Hey man, to each their own. There's alot of reasons to buy or not to buy a BD bike, and the position that "everyone who doesn't see how awesome a deal BD is is wrong" is just as silly as saying they're crap because they're cheap.

Me personally, I don't like the styling of the bikes. I would never give my money to a company that said "you might get a threaded headset, you might get threadless, you won't know until it arrives though". I find Mike's presence on this forum annoying. Most of all I don't like the idea of giving money to a company that designs absolutely nothing new and just remarkets existing designs.

So it's like I said, there's plenty of reasons to buy or not to buy a bikesdirect bike, and it all comes down to individual priorities. FWIW paint that chips easily also exposes metal to rust easily, which is a practical consideration as much as an aesthetic one