Just don't.
I pre-ordered a $230 item in January 2019 that was supposed to be completed and shipped "1st Quarter 2019". Come March it was pushed to "2nd Quarter 2019". Come June is was pushed "1st Quarter 2020." They didn't send email updates about these pushes, I would find out on my own by visiting the product page every so often. At this point I decided I was done waiting and asked for a refund. They said they couldn't give me one because my preorder money went into the production of the item and "gears are already in motion" as they put it. They said "as a collector I should know that these things take time". I told them I'm not a "collector", I just buy things like this sometimes, and I've never before ordered anything from Mighty Jaxx. I've ordered from Sideshow a few times and the estimated completion dates for preorders have always — in my experience — been pretty on the nose. I just came across this item on instagram, thought it was extremely cool, and figured I'd be able to enjoy it by the date advertised at the time of the order or soon after. I can understand setbacks but these date changes were getting silly. This isn't Kickstarter, I didn't know I was funding the item into existence and it could be years before I have one. At the time of the order it was expected to ship within a couple of months according to the product page, and with the number of pushbacks since then how much confidence should I have in the 2020 date? They still refused a refund, so okay, I guess I'll wait. Between June 2019 and now, November 2019, I forgot it existed. Then suddenly last week I recalled it and went to the site to check the latest status. The item did not exist on the site any longer and my order receipt from January took me to a "page not found" when trying to check my order information on the site. It was like the order and item never existed. By this time the card and PayPal account I originally made the preorder with no longer existed. I contacted them explaining that if the item was cancelled and they refunded me I didn't receive it because I received no correspondence from them by email about it and the card and PayPal account no longer exist. They replied saying they already refunded me via PayPal August 30th, included a PDF of the refund that stated "pending", probably for the reasons I explained and they ignored, and they didn't at all acknowledge anything I said about the non-existent account and card they would have refunded to. I contacted PayPal and they said the money was bounced back to them September 30th. I emailed them again saying this and they replied AGAIN confirming they already sent my refund apparently failing to read or bothering to understand anything I'm trying to communicate. I emailed AGAIN explaining it like they're 4 and finally they refunded me to a new PayPal account I gave them information for. Unfortunately they sent me the money as a payment, so PayPal took a $14 cut of the money and are holding the funds for another 21 business days, but at least this is over. Was the item cancelled? Did it ever reach production? No idea, they didn't acknowledge that either.