No offense, really... but again, your post has a bit of speculation.....
Never said it was the customer's fault. I did say that we do acknowledge a problem run and I also stated that these units were being replaced with, not the same, but a better part.
We actually do handle such claims on a case by case basis. Fortunately, it doesn't happen too often, but it does happen and in those few cases the customer has been asked to send all potentially damaged product back to Ultra so we can inspect it.
That said, the problem is not always the PSU. Just last week I had someone claim that their 700W XVS blew up their hard drives. Upon inspection of the returned merchandise it was found that the customer had plugged (forced) one of the modular Molexes in backwards so 12V was on 5V and 5V was on 12V. Hard drives don't like that.
But back on topic; incidents where a PSU "blows up" components are further and farther between than you may think, and all of our PSU's have always had all of the appropriate circuit protection so such catastrophic failures don't occur often. Yes, I've read about them on the web, but often times it's the same incident rehashed over and over. Overall, PSU RMA is less than 2%. Of those, those that would somehow damage something plugged into the PSU is probably only about 1% of that number.
That's not how retail works or how rebates work. A $5 after MIR PSU is not a $5 PSU.
I don't believe anyone at Ultra claimed to be the best in the world.
But you're not familiar with our entire product line, and you don't know anything about the 1kW shown at bit-tech. I can say that compared to PCP&C, OCZ and FSP's offerings, the "EE" line of Ultra PSU's (of which the 1kW is part of) are more efficient, have less ripple and better voltage regulation than most of those company's current offerings. You can call that fud. That's fine. You don't have to take my word for it.
No doubt it's been a tough road... or shall I say, "roller coaster ride." The X-Connect was a very early effort and for it's time it was really a great product. I personally feel that it stuck around a lot longer than it should have and wore out it's welcome. I'd like to think that the X-Finity and X2 has made up for the X-Connect's shortcomings and it has been well received and well reviewed. These new units are just the next progression of Ultra getting better and better with each new product.
For some time (about a year) people have forgone the 240VA rail limit. Take a look at the PCP&C 1kW SR or the new Silverstone Olympus 1kW, for example. MOST power supplies are going back to single 12V rails instead of two to five because, quite frankly, 20A on a single 12V rail isn't enough juice for a pair of 8800GTX cards or an AMD FX72.
I think they were the last one to order the X-Connect after we discontinued it and it was the last run of that model that we had the most problems with. 
