Preorders and Promising a Date

What a preorder actually is

A customer has paid for something you do not have, on the strength of a date you stated.

That is a straightforward commercial arrangement and it carries obligations that an ordinary sale does not, because the customer is holding nothing while you hold their money.

The date is the substance of the promise, and everything difficult about preorders comes from it moving.

Which it will, at least sometimes, since the reason for a preorder is usually that supply is uncertain.

The rules in outline

Not legal advice, and the shape is worth knowing before you take the money.

Consumer protection legislation in most Canadian provinces requires goods to be supplied within a stated period, or within a reasonable time where none was stated.

Where you cannot supply within that period, the customer is generally entitled to cancel and receive a refund rather than a credit.

Advertising a delivery date you do not reasonably expect to meet can be treated as a misleading representation, which is a separate and more serious matter.

And your payment provider has its own rules, frequently stricter, about how far in advance of dispatch you may charge.

Where the amounts are significant or the delay is long, get advice rather than working from a general article.

State a date, not a season

• A specific dispatch date or narrow window.
• Dispatch, not delivery, since you control one.
• What happens if it slips.
• How you will tell them.
• That they can cancel for a refund.

The third is what prevents the argument. A customer told in advance what happens when a date moves is prepared for it, and one who finds out by waiting is not.

Choose the date you can keep

Since the temptation is the opposite.

An optimistic date sells more preorders and produces the situation you are trying to avoid.

Take the supplier's date, add margin for the shipping and for your own handling, and state that.

Where the supplier's date is itself uncertain, say so on the page rather than converting their uncertainty into your promise.

A later date that holds is worth considerably more than an earlier one that slips, particularly at this time of year where the slip is the difference between a gift and an apology.

And where you genuinely cannot state a date, a notification list is the honest alternative to a preorder.

A worked example

A shop took preorders for a restock advertised as arriving early December.

The supplier's shipment was delayed by two weeks, which put it past Christmas for most customers.

They emailed everybody the day they knew, stated the new date plainly, offered an immediate refund with one click, and offered a gift card for anybody who wanted something in time.

About a third cancelled and were refunded within a day, and the rest waited.

There were no disputes and several customers said the handling was better than the delay was bad.

The following year they set preorder dates a fortnight later than the supplier's estimate and did not miss one.

Tell them the day you know

Since the delay is survivable and the silence is not.

The instinct is to wait, in case the situation improves, and that instinct produces the complaint.

Email the moment the date changes, with the new date, the reason briefly, and the refund option stated first rather than buried.

Make cancelling genuinely easy, since a refund that requires a phone call reads as an obstacle deliberately placed.

Then honour the new date, because a second slip after a first one is what turns an inconvenience into a dispute.

Customers forgive a delay handled openly and remember one they had to chase.

Keep the money available

The practical consequence people underestimate.

Preorder money is not yours until the goods ship, in the sense that a substantial share of it may need refunding at short notice.

Spending it on the stock is normal and spending it on something else leaves you unable to refund if the supply fails entirely.

That is the scenario that ends businesses: a delayed shipment, a wave of cancellations, and the money already committed elsewhere.

Where the risk is real, taking a deposit rather than full payment reduces the exposure on both sides.

Some payment providers also hold funds or charge back preorders aggressively, which is worth confirming before running one at scale.

Label it clearly on the page

So nobody discovers it at checkout or afterwards.

The word preorder near the price, not only in the description.

The dispatch date in the same place, in the same size as the price.

A note in the basket and at checkout, since a mixed basket containing one preorder item will hold the whole order unless you split it.

And decide whether to ship in-stock items separately, which costs an extra parcel and prevents a customer waiting for everything because of one line.

Most complaints about preorders are really complaints about not having noticed one.

Watch the payment provider's clock

A constraint that catches sellers who have done everything else correctly.

Card networks and payment platforms allow a limited period during which a charge can be disputed or refunded through the original transaction, frequently measured in months.

A preorder charged in November and dispatched in March may fall outside that window, which means a refund has to be made some other way and a dispute may be decided against you automatically.

Ask your provider what their limit is before running any preorder with a long lead time, since the answer varies and is not obvious.

Where the gap is long, taking payment closer to dispatch, or a deposit now and the balance later, keeps the transaction inside the window.

The counter-case

Preorders are genuinely useful.

They convert demand you would otherwise lose to a sold-out page and tell you how much to order, which is better information than any forecast.

For a small business, customer money funding stock is sometimes the only way a restock happens at all.

And most preorders are fulfilled on time, so the failure case should not stop the practice.

State a date you can keep, say what happens if it slips, refund without argument, and keep enough back to do so.

Before taking one

1. Take the supplier's date and add margin.
2. State dispatch, not delivery.
3. Say what happens if it slips.
4. Label it beside the price.
5. Decide about mixed baskets.
6. Email the day anything changes.
7. Keep enough back to refund everybody.

Step seven is the one that turns a bad month into a survivable one, since the scenario that ends businesses is a failed supply with the money already spent.

What a stated date commits you to is covered in what your delivery estimate is promising.

Frequently asked questions

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