I'm not sure why everyone is getting ruffled.
I take steamboat's statement to mean that if you have not paid for components/assembly through his website, its not his fault if he runs out of components. This is especially pertinent for early batches. For example, if you are in batch 1, and you have not paid for components/assembly, and steamboat runs out of components because other chips arrive (his own batches and/or other group buys) that have paid for components/assembly, then you will face delays until steamboat orders another few pallets of components.
Assuming the above is true, I also think this is fair. He can't sit on his thumbs hoping that early batchers that are late to pay for components/assembly will do so eventually, while holding back customers that have paid for components/assembly, and their chips have arrived.
So, if you have already paid for components/assembly before the 30th June deadline (or perhaps even a couple of days after that) I don't think you have anything to worry about.
I take steamboat's statement to mean that if you have not paid for components/assembly through his website, its not his fault if he runs out of components. This is especially pertinent for early batches. For example, if you are in batch 1, and you have not paid for components/assembly, and steamboat runs out of components because other chips arrive (his own batches and/or other group buys) that have paid for components/assembly, then you will face delays until steamboat orders another few pallets of components.
Assuming the above is true, I also think this is fair. He can't sit on his thumbs hoping that early batchers that are late to pay for components/assembly will do so eventually, while holding back customers that have paid for components/assembly, and their chips have arrived.
So, if you have already paid for components/assembly before the 30th June deadline (or perhaps even a couple of days after that) I don't think you have anything to worry about.
People signed onto this chip group buy because it was being bundled with an assembly service. Everyone thought that steamboat chip purchasers would get priority use of steamboat's assembly services. But now it seems that there's only enough components for 4.8 batches at this time and someone in steamboat batch 2 or 3 could be waiting for a significant parts delay if another chip group buy sends a significant amount of chips to him first. We were not anticipating to have to fight with other chip group buys; we thought our batch # in steamboat's group buy would be the main factor.