No one should be upset at Stern. They do what they want when they want and we still buy their product. It would take many screw ups for that to change and the Metallica LE situation may or may not have even been a Stern screw up.
To the people who complain about prices, we have no one to blame but ourselves. If I'm Stern, I keep raising the prices of the LE's to maximize my profits until I get to the point where I have just enough buyers to sell all 500 LEs to. $500 more per pin means a cool $250,000 in my pocket. Think Stern would have sold all 500 Metallica LEs for $500 more? I do.