Wow, you ain't kiddin'! They may have priced themselves out of the market with that price jump!
Sad to say but I think you may be right.
I bought my BH back in Sep. and I have yet to use it. Mainly because I have not had time to brew but hope to brew and use it this weekend. Anyways, I just added up what I have invested in my BH. I'm sitting at $969.17. I still need to buy a CIP pump, hoses and a glycol pump and temp controller. I have the BH in my 2 stall barn and the barn is well insulated so my plan is to heat the barn this winter. But if it turns out that my heater can't keep up (it should) then my plan 2 is to get a water bed heater and wrap it around the BH to control temps. Come summer time I'll switch to the glycol.
With the new pricing I think I would rather spend an extra $100-150 and get a 20 gallon Stout Tank. Yes, I'll lose 2 gallons of space and the ability to carbonate in the FV but I'll have a nicer looking fermenter with polished welds, welded on stainless legs and it will come ready to use with ball valves.
After receiving the BH I made my first order of valves, clamps, seals and so on and that alone with the new price would be over the price of the Stout Tank. I figure that by the time I'm done adding things to this BH I'll be will over $1300 into it. Granted, other then the legs that will start rusting and I'll end up replacing, it should last me forever.
The BH is a nice fermenter and could be even better with a few small changes and the old pricing made it worth having. The new pricing I'm afraid kills it. I totally understand why they had to jack the price and I thought it would happen sooner or later just wish I would have bought two when I got the one.