The easy solution to make somebody else overtake board design and convert most of the pre-orders to chip sales seems probably very appealing to BFL right now.
Funnily enough in the very first post in this forum saying they were selling chips, I said something like "Maybe it's a cunning ploy to get BKK to design a board that actually works"
They could come up with a motivation instrument for pre-order costumers. For example chip discount. That could make the magic happen, giving the fact those costumers are still interested in mining by not getting refunded already
Please note, that most of this is only my wild speculation.
Possibly, my own speculation given their history is that they saw the huge amount of avalon chip orders and thought it was an easy to way to raise large amounts of
needed cash.
Unforunately for them I don't think either of these options is going to happen, they've been telling too many lies for too long for large numbers of people to spend anything with them. BFL's window is closing.
Anyway, good luck with the group buy