It is the "maybe, just maybe" part that is the problem. It's not "hate" is is frustration at a business that is quick to book orders for a product they don't have yet.....I will give them 1 more chance and like baseball they will have their three strikes if they miss the third shipping date. Nor does this excuse a company that does not communicate or be honest up front about these delays. So no, I am well less than pleased with Mishimotos' business practices. I was a business owner for over 30 years and can assure you I am not used to this type of business practices. When I ordered the hose I was under the impression they had already designed, tested and produced the part and was simply waiting for their first shipment. Then we find out that they have not even tested a prototype yet much less gone into the manufacturing phase........I will not accept this as the normal business practice. My business would have failed quickly if I took pre-orders for a "vision". I would hope everyone would refuse to condone business practices like this since I have used other suppliers on this Forum and had outstanding service and customer care. So in comparison to their competition, yes indeed they are at the bottom of my list of suppliers at this point.
From many years of doing corporate training for some of the largest companies in the world in management and customer satisfaction skills I will also assure you this is not common business practices. This is demonstrative of a marketing driven company with little concern for long term customer commitments or a company without adequate upper management oversight. How many readers are looking at this thread wondering what is going on like the rest of us? I for one will think long and hard about supporting them in the future and will definitely not get involved in one of their pre-order deals again. So again, I don't "hate" them, they have not ripped me off or damaged me in any way to give reason to "hate" them. But on the other hand they have done nothing to give me reason to respect them at this point either.
Which is why my Training business taught corporations to not make promises they cannot keep and to communicate to their customers. The two main reasons for customer complaints in industry. It amazed me at times what companies would pay for this training on what I would consider to be common business sense.
Would you order a new car knowing up front it had not been designed or even tested yet? Had they stated that they were selling an idea it would be one thing, but the implication was they had a product to sell. They obviously don't. So I will keep my order active and as you said "maybe, just maybe" they will actually ship one. But I will continue to hope Mountune gets one out that will not cause problems with warranty issues as technically this will modify the factory emissions equipment. The plug and play aspect was the reason for ordering so I would not have to modify anything and could easily "unplug" it.