In fairness, they will have clauses in contracts that state release dates and those will need to be stuck to rigidly. In reality, this means that they were unable to send anything that could potentially arrive early. They are left at the vagaries of courier firms and that is rarely a good place to be. It is going to be disappointing for some and while it is not great, I think in the grand scheme of things, a delay of a day or 2 is not the end of the world.
Hopefully we will never have such a critical and important release ever again and folk will not be so funnelled into particularly specific days for their order in such large numbers.
Given our history and the size of Castore, I think we can give them a pass this time, given the scale and limitations on the job in hand.