let me start by saying I ordered a lot of equipment from them, and I have asked for a refund (failing that I will contest on credit card).
The following is my opinion - these facts may or may not be correct:
1) BFL had a vaporware product and used pre-order money to try develop a product
2) BFL have no idea how to produce this product. The first major red flag was when the device drew 6x the estimated power. Now the cooling doesnt work, the case doesnt work, etc etc
3) BFL to this day have no idea how they will ever produce a mini rig, can you image you dropped 30k on this?
4) BFL have a terrible "front man". maybe the worst I have ever seen. a total PR nightmare if i owned the company.
5) speaking of which the CEO / owner, seems to have some sort of a murky disreputable past
6) BFL have consistently lied about ship dates and progress
7) BFL are now switching suppliers to manufacture their chips??? and still making board and power changes and such? this late in the game?
the competition has passed them asleep at the wheel
9) the maneuver of doubling prices was a stroke of genius to try stem cancellations, but this kind of manipulation wreaks of a slick behind the scenes con man.
10) in my opinion, BFL must have wasted a fortune in money by now. It is my opinion that they will never be able to ship all these products, they do not have the technical skills, and more importantly, once people realize how high the difficulty is, and how long they "might" get their order in will be, they will cancel. And I bet BFL doesnt have money just floating around to continually throw at development and refunds. Unless of course they don't intend on really shipping ever - in which case they will keep the money and not refund most people.
This company is almost a text book case on how not to run a business, unless they never intended on being a business of course.
I will get my money back and rather just buy bitcoins and litecoins and not deal with this headache.
If any of you become rich off butterfly labs, good luck to you.