Of course its no accident! It was Spacex doing their diligence to ease into the concept of rocket reuse. It was spacex doing their diligence to 'over do the refub' of those vehicles to make sure their calculations/predictions matched reality. (You tour SpaceX, for instance, and they're VERY proud to point out the re-entry burns on the dragon capsule exactly match predictions--seriously, I had 3 people point it out to me in like 15 minutes)
SpaceX has FAR more to lose than any one customer when it comes to failure of a re-used vehicle. Make no mistake, it is spacex that is driving the scope and duration for re-launch.
I don't mean to out-space you or anything, but that's not the way business is actually conducted in the space industry. Typically customers are very technically saavy--especially about launch vehicles since they typically launch on multiple rockets. When they challenge a contract manufacturer its typically because a) they have a valid technical point, or b) they're looking for confidence that their CM actually has a grasp of a technical point. SES specifically is renown for this and, IMHO, are probably some of the most if not the most technically competent customers.
SES also was one of the first commercial customers to sign up for a then-untested falcon 9, and IIRC, they were actually the first commercial customer to actually fly on a Falcon (at least as the prime?). If that doesn't illustrate their specific willingness to dive into future tech, I don't know waht does.
Again, customers just want a cheap ride. They're clamoring for reused falcons because they're cheaper.
The words of SES CTO didn't left me with that impression. He clearly stated they did their due diligence but implied other satellite operators aren't as technical.
Surely SES, Iridium, Intelsat, Inmarsat and pretty much every other big satellite operator surely has the technical insight to understand things.
But, where big decisions are taken, at the BOARD level, often times all that matters is if there are technical reasons against doing something, then its listened to, but when there are no technical reasons, the BOARD often still goes against doing something brand new.
This isn't the first, second or even third time where the vast majority of customers don't want to be first or second with SpaceX. This applies to the first F9 Block I launch, F9 Block II, F9 Block III and F9 return to flight this year.
If technical considerations were everything, customers wouldn't be so skeptical of being first and second in some way. Even NASA with all of their technical expertise (much, much, much more than any satellite operator) often demands not being the first to ride on a SpaceX rocket with complex modifications !
Furthermore, there's a well documented fact. When a CEO saves his company US$ 100 million, and then looses US$ 100 million on a mistake, the two don't cancel each other. Failures are punished disproportionally !