Wait, how do you get credit for your reservation fee?
you don't... the reservation fee doesn't apply to purchase price.
its just that, a reservation to be able to purchase at a certain price point
Well that's lame. OP should probably update the first post then, as the cost of the miner is not $500 and you cannot get two SP20's for $1000
It was explained early on.
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.9925485Yes, and it is probably partially a miscommunication but I did ask if the deposit was refundable. A sentence that it isn't a deposit probably would have been appropriate, especially given the advertisement that the cost of two units is $1000.
It's very similar to RoadStress previous two GB.
Anyway, I don't know how he could have made it more clear:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.9925806I wasn't part of RoadStress's previous group buys.
Again, I know it's probably pedantic, but when I said
Sorry, that's still not very clear. Are you saying that you will keep 40% and donate 60% for people who do not follow through with orders in the event that the group buy does go ahead, but that you will refund the reservation fees if the GB fails to reach 200 units?
it would have been pretty simple to say "No, the fee is not for people who do not follow through with orders, it is for all orders" or just "No"
Instead he basically just echoed what I said but removed the part that would make the .02 a deposit as opposed to a fee.
I really don't have a problem with the idea of the fee, but you shouldn't advertise the units as $500 shipping included since no one (who isn't cheating) can buy them for that price. It's not even like it's a one time fee that will asymptotically approach $500 if you buy enough.
Each unit costs $506.50.
Pedantic? Maybe. It's similar to advertising 0.5W/GH - 0.295$/GH though. It's intentionally misleading as it implies you can have both those things at the same time. You can argue that it's never claimed that both numbers are valid at the same time, but it still comes off as slimy and really the product is good enough that you don't need to resort to tricks like that.
Thanks. I might have just been in a bad mood; I was installing QT on a fresh machine today for my active wallet so I got to watch my BTC total rise and rise until I decided it was time to cash out my $10k worth of Bitcoin a little over 2 years ago to pay off a car since it had just surged up to $14 each. Makes me grumpy every time that happens. 
) purchase price.