Waytools' actions are not consistent with a company running a scam, IMO.
On the one hand, they've produced a lot of expensive parts, enough for many hundreds of units (
https://capacify.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/textblade-case-study-v2-1.pdf). They've also sent out dozens of fully functional prototype units out to testers (the accounts from testers are not consistent with sock puppet accounts run by PR guys... way too varied and not universally glowing), and they've gone to the trouble of iterating 3 major hardware revisions (at least, that's the count I got reading some forum posts).
Yet for all of this expenditure, they're not really hitting the gas on any kind of marketing push. Instead, they keep describing production problems in detail. If I were going to make some really impressive prototypes then run a scam, I'd handle it very differently. I'd do a big Kickstarter push, followed by an Indiegogo before the Kickstarter delivered (painting a rosy picture of the Kickstarter units' production, all the while), and then run for it. I would not produce dozens of test units and provide support to testers. If they're running a scam, they're really bad at it.
The stuff I've seen that company do is far more consistent with a hardware startup that's trying to make a thing, but encountering problems with producing things in China. Quality control ain't the same over there. There are a lot of unknowns around every corner when you try to scale up production as a new company.
The evidence I see indicates that maybe we should cut those guys some slack.
