I'm not sure you read my post at all; I posted his order, he sold his for 150 because his order was for BOTH keyboard AND keycaps, he sold this at COST and there was ZERO profit. So what exactly is the price that must be paid? Reputation as I am sure you know is very important in a niche market where there are only a handful of competitors which is why I am sure Vortex has suffered more of a loss than the consumers, the consumers only have to wait, while the more delays and hick ups that Vortex is presented with, the more customers are willing to settle for alternatives which in term is loss revenue. It is in Vortex's best interest to be able to follow their production schedule or at least not announce to the public dates which keep getting changed in order to keep sales.
Although I would not use a TKL backlit keyboard to compare to the race, there is an alternative which is the tg3 BL82 which has a very similar form to the race and while that has sold, it is not the same as the Race. I am by no means advocating that group buys do not have a place, but, compared to the standards that previous and other group buys have created I would say that this is not a front runner for the smoothest group buy due to manufacturing problem, and lack of communication which was NOT due to the creator of this groupbuy =).