Which is what I obviously did this afternoon... a couple of hours after the ridiculous notice. And I contacted them, but sorry, that's the preorder situation?!
As it turns out they were available at the local Best Buy and even the B&N when I went there to get a cover, where the sales rep told me to just not bother with the online service anyway after I mentioned the sad tale, and adding that even they constantly receive conflicting information (until the box(es) arrive at the store)...
This does not change anything to the fact that they were going to ship me a PREordered item almost -2 months- later, when people who ordered long after me received theirs already. And the local availability as described above makes it even worse since there is obviously no real shortage.
Problems happen when ordering, I deal with it quite a bit, no big deal. But the above is just very notably sub-par service: being incapable of something as basic as shipping out preorders in the order received is just unprofessional, and discourteous to longtime & loyal customers (who tend to be the first in line). One would think that they learned from the original nook's messy launch...
Now let's leave it at that, before I live up too much to my title
and the Defenders Of B&N ©®™ have to get up in arms...
B&N got my money, and I got my nook color after all, and it's nice and much more usable for a 1.0 release than the original nook ever was (at least the engineers seem to have learned a lesson or two)