Re: Black Arrow 28nm 100Ghash Bitcoin ASIC from $1.99/GH/s, miners from $2.97/GH/s
That and technically they haven't missed the ship date yet, though they have said they're going to, and Hashfast was nearly 4 months late from the original ship date and they still haven't fulfilled batch 1 completely. So BA has a long way to fall yet, in spite of the disappointments. 
Way to lower the standards, BA and others would LOVE to have more customers like you.
ain't that the truth.
I don't know why people are so quick to accept this type of behavior in this industry. I can see thinking there aren't many alternatives, although outright defending it seems tantamount to sticking yourself in the eyeball with a hot poker - and paying for the poker as an added bonus.
delays are possible in any tech development effort, however, that is why any company with any experience moves on multiple vectors towards the goal, creating options for potential breakdown of any one of them along the way.
just on a quality controlled basis these sorts of efforts require redundancies, normally, and multiple suppliers for any and all components is the norm. That this apparently isn't in place further underscores how nascent this industry is, but it also provides an opportunity for learning. Get your ISO certs, people, for damn sake.
until the customers of these people stop just accepting it as some sort of unavoidable pitfall, which it is not, this will continue. people need to wake the hell up and hold these people accountable. the companies themselves need to wake up and demand better of themselves as well, as to this point their performance has been almost uniformly pathetic.
Or, people should temper their expectations regardless of what the vendor says and make a decision based on that. It's not as though the industry doesn't have a track record with this to begin with. If you invest in a mining hardware pre-order without expecting them to be late, very late, you haven't been paying attention. I know that some, few, manufacturers have brought hardware to market without pre-orders but they've been in the minority. Of course, it would be best to patronize them and let the pre-order based concerns starve but there are a lot of people whose greed outweighs their good sense and they continue to try to get the jump on new technology. They will pre-pay for machines and pray that this time will be different.
I think you're missing my point. it will continue unless people demand better. that's the market. as long as they're allowed to blow this off they have no reason to change. why spend the extra money on anything if they can just walk off with people's money either way?
as consumers it is our job to demand better of them, not simply shrug our shoulders and take the reaming, time and time again.
I know they can do better and I also know they won't bother until forced to do so. the only way to get some change is to ask for it. simply chalking it up as par for the course pretty much guarantees nothing will improve and there will continue to be no accountability. if that's what you'd like to do, that's your business, of course. everyone is free to make their own choices, naturally.
when they've got my money, and they're screwing me, they're going to hear about it. that's my choice.
No, I get it and you're right. WE should be spending our btc/fiat with companies that have product in hand to sell. Simply put, don't buy pre-orders, FULL STOP.