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Imagine you sold a widget for $5K and tomorrow widgets will only sell for $3K.  Sure you can accept a refund and then sell the unit again for future delivery.  Each refund essentially costs you the difference between the price you were already paid and the price you will be paid.  Now one or two refunds is one thing but given they knew they were going to be days (weeks) late it could have meant hundreds of refund requests.   The cost of each on is the difference between pre-sale prices and future sale prices.