Well even though bfl and avalon screwed everyone over, at least they taught us all the valuable lesson of not trusting any frickin preorder bull
The only way to get real roi at this point is to invest if and when a product that is cheap and efficient comes out that will allow refunds and limited returns
The problem is these ASIC companies have us by the balls in a sense - if they pay for everything without taking pre-orders, they can either mine with them themselves or charge what they think they'd make in 6mo, 3mo or whatever.
If they can't afford to pay for everything they can take pre orders, but, if they do that they have every incentive to make as much money as possible up front without concern for user ROI. That means selling at the current difficulty and taking enough pre-orders to render all their users out of money.
HashFast started off on the wrong foot, IMO but they're doing a little better with their miner protection plan, and their claim to open their order books so we can see how many they've already sold (since every sale decreases the value of all of their products)
The basic problem is information asymmetry. It's like playing a game of poker where the other player can see your cards but you can't see theirs, except hopefully it's a positive sum game and you can both "win". But, with the difficulty increasing like this, who knows.
Anyway, it'll be interesting to see cointerra's prices.