Payment was intentionally in fiat I believe in order to avoid the BFL & Hashfast payment/refund fiasco's that we're all constantly seeing.
i cannot believe that refunds are only by cheque and not in BTC, I am flabbergasted that this seems to be a minor detail.
Yes Ken has stated that all refunds go in Fiat. All Purchases should have been paid in Fiat and BTC has no part in the buying of hardware. We are not bound to refund in BTC value. I stated this earlier as the biggest advantage AcTM Investors have going for them and the biggest downfall AcTM Customers could face if they end up requesting refunds.
We could refund everyone's money and still probably be up enough to buy some miners since we started taking orders way back when BTC was worth $100-$200 and Ken has hinted at keeping a lot of money in BTC to ride the tide upwards.