Lethal bills at the time of sale. It's not like Summit where they bill you when it ships.
I found this out too. I very much like supporting forum vendors but it needs to make sense. I'm not in favor of the above practice but I understand it from a business perspective. It makes it so people are less likely to cancel an order and go through the refund and then re-order process.
I've ordered from Lethal, the products were shown to be in stock on their site. I was in no hurry and it wasn't a big deal but It took a while longer than I had expected. It took me a minute before I even looked into it. What I found was that Steeda's site showed out of stock while Lethal's site was showing in stock. Initially, I hadn't realized that this was a drop ship product, I know that now. As I said, I wasn't in a hurry but I do like knowing up front what to expect.
It can be challenging to have a website that accurately reflects real inventory and even more complicated when you're trying to keep up with drop shipping from a supplier. Vendors can't ship something that they don't have or isn't even available in the supply chain.
This all said I'd still like to know what I'm looking at when I make the purchase. I don't think that's too much to ask. We all know that manufacturer availability dates can and will change. Heck, Ford changes shipping dates more often than people change socks. I'd just like to know something is back-ordered from the get-go. It gives me the option of purchasing or not in a different manner.
Recently, I ordered another Steeda product that I initially intended to order through Lethal. The websites once again didn't agree with each other and the price was the same on both sites. I ended up just ordering directly from Steeda knowing the product was back-ordered.
I'd order from Lethal again in a minute, they can have some very nice pricing but I will always compare the price of products and check the availability before placing the order.