Thats what was crappy here... the prices were high, the projected revenue wasn't great. The _only_ thing the HF batch 1 offer had going for it was a layered stack of assurances that it was reasonably unrisky— refunds, mpp, (near)state of the art process, an experienced design house, located in silicon valley, a late announcement with near impending shipping (they initially seemed to be saying they weren't going to take preorders, but ultimately they did). I think this contributes to people not being happy about the current situation: We weren't promised unicorns and rainbows and so didn't expect the risks that comes with chasing them.
Though I suppose some customers used crazy optimistic hashrate projections and thought they were going to make a mint... though I don't understand why anyone doing that hadn't already sunk their money on KNC. It certainly wasn't the case for everyone. I saw it as a moderately low risk way that I could upgrade my mining farm to 28nm and continue mining as increased hashrates drove my avalons into non-profitability over power costs... and now they're asking people to lock in an 86% loss. ... perhaps even trying to force it, if that unsolicited refund check wasn't a one off fluke. (Easy for people to jump to that conclusion, since there is still a fighting chance that batch 1 + full MPP will be somewhat less of a loss than taking that refund check; assuming hope upon hope that this time the delivery timeframes are correct)
Emphasis Added