Steamboat (Liquid Synergy Designs Inc.) is taking your money to build the infrastructure for his business.
If there are any unrecoverable costs, it falls on the corporation owner. Those are the sunk costs of running and operating a business. The costs do not fall on the customer who does not benefit from the product or service. It was agreed that he would have a working product within 72 hours of chip arrival which was an agreement he breached, therefore he cannot keep a single bitcoin/dollar. I kept telling you guys to be careful from the start, but no one would listen. This is clearly going into fraud territory. If you do not receive back 100% of what you paid, you are being scammed. 25% returned, while he invests the 75% into his business and you get no stake in his corporation is fraudulent. You can send a complaint to:
http://www.fbi.gov/contact-us/It's impossible for us to get 100% of our refund back because steamboat converted some btc --> usd to cover the parts costs, exactly how much he had swapped over is anyone's guess and is why a bit of transparency would go a long way. But with the way the price is sky rocketing at the moment an update from steamboat would be good. I doubt he'll try to scam us, if you look at his replies in this thread and emails everything has been done to the best of his ability and quite professionally so I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the reason we're not getting any update is because he's flat out organising and shipping miners for those who accepted them.
The last update from steamboat via email was only 11 days ago but for those who are wondering:
"Many of you are still waiting for information regarding the assembly refund process. We understand the wait is aggravating, and appreciate your patience in this matter. Our resources are finite, and the work load for this project has increased substantially due to reasons outside our control. We will be publishing more information when we are able, and can assure you the solution will be as fair as possible. You will not be punished for our lack of timely response in this matter."