Let me take you back to January 2016:
Apparently the project was all but finalised, orders needed to be in ASAP and customers could expect boards to start arriving from April 2016!
Fast-forward to April 2016:
OK so even though production should have been well under way by now at least to the point of finalising numbers, apparently you can still order for a few more months. OK fair enough, delays happen. No major red flags at this point. But hey, last day to order is June 2016! Don't miss out!
July 2016:
Hold on, you can still get in for the 'early bird' sales? OK, good for the 'late-comers', and the good news is a lot of the molds to prepare for actual production
were finished in May and June (wasn't it already pretty much ready for production before April?).
October 2016:
Soo.... the January promise of April delivery is long gone. 3 months has turned into 9 and we're still making molds? But hey good news, you don't have to miss out! You can still get your orders in by 31st October!
Still on track for delivery in December...
December comes and goes... half of 2017 comes and goes... now well over a year after boards were supposed to start being delivered. No meaningful updates, no explanation what happened yet again to the last delivery timeframe, just another 'get your orders in by the end of this month!" update:
I think you get the idea by this point. It's now August 2019. 3 years of the same pattern repeating itself. Perhaps the clearest sign of bullsh*t yet:
Isn't everything manufactured already? Isn't it just assembly? And if it's taking longer because there are so many orders, so what? Should the 'early bird' orders from over 3 years ago already be getting shipped out rather than waiting for all the orders to be ready? Isn't that the point of 'early bird'? And if everything is already manufactured - why trying to 'get the word out' to as many people as possible? Just trying to take in even more money. And conveniently enough, now in August 2019:
There sure is a lot of constant playing at "Fear of Missing Out" and time pressuring ("The sooner you order, the sooner your keyboard ships!", "Make sure your order is in by x") which reek of as much credibility as someone selling into a time-share pyramid scheme. Anyone want to take bets on whether the end of August goes and magically the cut-off date for orders is now the end of September?
If these ever do actually materialise for buyers, what is the bet that preference is given to notable buyers (bloggers, youtube reviewers, forum/reddit/etc community leaders etc) but a vast majority of other buyers have other 'complications' with their orders and never see the light of day. For many, way outside the eligible period to make a claim via their credit card (and of course there was no Paypal/etc option with this).
This may have started off with good intentions but my guess would be they realised they were way out of their depth with the project, and rather than do the right thing and issue refunds, went with milking as much money as possible (making more than enough to produce some prototype material which is convincing in photo form but immune to hands-on scrutiny) before someone finally calls them on their bullsh**.
