I signed up to be notified. I tried to buy many times and failed. I lost time and sleep because Google decided to play all these tricks on us. I never got an e-mail or any sort of communication. I guess it depends on your definition of customer but in the physical world when someone goes in a store to purchase something and talks with the staff I would consider them to meet the definition of a customer.

EDIT: Let's say you drive to a store knowing a product is going on sale. You go to a shelf, they have pieces of paper saying take this paper and claim the product at the register. You take the paper. You queue up, you get to the register and they tell you tough luck, we have no inventory. Wouldn't you be annoyed? Then you leave the store to find stalls of people selling the product for double the price.

This sort of stuff can happen but it would be nice if Google said something about it. The only thing they told the community is "sold out" and "check again soon". I was hoping to use this phone while traveling next month but I'll have to make some other arrangements for a reasonable unlocked phone.

It's a full two days after the original order went through. Couldn't they know this information earlier?