yeah! Craig has been trading tech gadgets for years before they decided to build the Pandora to fill what they and many others saw as a big hole in the market, assure your parents that if no Pandora appears soon you will go for a refund, set the best date you can negotiate, start high and let em bid you down

, I doubt OP are going to try to go into hiding over £1m, that's only about 83k each for the team, where on planet Earth could they hide for that amount of money? considering they would have 4000 angry pre-order people looking for em, it`s not probable that they would try to run off over such small earnings, plus, as a scam, it would have to be the worst run scam in the history of the internet, I could run a more convincing scam
real scams go after big money, (Cherrypal, Gizmondo for eg, Gizmondo took big investors for Hundreds of Millions), also TI would have to be in on this as well, or at least not bothering to say anything about never having supplied 4000 OMAP soc modules, not to mention we have all seen Craig, Evil dragon etc on YouTube, and since Craig and his tech trading firm are based in the UK the fraud squad would be all over him if this turned out to be scam, it`s not like this is some unknown guy from Outer Mongolia or something, he even has his (valid) trading address on his website (that's where I sent a cheque to for my GP200, and later the Pandora).
I fully expect the Pandora to appear soon (soon defined as OpenPandora soon, that is, with only a faint relationship to what the rest of the world calls soon

), if you can`t convince your parents, then you will just have to wait for the second batch, remember the device we get will have "beta" software etc, so they may think you have been ripped off with a dodgy device anyway, even if you get a first edition unit, the only question I have is on final quality of build, and we should be seeing that soon enough.
a similar device in capability (while lacking a whole host of features) would be the Nokia N900, they cost £500 as a no contract device, building a superior device from scratch on such a low budget was always going to be slow, its not like Craig has his own injection moulding machines and a big design team, so ask for some more time, then honour the cut off date with no complaining if the Pandora fails to appear, that way you stand a good chance of getting a second batch device if a first batch device eludes you.
I can understand your parents concern, they just don`t have an infinite supply of money* and with Christmas coming up think they could put it to better use on your behalf (for example), so don`t feel like your being picked on, it`s a parent thing (says the 49yr old guy who still lives with "mum and dad" :unsure: )
*...if (however) they do have an infinite supply of money then ask them to send me some if they would be so kind B)