After mulling this over in my head for some amount of time, it's high time that someone made a definitive post on the subject of The Armory.
I've read the posts of many others on here, and it is becoming increasingly clear that my situation is not an exception, a corner case. It's the rule. It's looking more and more unlikely that The Armory actually has any plans whatsoever to actually do anything to fix any of it.
The Armory has been downright ignoring reddit private messages as well as email messages from customers with orders that have already been paid for and ought to have arrived a long time ago (or at least an explanation provided for the non-arrival). All while posting on reddit as if nothing is happening...
The Armory is at the very least a scammer, and to keep such people in the sidebar is a disservice for the entire community....and i am more than happy to provide proof of this to the mods once they PM me on here with information on how to proceed and what kind of proof they want (as they have been saying).
4/7/2014 Edited to update anyone that might be looking at this: The Armory now appears to have ceased all communications (and even if they decide to materialize again after i update, i am now a 100% convinced that the chance of them not being a scammer or worse is zero.), including emails, pms as well as posts on reddit. As of today, i also am unable connect to any of their onions. "Bitsec" (probably operated by the same people) never answered anybody's emails. Nobody that i know of ever received anything related to their orders, and no refunds were given out. Somebody is still logging in at one of their emails though. If you are still trying to buy from them, STOP IT or you will be scammed too. It's one thing taking a shot in the dark (knowing you might be sending your funds into the abyss) and testing the waters before the scam reports started coming in, but if ANYONE is still trying to buy anything from them - you are wasting your time and money. You might as well take your bitcoins and send them to an invalid address.
There is some speculation that it`s the same people that were responsible for Executive Outcomes as well as some other scams. STAY AWAY FROM ANY VENDOR CLAIMING TO SUPPLY THIS TYPE OF PRODUCT UNTIL A RELIABLE MARKET WHICH ALLOWS THIS TYPE OF PRODUCT TO BE SOLD IS AROUND AGAIN...OTHERWISE YOU WILL BE ONE OF THE MANY PEOPLE WHO HAVE FALLEN FOR THIS SCAM. THEY HAVE DONE IT BEFORE - AND WILL ALMOST CERTAINLY DO IT AGAIN. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
So yeah, after reviewing the materials sent to the mods, I'd say the OPs evidence is pretty damning. The escrow service used by The_Armory seems very suspect, but I cannot confirm that they also operate the escrow service they use.
On deepdotweb, Bitsec is listed as a third party escrow service and they also seem to have a clearnet gateway. However, this clearnet gateway seems to have been suspended by the hosting providers.
This in addition to /u/The_Armory apparently ignoring customer communications doesn't look good for them. My vote is to add a warning next to their name on the sidebar and make a post explaining why. I've said previously a few times now that The_Armory needs to employ a 3rd party escrow service, and they seem to be stalling to do so even though they said they were looking into getting an account on Agora. At any rate, it would not have taken this long to get a vendor account setup on one of the markets.
A decision should be made later today once I get a chance to speak with the other mods about how to proceed. Thanks for staying patient everyone.