Technology
This is the official technology community of Lemmy.ml for all news related to creation and use of technology, and to facilitate civil, meaningful discussion around it.
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@tookmyname @BaroqueInMind
I think there's still a place for certain types of pre-orders.
There are many projects where the production of the product requires an upfront cost and a pre-order is needed to cover these.
I have pro-ordered many a small batch electronics device and have had no issues. However, in these cases the design of the device is already complete and the features/specs all known in advance.
The same goes for all the books I've pre-ordered from indie publishers, for the same reason, the book is already finished but production is too expensive for a small publisher to cover without pre-sales.
The issues come when pre-ordering something that _isn't_ complete, especially if it's working on an as-of-yet unsolved problem. Frankly, I wish that platforms like kickstarter would have a dedicated section for "production cost" pre-orders that had a different sales agreement and some vetting to ensure that products got delivered and were as advertised.