This is a very angry, accusatory, suspicious community.  On top of that, it is in the best interests of mining equipment buyers to discourage other buyers, so they own a larger hashing market share.  Add to that the newness of this industry, the privacy-centric foundations of Bitcoin, and the sheer amount of capital now wrapped up in the scene, and you get... this.  A digital wild-west with all the dignity of Mos Eisley.

There are legit scams out there, and people have gotten burned.  There are also good intentioned manufacturers that have gotten screwed by the community thanks to fraud, chargebacks, and massive unfounded negative PR.  There are companies that just couldn't produce, despite pre-orders and community faith.  And, there are people who would have made ROI if they hadn't been talked out of it through the prolific FUD tactics here.  You're just as likely to screwed by an ASIC manufacturer as you are by a fellow forum member.

SHA-256 isn't a difficult algorithm.  I don't doubt that these companies have a product they think they can sell.  If they can deliver?..  I dunno.  If you listen to this forum, nobody has every delivered a working miner in the history of bitcoin, and the ones that did murdered your unborn children first.

I use the forum to see what's being announced and talked about, but I treat most thread posts the same way I treat YouTube comments, and do my own research.