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CT-96 t1_j6081ei wrote

Reply to comment by Benbenb1 in ~2 years waiting for the keycaps! Finally arrived this week. by Human133

This hobby is really strange about this stuff. In pretty much any other niche hobby (I'm a longboarder for example), paying upfront and then waiting 2 years for fulfilment would get you boycotted and most of your orders cancelled (or just run out of business because no one ordered in the first place). You actually need to have a physical product to show people and not just a render.

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GRSimon t1_j60mzlr wrote

Not defending it, but part of the reason is back in the day GMK never did group buys, and the idea of it happening seemed so out of reach. People on GeekHack forked out $$$ just to buy tooling to imitate GMK's Cherry font, a 'rare' now common red GMK escape key once sold for hundreds of dollars, finding GMK keycaps on Classifieds was rare.

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Benbenb1 t1_j60knka wrote

Exactly my thoughts on this. Literally any other hobby and it just would not work.

I feel like it’s due to the fact that enough people try to justify their (respectfully) dumbass purchases, that (is also in part due to the the normalcy of this practice from companies) takes YEARS to receive.

But you know…Clickity clack. And those THOCK key caps.

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fronteir t1_j60pwos wrote

It initially started when the hobby was niche enough that groupbuys were pretty much the only way to get the factory time to do enough items to make it economical.

Nowadays it keeps happening because a) its a win for the designer/company, they get immediate payment with no risk of not selling their product if they just did it in stock b) there are still smaller designers who wouldn't be able to get their designs made without the GB model

I am hopeful that with GMK leadtimes being consistently insane, and now with KAT being blown up due to factory covid issues, that people will start to wisen up? But the FOMO in this hobby is real and its a fucking shame

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[deleted] t1_j60nbz4 wrote

There are loads of really nice in stock sets if you don't want to wait for a group buy.

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CT-96 t1_j60vmj5 wrote

And that's exactly what I do. I buy in stock stuff instead because that is a more consumer friendly business practice.

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