I can’t tell you what you should do, but it’s clear what Purism should do when they can not ship in the time frame promised. Purism should follow the FTC Mail Order Rule. https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/business-guide-ftcs-mail-internet-or-telephone-order-merchandise-rule
What You Must Do If You Learn You Cannot Ship on Time
When you learn that you cannot ship on time, you must decide whether you will ever be able to ship the order. If you decide that you cannot, you must promptly cancel the order and make a full refund.
If you decide you can ship the order later, you must seek the customer’s consent to the delay. You may use whatever means you wish to do this – such as the telephone, fax, mail, or email – as long as you notify the customer of the delay reasonably quickly. The customer must have sufficient advance notification to make a meaningful decision to consent to the delay or cancel the order.
Some businesses adopt internal deadlines that are earlier than those set by the Rule to ensure that their delay notices give all customers a meaningful opportunity to consent to the delay. If businesses fail to ship or give delay notifications by their internal deadlines, they automatically cancel the orders and make refunds.
In any event, no notification to the customer can take longer than the time you originally promised or, if no time was promised, 30 days. If you cannot ship the order or provide the notice within this time, you must cancel the order and make a prompt refund.
Do you think Purism has followed the FTC Mail Order Rule?
There are lots of people claiming this and nobody from Purism denying it. IIRC, when Purism finally got to the point of the queue being empty for the Librem 5 … I think JCS or somebody with Purism knowledge indicated on this forum that there were something like 600 people waiting for refunds [Edit: As @leetaur pointed out, it was not JCS, it was this comment Louiss Rossman on Purism - #21 by Poseidon which referred to Louis Rossman’s video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IjUryQOlgk ) where an unofficial Purism spokesperson (listen to the video) claiming insider knowledge wrote this in an e-mail to Louis. As read by Louis, it is between 16:54 and 17:05 in the video.]. Purism didn’t offer them refunds — only delivery on the phone or store credit. In fact the OP provided screenshots of the same. I also linked to the StartEngine discussion where Todd was denying the refund until the person publicly shamed Todd. What more do you need???
In regard to whether “Purism is going to be the next Google” … I don’t know. But I do know that I don’t trust Purism to be honest. As such I certainly wouldn’t trust Purism with a privacy product. But people can decide for themselves as long as they know the pattern of behavior that Purism has set.
To Purism’s credit, however, they have made good on FOSS and upstreaming promises. That said, Google’s contribution to Open Source has been much larger than Purism’s — of course I don’t really trust Google with my privacy either.