From my point of view, being more transparent here could only be beneficial for KnC with respect to their reputation and a kind of "shock and awe" for any competitor.

How long it takes to bring the ASICs to an PCB, debug all the related firmware and FPGA design on the linux daughter card, to have finally a working miner they can send to customers you can estimate yourself. But 2 weeks are not much time for that tasks.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but they can only refund customers with money they still have, can't they?