The "on-demand" comment is a bit misleading. I took it, based off of years of being around here, that by "on-demand" does not mean that they make each speaker after the order has been placed, but they do not stock pile speakers either. They do product runs and try to plan for the number of sales that they expect before the next run of that product line. For example, when I was looking for a VP180 center on their auction site, I was waiting for a product run on VP180s in hopes of one of them having a small cosmetic blemish so that it could hit the auction site. So they do operate that way.
I obviously do not have visibility to their production schedule or stock, but you may have hit a point when stock was low, or as can happen with any sized company, some shipping issue happened.
Heck, last week here in Iowa, it was so foggy that shipments weren't getting dropped off or picked up at our office for 2 days in a row.
FedEx is a sticky shipping partner for sure. My first speakers from Axiom a few years back were all shipped FedEx. They actually went out for delivery 1 day early, but nobody was home, so they wouldn't leave them without signature. I was lucky enough to call them and reroute it for pickup at the local office (which was about 25 minutes from my house), and I went that route.
My VP180 shipment and the QS8 shipment 2 weeks prior were both shipped via FedEx, but did NOT require signatures. Not sure what the deal is there, but I was happy that I didn't have to be home when they arrived.
Hang in there...
