All sorts of things could have caused this, from bad to indifferent to good. They might have had a whole run of units come back bad from the factory (maybe there was a bad batch of a component). Their container might have fallen off the boat in mid-Pacific. They might be insolvent and unable to fund a production run. Or a big distributor might have said to them, we'll stock your gizmo in 5,000 stores but only if you sell us your entire Q1 production.

None of which are an excuse for not keeping customers informed, of course. They haven't charged your card yet, have they?

Peter