Just got this in my inbox from Avalon:
"Lots things to update.
1. We are currently investigating on the three or so shipments that have shown up badly damaged to the customers. They do no appear to be simple delivery damage: they are not dents but some corners of some of the units have been snapped off. It takes a great amount of force to snap 3mm aluminum that's been bolted down with 0.9mm screws in a box with foam padding. We are not ruling out the possibility of sabotage.
In future, when receiving an Avalon package, if there is any rattling sound coming from inside, open the package in front of DHL/EMS and inspect the inside, if there is damage immediately return the package to the sender. The receiver must submit the complaint so us, the shipper can receive this information from DHL/EMS and we can investigate.
Do not worry, even if DHL/EMS does not compensate for the damages, once you send the damaged unit back, we will send you a replacement free of charge.
2. Our new SMT equipment has arrived, it is expected to be tweaked and fully functional by the second week of May. Expect an updated gallery of our facility soon. In the mean time we are going to send out ~20 units through our new shipping channels and test the waters. We expect to go full throttle once the new SMT line comes online.
3. We also recently released a new firmware that is our most stabled version yet, it also increases the performance by about 2Gh/s and lowers idle power consumption, see the wiki for full details. https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Avalon#20130419
p.s. few people in the Avalon team is sick, so we are moving rather slow at the moment."
