wow, man that sucks... I've done some custom headlights & I too have gotten into that same thing of it taking forever to finish them & still not finishing some even... unless you've done these things before it's hard to imagine how something like this can go on for so many months & months, a year or more even, especially when you start playing with highly custom instead of just spraying & sticking leds in there... but, for me there were 2 main differences, 1 being that it's not my business, just side hobby type stuff & 2 is that I never ever took any money for anything from anybody, not one penny let alone hundreds... I used my own money to buy lights & materials & if I never finished them then it was my loss, not anyone elses...
unless you can deliver a solid reliable ETA that is agreable to both parties from the beginning it's not fair to take someones money & then play on there dime... I can honestly say that so far I have lost thousands of $$$ playing with this stuff, BUT that was my money & my loss, had it been others $$$ then I could see something like this really hurting my reputation, & honestly my reputation & my word is worth more to me than any $$$ out there... to me that is where they screwed up, taking your money before delivering the goods, & all the money??? that's just plain stupid... at that point what incentive do they even have to finish your lights? they already got paid & spent the money long ago... man, that is just BAD business, I never like to take money in advance... it's a mental thing too, the payment is incentive & drive to finish the job, without that it gets even harder to have the same drive... hell, even with the incentive of getting paid it can be hard to finish, without that?? not good...