This company flat out sucks for end users...they can't not even be bothered to reply to emails.
I agree and am very disappointed with my Prisma. I've been troubleshooting it for weeks and trying different methods to get it to run (windows, linux, usb, controller, etc...). As of right now, 2 of the 4 boards give off nothing but errors, 1 of the boards is completely dead due to arriving with missing parts, and 1 works. I can't get any response from asicminer and my group buy seller told me to deal with them and won't accept a return. My advice, if you insist on buying one of these, make sure you do it with a method that can be charged back in the event you receive a non-functional miner and whoever sold it to you is unwilling to make it right.
Yeah, except all miner manufacturers take Bitcoin for their orders (Bitmain just added USD, but I'm not sure how that works yet), so you're stuck ordering from a third party if you want to be able to do a card. And I know for my sake (as a local reseller) I don't take cards, only cash or Bitcoin, for exactly that reason. I have been contacted by several people wanting to do CC purchases, some who even want to pay 150% up-front for it. Yeah, no thanks, I don't feel like being scammed, charge-backed, or taking stolen money. So take "real money" and if my clients have an issue then they e-mail me and I can troubleshoot it, or swap their miner out for one of my own.
So what I'm trying to say is that if I'm not going to expose myself to the risk of chargebacks, neither is a manufacturer. The issue isn't adding penalties to a trustless exchange, the solution is working with the amount of trustlessness you feel comfortable with. If you want to eliminate risk, buy from an established local reseller that you know you can talk to face-to-face, or call/email if you have problems. Crazyguy and Canaryinthemine have been really great through all this, providing a better face to this debacle than ASICMiner has, even to buyers who aren't their customers. That's the best you can hope for in this market right now.