Bitcoin mining is not a guarantee of profit, only a guarantee of income. People buying mining equipment are exactly like investors buying stock in a company, speculating that they will make more money than they spent. You could have bought a bond (no real comparision, but could substitute BTC here) instead, and had a fair guarantee of income. You could also have just kept mining with whatever equipment you had until electricity costs made it no longer worthwhile and definitely had profit.
missed the nail on this one. we are talking about hardware vendors here - not the 'industry' as a whole. we are not investors in any BTC hardware company when we order hardware. if we were we would have equity stakes and privileges associated with that. in this context the only thing that should be guaranteed (by laws and regs) is that a hardware product purchased by a customer is delivered as advertised (including the time frame). if customers are not receiving the products they should be in, the time that they should, then these forums are one of several means of recourse for customers to use against fraudulent, incompetent, or otherwise non-performing hardware vendors.
No, I actually didn't. I'm talking about the equipment investment and whichever company you buy from doesn't matter. Maybe comparing the purchase of equipment to stock in a company was wrong, yet the premise remains solid. You are speculating that the equipment you are purchasing will make you more money than you spent.
Now, if you want to compare companies, then you have to liken it to horse racing. You're betting your horse will come in first, and if it doesn't you lose. From your statement, you are obviously referring to BFL. Considering their track record with the FPGA, anyone who took the time to read up on them would realize this horse is a long shot. Betting on the long shot can win big, but more often than not, you lose.
In my case, I already knew the horse had lost, so my bet was that they would still finish the race. At the time I made my purchase I had 2 choices... $250 per .333MH or $274 for 5GH. I already had several GPUs running, so I felt the $274 was a better investment even though I figured I would not see it for a long time. I compared 13M difficulty, 28% growth (which the network was at the time) and 5GH. Going with the USB, this would cost me $3,750 for 5GH and after one year I would be at a loss of $613. That sold me... it was better to possibly lose $274 than it was to definitely lose $613.