I dont get it, How are they supposed to have a cut off and a 1/3 shipping plan? Are they shipping 1/3 from all orders or saying the first 3000 orders have a chance of being in the 1/3 shipping plan.
I am getting frustrated about the lack of info from BFL, Where has josh gone? Where are we? Where am I? and for the love of doughnuts where are my chocolate sprinkles?
Only pre-orders from the first month are included in the 1/3 shipping plan. 1/3 goes to upgrades, 1/3 goes to new orders (ie, people who aren't upgrading) and the remaining 1/3 is randomly chosen from orders for both. It's presumed that the 1/3 to upgrades and new orders will be distributed by order date. The remaining third will still go to people who ordered in the first month but it will effectively be a lottery. How many of each unit they make out of the first batch is obviously going to affect how many people's orders are fulfilled under the 1/3 shipping plan.
At this stage, no-one is expecting that
all orders from the first month will be filled by the 1/3 shipping plan - there'd be no need for the random 1/3 (which was meant to prevent a concentration of hashing power in the hands of those who ordered big and early) at all if there were enough units in the initial batch to fill all pre-orders placed during the first month.
Josh said a while back that he expects no matter how they choose to handle shipping of the initial batch, there are going to be some unhappy customers. The 1/3 plan was formulated when they expected to receive more chips in the initial batch.
The best place for information on what's happening with any of this - the 1/3 shipping plan, shipping costs, taxes/duty customers may need to pay to receive their units - remains the BFL forums themselves. These questions are being discussed constantly over there and none of the threads are so long that it's onerous to read them from start to finish.
Also, order numbers mightn't be useful in trying to estimate a cut-off. It looks like the order numbers may have been segmented for the different types of units.
https://forums.butterflylabs.com/bfl-forum-miscellaneous/952-new-account-page-website-shows-your-orders-3.html#post13597