I am asserting that your last sentence is marginalizing other factors. It isn't really as "Simple" as "He gambled on BFL delivering and lost." Anyone, even today, who is purchasing a mining device that they don't receive instantly in their possession is gambling on a number of variables and (hopefully) considers the potential difficulty increase, the exchange rate, and how the latter most noticeably drives the former.
Your sentence immediately preceding these two confirms this, in a way:
If BFL had delivered when they said they would deliver, the investment would have been good. They did not, so the investment was bad.
This discussion has been completely sidetracked on irrelevant statements.
Let us refocus it to what was originally stated by hexed and that I disagreed with:
Those that kept their BFL preorders, or even made new orders, look likely to come out ahead over avalon batch 3.
No! I paid nealry 200 BTC for a Single SC in June 2012. There is almost no chance to get this money back so in the end BFL was a bad investment. The Avalon batch 3 was sold for 80 BTC (?) and nearly the same hashrate. Avalon already delivered this kind of miners while BFL is still in the prototype state with the singles. It's quite realistic that an Avalon batch 3 will reach break-even. For the BFL single I see no chance. Unfortunately I ordered a single (and a bASIC) and not an Avalon so bitcoin mining is history for me before it even started.
This is such a lame bullshit statement and what I call "cherry picking" your circumstances. No matter what the outcome, you will ALWAYS be right because you are the type of customer that has to complain..
Hexed is wrong, Mezzomix is right.
My reply was:
There is zero speculation involved. We do not need to consider exchange rates. He paid 200BTC for a product that is supposed to create BTC. In October 2012 (according to your stats), the device would produce 300 BTC per month. Unfortunately, due to delay in shipment, it may not generate 200BTC in it's lifetime. The only reason for this is the difficulty has risen over the intervening period.
We do not need to consider why difficulty rose. We do not need to consider alternative investments like Avalon or ASICMiner shares. We do not need to consider exchange rates. Nobody has yet explained why getting less than 200 BTC back was good for Mezzomix.