Yes, there's a reason many oem's are pulling out of retail.  There's tremendous workload associated with providing quality customer service, a solid refund policy and fast shipping.  Adding credit cards has increased our administrative costs due to the amount of credit card fraud.  In order to honor refund requests, I've sent millions in BTC and USD.  In addition, the presale market continues to set lower bounds on price, despite the fact the we ship and they dont.  Price fluxuations in BTC drive ROI models crazy, putting pressure on us to lower prices.  Leased haspower is at least currently demanding an attractive premium over offering retail.
MBP was and still is focused on building mines.  Retail sales has been a great way to involve the community, and initially generated some good capital, though we haven't done anything like the sales of KnC, Cointerra, etc. and in the face of 28nm, our product has become "legacy" equipment already.
All this being said, we still have an idea of what we are willing to sell our hardware for, and that is reflected in our prices.  I dont typically respond to price wars, nor do I ever engage on forum arguments about ROI.  The price point each miner will pay is a personal decision and everyone has a different strategy. 
If my prices don't appeal to you, I encourage you to shop around!  But I hope this is not perceived as a.lack of support to the community.  I remain committed to bringing our next gen products to this community along with continuing to field the best customer service and support team in the market today.