Topic: 1GH/s, 20w, $500 — Butterflylabs, is it a scam? - page 13. (Read 123109 times)

Yup. And this isn't even clear in the PayPal User Agreement you linked to. I've gone over the relevant sections a couple of times but I can't find it stated explicitly.

I have no worries though since I cancelled my order. Not mainly because of the above, but because I don't want to spend almost $600 on this kind of hardware even if it is legitimate. If it is, then the difficulty isn't going to stay this low for long, and this device won't even pay itself back in the 7 months I originally figured out. Plus Bitcoin prices could fall, or any other number of things could go wrong, resulting in a loss from an investment like this. I think I'd rather get an FPGA myself and play around with if I really want to have low power mining. Seems more fun and cheaper too (if I can get some educational rebate).

Oh, and the cancellation was swift, and the response polite. PayPal has already notified me that my payment has been refunded. I'm not sure yet that these guys are legit, but if I had to bet my money on something it'd be that they are. They're just too polite to be scammers! (yeah yeah, I know )

Paypal is a joke and it doesn't even cover all Ebay purchases. I got scammed once and it cost me about $40 for a supposed legit windows key. I was informed that the buyer protection does not apply to digital objects. Funny because the ebay ad even said it was eligible for purchase protection. Ever since then I have been very bitter about them. Good luck with trying to get your money back.

Ouch.  Pretty assholish for Paypal to call it the Buyer Protection when it only applies to Ebay purchases.  I have to think that is intentional double speak.  IF they wanted to be clear why not have Ebay Buyer protection policy and Paypal General Buyer protection policy. 

So looks like your rights for non-ebay chargebacks are next to nothing.  If I am reading that right, from that email it looks like the seller could ship a brick (literally) and you would have no resource.   Sound about right?

It is troublesome to open any disputes with Paypal, I rather wait for the product to be verified before buying.

I received a response from PayPal regarding my inquiry. Turns out DeathAndTaxes isn't right. Chargebacks are only guaranteed when you purchase from eBay. (Emphasis added)

I've not heard from them today as of yet. I just sent an email inquiring about progress just prior to posting this, so they should get back to me at some point this evening I'd think.

Looks like some guys lose their patience

Inaba, any news so far ? Have they sorted out the tech problems ? What problems are they having ? Thanks. Let us not degrade this thread further with such offensive language.

 haha, yea. I'd be happy to see one toss sparks and take the computer down with it at this point. ;p

The shoe is fitting... and they proudly wear it... suckers!

We need more info/rumors to speculate on.  ^^ The natives are getting restless.  They must feed!!

Please state your right to talk in here ( as pointed out by the kid above you),

otherwise everything you said is irrelevant

Qui?

Uh huh, just as i expect from you.

Way to prove my point

What fucking ever you have to say, no need to quote the whole irrelevant thing.

No, I asked your mom. And she let me before i gave her an orgasm overdose.

What makes you do?

Did you ask mommy to use the INTERNET?

Not going to address your points just because you were not the one that spent the last 30 pages pretending to be the expert(you really are, and you DO something), yet you are probably one of the persons that most have to lose if it turns out to not be a scam... But if the hat fits in your head that's your problem, not mine.

tl:dr You are probably one of the few on this thread that has the right to talk.

I have exactly the same thought.

I come here every once in a while to see if there's an update.

Now getting really tired of people commenting "obvious scam is obviously a scam"

BF claims were flagged with doubts FROM DAY ONE !

Maybe reread the whole 60 page thread to see if the reason why you think this is a scam hasn't been posted already.

Thank You.

What would you consider "doing something?" Our group has invested a lot of money in FPGAs, which would be tough to sell if BFL turns out to be real (3-4x greater performance per $ and per W). rph has done the same.

I'm certainly not claiming that I know BFL is a scam, but I do find it very suspicious. To summarize, here are the things that strike me as at least a little bit odd about them:

1. Incredible performance claims and insanely low price. They could have easily priced it twice as high and it would still be a great deal.

2. Doing business as Butterfly Labs, yet supposedly incorporated as BF Labs.

3. Came out of nowhere with a professional looking site and all sorts of implications that they have been doing business for some time in the cryptography field, although they have no other products. Actually, this is even more than an implication: "Butterfly Labs has more than a decade of experience in FPGA & ASIC stand alone system design."

4. In the same vein as 3: Gift store? Job postings? Consulting?

5. List drivers available for "medical imaging" and "computational research," yet they state it can only do 2-stage SHA256 hashing. What kind of medical imaging can you do with SHA256? By the way, in my real job I actually use FPGAs and GPUs for medical imaging processing.

6. The mysterious "Rig Box" that somehow gets a 50% higher performance by clustering 32 of these boards together.

7. Accepting Paypal for pre-orders.

8. Very little communication with the public about how it works, who they are, and how they can do this for so cheap.

All of that still doesn't mean it's impossible, but it definitely smells fishy.