It _is_ a mess, but its not _that_ hard to understand...
High level (cutting out a lot of details and history).. the very show 10 secon version is..
There were multiple batches of (pre-)orders at each store (ED and Craig are separate stores, as are ithic and anyone else selling the device.) Craig got the largest set of pre-orders.
Many crazy things happened (volcanos, mudslides, CC being a bad company who ripped off the production..) -> leading to multi-year delays in assembling shippable devices in quantity (also, devices cost more to make than the original sell price)
After awhile, people requested refunds, mostly from Craig (due to his higher queue size, perhaps due to lack of communication or other factors)
--> Craig doesn't have the money to pay ED (who is now doing the production) for new units, but still owes people a pile of units
Then 1ghz machins came along, and Craig sold a pile of them .. got the cash, but more refund requests came and he sent the cash away to them, and thus has new orders he can't fulfill
So the Craig story is .. he has 2 or 3 queuers of pre-orders, and no devices to send them, and no money for refunds, and no money to order new devices from ED.
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ED has devices in stock; new buyers from ED get a device in a couple of days.
it 'seems unfair', but ED is not Craig; ED has sent piles of units to Craig without payment, so he cannot keep doing this.. he can't go deeper in the hole to help Craigs situation, as he's alreayd in the hoel quite a lot from this. So no more units flowign from ED to Craig out of the blue.. ED is owed a rather large pile of money. (ED also has a queue, but its getting very small, and he's shipping those units out as he can. So yes, new orders get filled instantly, but EDs queue orders also get filled.. for every unit new sol, he can fund a unit to a preorder as well.)
ED is _also_ sending units to craig to send to Craigs preorder queues, when ED gets a sale of two of various units. ie: He's sending 'free' units to Craigs queue customers.
ie: ED is spending all his proceeds on Craigs customers, to help them out of the hole.
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Its a bit messy, but it 'adds up'.. This creates friction though, with Craig taking money and sending it out to refunds, and ED bailing Craigs customers out on his own pocket.
jeff
