Remember also that the Pro¹ is not crowdfunded (I know some will say it is almost the same due to the delays since payments, but well, it still is not a crowdfunded project), meaning F(x)tec had investors. I am not saying those investors included retailers, but that' is a possibility, especially as Clove seems to be UK-based. Or they could just be pre-orderers or IGG backers too. In both cases, it wouldn't be shocking that they get devices at the same time as pre-orderers.

What increases the feeling of being fooled is the slow production followed by long export process. I don't think anyone would have seen a big issue if individual preorders had been fulfilled in a few weeks as initially planned (meaning many more units per week, and shorter duration between those in one batch, those in another one, and retailers). There still is no general availability, those retailers had very limited stocks, so we can't really jump conclusions that F(x)tec skipped pre-orderers to please stockists.