Would you be willing to show your proof that shows this is a scam?
How many legitimate companies that you know of, allow their COO to make one broken promise after another, while earning the scorn of an entire community due to his outrageous behavior and taunting ?
How many legitimate companies that you know of make bets of 1,000 BTC to charity and then don't honor it in a timely manner ?
How many legitimate tech companies that you know of are run by a former convicted felon, who's past behavior with mail fraud raises questions about certain aspects of Butterfly Labs' business and customer service practices ?
How many legitimate "leading edge" tech companies that you know of farm out the design of their chips to third parties, rather than creating the design themselves in-house ?
How many legitimate "leading edge" tech companies blow their power estimates by almost a factor of 5. At least.
How many legitimate tech companies that you know of have ever displayed such outright contempt and disrespect for their customers ?
To be clear, it's not accurate to call them a scam, but they sure have acted like a bunch of bumbling amateurs over the last year.
There are a few actually. 80% of companies fall behind of a scheduled release date. Not one thing that you bring up justifies a scam. I will agree with you that from what I have read, they should handle them selves better in their responses or don't respond at all. People talk crap about every company that doesn't mean they should go and argue with their customers. Also, if a customer is that un-happy with the company than they should cancel their orders and not give them any of their money again.
But, coming onto a forum and misusing terminology doesn't hurt the company at all, it makes the person look like an imbecile for misusing terms. And I guarantee you at least 70% of the people talking crap about Butterfly labs are people who didn't read the print(which wasn't even in a small font) that said this was a pre-order and maybe should have realized when a product is made for the first time, it's very likely they will run into some difficulties causing delays.
Yes, they may have taken pre-orders a little too early. But, I have pre-ordered a product before 3 months before a release date was even announced, which then took a little over one year from the announcement. If people do not like that than they should wait until it's no longer a pre-order.
And I am not being biased as I pre-ordered from Butterfly Labs almost one year ago. I also didn't pay using bitcoins, I paid using a CC that has a protection service on it regardless of how long the process may take. So, yes, I had my doubts as well. But, in no way are they a scam(i know you agreed with this part), not one person has proven a scam. They have all proven a new company running into problems on their first launch.
Now, if we wake up one day and the site is gone and they're no longer updating us with information(which they're on their forum). Than we have something to look into. But, at this point, with what people are trying to use to determine a scam, well you may as well call TESLA motors is a scam as well since they're a new company and have only released one shipment of their electric sports car and have the possibility of taking off with all of the pre-order money.