I have corresponded via email with Emmanuel from cloudhashing.com.
I have learned that they have a couple of the Butterfly Labs machines on order. Emmanuel also told me that they are in communication with the BFL people and that he expects the BFL machines to be delivered soon.
I have two smaller BFL machines on order and part of the reason I wanted to correspond with them is I figure that if they bought a couple of US$30,000 machines, they would know more about BFL delivery dates than anyone.
My intuition is that the cloudhashing folk are NOT scammers. Yes, they are charging twice as much per GigaHash as you would pay if you bought a BFL machine on your own. On the other hand, they will maintain the machines. If BFL delivers my machine and a few months down the road I have a problem with my mining rig, I am sort of SOL.
I was trained as a scientist in grad school. That means, I wait for evidence before I make some accusation. There is no reason to believe that Cloudhasing is a scam. They might not get their mining rigs delivered, but that doesn't mean they are a scam. Emmanuel assured me that if they do not get delivered, all contract purchases will be refunded.
I do not have any financial interest in Cloudhashing, and have not yet bought any contracts. I just responded because it bothers me when people make accusations that are unsubstantiated. State your beliefs, but if you are going to make a statement that is accusatory, please provide evidence.
What is the best predictor of future behaviour? Analyse the person's past and present behaviours. I'll explain.
BFL have a terrible shipping track records and you should take this fact into account because it is fact and there is no denying it. I ordered in late February and cancelled in April because orders where supposedly shipping by January when I looking up their website. What happened? They got further delayed! This pattern was observable since 2012 and this is not recent phenomena. They have been accepting pre-order monies since summer 2012 (many claim they lost their money due to the "no refund policy" especially if paying in bitcoins as sales are final) and delaying month after month causing an angry bitcoin community which I can understand their anger and frustration.
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/butterflylabs-huge-scam-114329https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/bryan-micons-butterfly-labs-scammer-investigation-including-josh-zerlan-136392You should also take into account the past and present evidence and data available (there are accusations with no evidence and are not true but some accusations do come with proof in the form of images and videos so please view the latter address I have posted ref Bryan Micon) that exist so that you can make an informed decision of where you want to invest.
An analogy to what is happening that if you were to write a systems paper with half baked solutions, your paper won't even be accepted in conferences (unless its a 6 page systems workshop paper or a work-in-progress paper); you must describe a problem, describe a solution, and provide data to back up your claims. What is happening in the bitcoin community is that there are people who write papers that have describe a problem, have no data or a demonstrable test bed and describe half baked solutions.
I will not say that BFL is neither real or a scam until I see a fully working product. Due to that I am basing judgement on my previous experience with BFL, I will not pre-order anything from any company until I see a proof of concept that is demonstrable.
Unfortunately there have been a long string of scammers over time and I believe that if companies want to make a good impression, the least that they can do is showing to the bitcoin community that their idea works and is demonstrable.