There are two different things in the ICO, first one is called as pre-ico phase and there is another one that's called as presale ICO. The first one is the one you are mentioning here which is most earliest stage in any ICO project.
In that phase ICO will catch up the early birds with lowest priced tokens but they will have "minimum" investment criteria for example jibrel @5000 USD one of the ICO that's running right now. This money then will be used to do the marketing and advertising of the ICO project and developing the premature phase of their roadmap.
That's rare case to happen and most of the ICO will get the funds raised via ethereum blockchain only and not from the bitcoin. But it's completely upto the terms of ICO whether they want to transfer the tokens immediately or not. But most of them will do it instantly. Better read the terms.
Most of the time there is no need for direct contact in the ICO because everything is in front of you. It's public and open source. You can contact them at the forum announcement and they will respond there as well as email too.
That will probably reflect in the tokens value when it comes to the exchanger after the ICO has ended. There is no point in lie if the ICO is legit completely.