Vague dates like "coming soon" or "shipping soon" to lure pre-orders is outlawed in Germany, after a Munich Regional High Court ruling, in which a litigant took reseller MediaMarkt to court over excessive delivery delays. For any retailer to sell a pre-order for a commodity or a digital software license (i.e. take payment before product launch date),. In other words, the onus is on the reseller to specify when a buyer will have the product or digital license in their possession, before making the sale, and ensure that the product reaches the consumer on or before the specified date.The new ruling bolsters Germany's consumer rights laws, which are among the strictest in the world. German consumers are already within their rights to return a product they don't like for no reason, within a finite amount of time after the sale. If a retailer delivers later than the specified delivery date, the consumer can refuse the product and become eligible for a full refund. Perhaps the biggest impact of this ruling will fall on the real-estate industry. Real-estate developers taking payments from home-buyers before the completion of the development (i.e. transfer of possession) of a property, must be ready to cough up a full-refund (adjusted by inflation), if the buyer doesn't get possession on the agreed delivery date.I guess we can kiss pre-orders goodbye over here....