I just received this email.
Hello,
Thanks for expressing your interest in our products. Over the last month we have received numerous emails and calls, enquiring when our products will be available for pre-order. People interested in our products have been continuously requesting us to take their orders. We have kindly declined to honor all such requests so far. Another request we have received a lot is to start accepting alternate forms of payment including PayPal and Wire/Cash.
Due to the huge demand, we have decided to start taking orders. Our website will start taking orders starting Tuesday June 18th, 2013 at 9:00 am Pacific Standard Time. For the first 24 hours, only the folks who have signed up for an account on our website before this email, would be allowed to place an order. After that anybody would be able to order.
We have also accepted the second request, and will accept PayPal and Wire as a payment method. We will not be accepting any cash at our office.
As a consequence of accepting PayPal/Wire as a payment, we will have to fix the prices of our products in USD. BTC prices will vary by the day, but users wanting to order with BTC will still be able to do that.
We have made considerable progress towards the development of our products. We are very hopeful that by next week we will have a working demo board ready.
Thanks,
TerraHash Team.
I'm disappointed that Terrahash is going to a preorder scheme when we have no manufacturing timeline, no way to guarantee a timeline would be adhered to, and still no details of (e.g.) their Avalon bulk order. I also find it odd that this reversal came so suddenly.
Also, while I'm glad they will accept PayPal, if preorders are far enough in advance of projected delivery, that may hinder our ability to obtain refunds (through PayPal) should Terrahash disappear or miss a delivery target after PayPal's dispute resolution period has expired.
Side note: Can we get a guarantee of what will happen if Terrahash gets board manufacturing rolling long before the DX cases are ready? In a preorder scheme, I think the only fair approach is to wait to release both DXes and standalone modules at the same time. (This is coming from someone who only intends to buy modules at this point, too...)