Those were exactly who I had in mind when I made that statement. I'm sure other companies do it as well, though, and just aren't as transparent (or, rather, haven't gotten caught). I mean think about it. You have an ASIC that can earn you 2 BTC a day right now (or $900). Are you really going to sell it for just $2k and ship it right now? No. You'll delay it until it's no longer as profitable and then ship it. Otherwise you're throwing away money, and nobody is the wiser anyways because it's become the norm to delay over and over.
These people must have made millions of USD by mining on their customers ASICs. Avalon claims to have sold mining equipment worth over 9,000 TH/s. Even if we imagine 6 months of mining, they must have got at least
BTC90,000. That is equal to $40,500,000 at current exchange rates.