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"Shipping early 2015. We will charge your credit card immediately upon pre-order."

When it did become legal (or even advisable) to charge a credit card more than 30 days in advance of shipment?

Given all the kickstarter hardware startup fiascos, there is NO way I'm paying for a piece of technology this complex 4+ months in advance of estimated delivery times. I'm fully expecting to see "Where is my Navdy!!!?!?!" threads around about this time next year.

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It's always been legal (in the US) as long as they tell you when they WILL ship (or within 30 days, if no timeframe is promised). It's against the merchant contract with most (all?) major credit card providers though.

I'm not sure why there would be anything illegal about charging a card so early (in any jurisdiction I'm familiar with, at least) but it's certainly considered bad practice where I am and the related payment services would likely not be happy if they knew it was happening, not least due to the high risk of chargebacks.

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