Yes you did misunderstand their plans. The reels being talked about come from existing orders placed at different times in the past by different people.
But no longer shipped to those people and offered openly for sale to anyone, aren't they? In which case I still think everyone else in the queue ought to be moved up and these reels sold at the end of the queue. But at least they aren't 'new' hashing power, so that's making me feel a bit better about it.
No way, these are unrelated batches. Why should people who have to pay more have to wait longer as well?