The question that is not asked in this thread is, "why would any vendor sell a product for $x when he can keep it and make $3x by mining?" There is no reasonable answer to that. Unless the vendor is highly averse to dealing with IT infrastructure, electricity usage, cooling, and the other annoyances of mining, he is not a good businessman if he sells his shovel for less than what he can dig out of the ground with it.
The first "honest" ASIC vendor will be the one who figures out how to price his pre-order so that customers make 3x, or something, while leaving him with enough cash left over to make, and keep for himself, 6x, or whatever, of aggregate sold hashrate. The dishonest ones we read about on these threads have succeeded in the latter, but failed in the former.
Can not agree more but DIY projects could be the best way to achieve this sort of ROI for both chip maker and miners. Obviously that sort of effort has been seriously damaged due to Avalon's failure to deliver chips but I suspect that more chip makers will recognize the DIY designers and builders are the best way to both profit and support the miners. Anything else seems to fit into the why would any vendor sell their miners for x BTC when you can make 3 times by mining at least for the next few months given the projects posted that are NOT DIY builds.