You know, you're right, Luketheduke. I didn't quite realize that much time had passed, but I ordered on the 2/10 date when they went up on site, myself, and at that point I thought they were in stock and ready to ship out. Ok, so here's some info I got yesterday from another vendor who's dealing with Lrider. This guy is a super straight shooter... he refuses to sell lava tubes he doesn't have in his possession, because lrider does jerk vendors around so much on dates and such. He said A) lrider is sort of known for using money they get from pre-orders on a product to finance the run of that product. Now in my opinion, that's NOT a safe thing to do, because if anything goes wrong, they're unable to meet the orders they've already been paid on, by the vendors. He said B) He's been asking his rep at lrider for the solid stainless lava tubes, and has been told repeatedly that the only silver models they have are the silver powdercoated one (thats the slightly glittery light silver one) and the copper body coated in chrome. The rep said they do not make them in solid stainless.
Now that's pretty scary. It could mean that the manufacturing of these stainless tubes is either too costly or a hassle, so lrider is not taking any more new orders from vendors on them (which makes
sense, since on the apollo site it says that the stainless are a limited run of 500, and when they're gone, they're gone). Or it could mean that somehow something went awry and there's been either intentional or inadvertent miscommunication between lrider and apollo, and there' never were stainless tubes available from the manufacturer. Personally, I think the top option is more likely. And thats the ONLY reason I'm not asking for my money back. If I do end up with a solid stainless tube, clearly there are a limited run available, and that has good things to say for any future resale of the item. So I'm holding out for a little bit longer. Little bit being the key phrase.
And NO... there are no other vendors (that I'm aware of... and I've hunted) selling the stainless steel (that's been confusing, since some of the vendors in the UK were calling the silver powedercoat ones 'steel' when they sold them). And to my knowledge, noone in the states or outside of china has actually received one of these solid stainless models. If anyone has any info to the contrary, I'd love to hear it. I suppose its possible that apollo has seen a test model, but I'm not sure about that.
I can tell you that if I end up receiving a copper body coated in chrome, or a silver powdercoat, I will raise holy bloody heck until I get my money refunded, and some sort of compensation for the 2+ mos I waited. But honestly, I think the most likely scenario is that apollo got in there with the vendor, and between them they decided to make some solid stainless ones, but that somewhere in the process, lrider decided that they won't be doing any more in the solid stainless than just meeting this existing order with apollo. I wouldn't be waiting still if that didn't seem likely. I know enough about the manufacturing process in general that that seems like a likely scenario, but by no means am I positive.
, 
