Just for the record, the "old chips", which you can buy easily in bulk (assembled in to prefab PCIe cards by the thousands), only cost about $12,000 per 1.2Ths. (That is the OLD chips, which draw nearly 1200w).

It makes sense that the new chips, which are not that new actually, are selling for nearly half. (Which is obviously a "early buyer" promotion. I am sure these will quickly rise to $12,000 once they begin rolling-out to "small consumers", while remaining about $6,000 to bulk-buyers.)

But they do lack customer-service for "small purchases". They are obviously inundated with millions of time-killing questions from people who don't even have actual money to pay for the item. Just as BFL had to deal with. They are not selling customer service, they are selling machines. Either you have the money to buy it, and buy it, or you don't, and are just wasting their time, and ours. (That is only to the trollers.)

By the way, there are few people who are in the forums who purchased BFL's 1.5Ths miners, and few who purchase the other 1.2Ths modules which stack by the dozens into cages. Those are big businesses, the ones selling cloud-mining services and who own the majority of the 7000+Th on the network now. Be glad that they are willing to sell such small quantities to us, at these prices, or they will eventually take that away from us too. Not selling unless we buy 10+ 1.2 THs machines at once.

Nothing is stopping you from buying the old crap at 60-100Ghs for $6000, which is still abundant and people are eager to get rid of.

Link, for those who don't mind paying 2x for old technology now... In bulk... (Which is a 3-month preorder too. Just for the record.)
http://virtualminingcorp.com/shop1/index.php?id_product=23&controller=product#/fh_exp_case_16_pcie_slots-no_expansion_case/fh_256ghs_module_a-1_280th_1_200_watts/fh_256ghs_expansion_a-no_256gh_s_expansion_modules

All units, by almost every company, are build-on-demand. It would kill them to pre-build, and stock items on the shelf that can't sell 3 months later. Perfect example is all the USB-stick miners. 800% loss for those. (If someone has something on the shelf, it is an item that was purchased and later canceled, or just real old and expensive to buy, with little or no ROI. Miners no longer determine market price. The best they could do was $180/BTC. This is now a buyers/sellers market, not a miners market. Honestly, you want a better ROI, buy bitcoins directly, every time they drop, or are lower then 20%-50% of the peak.)

Do not worry, as soon as my unit arrives, I will be giving a detailed review and hosting plenty of information for those who like to read about history.