The bottom line is that, at this point, the company is both not delivering the promised units and is not refunding money when it is asked of them. I'm sure that all agree that if someone pre-pays for an item that is promised in 6-8 weeks, then revised to 10 weeks, and then "you're close to the top of the list", and then can't even be reached by anyone to even ask for a refund, then that is a clear breach of contract (i.e., a contract to trade said dollars for said item), otherwise know as "fraud".
The company at that point is in breach of contract regardless of whether a person ultimately gets his or her money back from their credit card co., bank, or insurance company, or whatever. The eventual reimbursement--if it even occurs (including for me, as I still haven't gotten official word back from AmEx that I will even get my money back) does not at all 'let the company off the hook'. That company is still a fraudulent enterprise. As I mentioned in a previous post, the CEO of the maker of a supplement called Enzyte (Steve Warshak) is sitting in a jail cell right now precisely because people who gave their credit card numbers to his company could not cancel their automatic delivery services and were given the run-around when they tried to get their money credited back onto their credit cards. This case strikes me as quite similar.
Indeed, I wonder if SAI was inadvertently (at least initially) operating a Ponzi scheme. They took people's money via a promise of delivering units in a certain period time, actually delivered a few units initially, and all the while kept pocketing more money to pay for operations, yet just offering more promises for units that, at this point, they knew dang well they couldn't deliver b/c of widespread technical problems. Then, when people en-mass started demanding their money back because of the constant delays and bombarding their IT support team (perhaps a "team" of 1), and there was no immediate end in site to their technical problems, they quickly ran out of money and collapsed. Hence, no further responses to e-mails, phone calls, etc.