Honestly the biggest problem with group buys is people who don't know what they are getting into.
This.
It looks like most people who have never participated in a GB think it is just collecting money, handing it over and then walking away with the product. So anything over 2 months becomes "long".
Especially for the prices we manage to negotiate, production is in line with what you can expect. And if anything goes wrong (f.e. Wrong plastic), you miss a production slot and a buy gets delayed.
Only because of the experience of some of the GB organizers (Ivan, Matt, Bunnylake, to name a few) and some improved systems like at Signature Plastics we have seen some pretty quick GBs in the last year or so. Before that it was not uncommon for them to take around a year to materialize.
Round 4 for example took nearly 2 years because of the complexity. That is why Ivan has drastically decreased the number of options.
But there have been a few rotten apples. People who took the money, started production and because life intervened were never able to deliver. Or some people who outright scammed people.
These are fortunately very rare.
As always buyer beware and if something feels off, don't participate.
If you expect it to be delivered on time, don't bother. Pretty much every project in business gets delayed and we don't even have the business clause necessary to do something about it.
It is based on trust, but that trust sometimes delivers truly special things for a mish-mash of people from this community and others...