Don't worry. Bitcoin is going down in price now. BFL will start shipping as soon as the price is low enough that mining with customer hardware is no longer worth it.
They can't risk the hardware breaking while they are mining on it unless the price of Bitcoin stays high. They want it to last at least one day in customer hands. If it breaks after one day they can say it was working but you abused it. But if they ship it broken then they lose that excuse.
tl;dr
Yipeeeee you will be receiving your hardware soon!
I am curious as I haven't purchase to date... whom if anyone would you recommend for purchasing hardware? Or would you just suggest continuing to buy Bitcoin's through a broker as the prices just seem to keep falling?
My personal opinion, for what it worth, is that today's price is the lowest you will see for a while and it's a good time to buy. Think of it this way. If you bought Bitcoins instead of preordering an ASIC when they first put them up for sale you could already have cashed out at $130 and earned more than you could ever have made mining in the same amount of time.
The only upside I can see for mining hardware is being able to "make" Bitcoins instead of jumping through the hoops to buy them. However, you are likely going to jump through hoops selling them anyway so what does it matter if you do it to buy them too.
I also have a bias against purchasing an expensive piece of hardware with only one purpose. GPUs play video games, what do BFL singles do when your government decides to make you buy an expensive money transmitter license as a miner?