Justin Jackson wrote:BM should have made sure pre-orders were sent in the order received.
That's actually pretty much what BMD is doing... but it's based on when the VENDORS ordered, because BMD doesn't have visibility into who ordered from the vendor, or when.
So if some tiny shop in the Pacific Northwest that has a good relationship with BMD and knows that it will be able to sell the cameras, it will order as soon as possible, and likely even beat the bigger B&H to the punch, while B&H stops to think about how many to purchase with its initial order before ordering.
So the tiny shop orders five or six, gets two or three preorders, and gets its five before B&H gets its first shipment of 200 (I'm obviously pulling these numbers out of the same thin Pacific NW air that Rick Lang gets his numbers from here
). When B&H reaches some number of preorders, it places another purchase order with BMD. The small shop does the same... but for B&H that's 300 preorders, for the small shop that's seven.
So the seven preorder customers who went with the small local shop get their cameras before the 201st person on B&H's list, and the next 942 people on B&H's list stay on the list while the small shop has two units sitting on its shelf.
So yes, it's frustrating, but there's also not much that BMD can do about it. BMD isn't trying to screw over anyone, it's just trying to get quality cameras that don't cost enough into as many people's hands as it can.
It's hard to be patient I know (just look at the Hydrogen site), but also keep in mind that these Pocket 4K's are NOT competitively priced.
To be competitively priced, BMD would have to charge MORE for them. And stop giving away a $250 dongle that, if IT were competitively priced, would cost $30,000.
I'm looking forward to the preorder queues clearing out so that I can get one also, and I have two friends with preorders in (both with the local PNW shop in my area where I got my three BMD cameras). I knew the queues would be long, but I underestimated them too