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!
Do you build to order in your job? It's actually pretty common to pay upfront and not be able to get a refund on built to order goods. Bitcoins ASICs have had a long timeline from order to delivery on their first batches and you're right that customers were bearing a large risk. I don't think you can say that they were bearing
all the risk, though, because it's highly likely that first batch sales didn't cover development costs.
No-one's forcing anyone to pre-order. Plenty of people have decided to wait until BFL is shipping on a normal retail basis rather than pre-order from anyone.
You're apparently also overlooking the fact that Avalon didn't intend to ship rigs initially so they weren't set up for that. They've been open about the fact that pre-order funds for Batch 2 will be used to build the units.