I think you're knit picking nitpicking.
Oh most definitely
If they had profits and outside investments, why exactly did they need to take full payment pre-orders? if they didnt need customer money why not take a small deposit to hold the clients place, this is what normal real world companies do?
Meh, why not? As a small company, it's vastly easier to have everyone pay in full right from the start and have them shoulder all the risk. When the time comes to build, package, and ship, it's nice to know that you have X amount of customers that have already paid, compared to X [fully paid], Y [partially paid], and/or even Z [not paid]. It negates the "Oh wait, did this person pay the rest of their bill before I ship?" type of mentality.
Why not is definitely not a valid reason IMO... I believe my correction to you statement is more accurate and would agree completely with it .
Hell if they had the money to float the project but still took full payment pre-orders than what did they use client money for, speculation, paying salaries, R&D, hookers and blow. Really it doesn't matter what they did with it IMO the community gave them an interest free loan for an "open" amount of time, if shit hit the fan they could have lost money and what would the manufactures have lost? If they took it and needed it shame on them, if they took it and didn't need it shame on them.
I mean just look at Avalon, pre pay in full with no refund... that's on batch #2 Avalon is losing absolutely nothing no matter what happens, anyone ordering is taking all the risk (big or small its still risk). When purchasing goods it is not normal for the consumer to take ALL the risk while the retailer and manufacture take none. God I wish I could get away with this type of business model at my job!
And to your last point (sorry not familiar with the multi quoting from a single post yet... yup Im a newb!). You can gauge the demand for a product based on pre-sales with a small deposit vs full pre paid orders. Wouldn't it be sweet if there was a machine and some type of program that could have all of the client information on various stages of orders, payments, shipments etc
Come on dude handling (in Avalons case 300 orders for batch #1) is not that difficult in 2013 (unless you believe their current PR campaign). They can design and manufacture ASICS but cant run a tiny little Etail operation because clients haven't pre paid in full.