Topic: A letter from Avalon - page 3. (Read 6317 times)

Please contact WalletBit support immediately.

Really??? This is news to me. I've had a partial payment open with then, and have received ZERO replies to my Avalon support ticket nor emails. Seriously guys you have like 100-200 people to respond to, 1 day should be plenty to handle this.

All partially paid orders from 2012-02-02 have a deadline of 2013-02-13 17:00 EST to complete payment. All orders which have not been paid in full will be refunded to the sending address unless otherwise instructed. Payment instructions can be obtained and return addresses can be given to WalletBit support at http://support.walletbit.com.

We would like to take this time to warn you not to use Bitcoin addresses that you do not own, including but not limited to the following: InstaWallet, exchanges such as MtGox and others.... By using third party systems such as the ones listed above however, you give up the control of your own coins.... This defeats the purpose of Bitcoin.

We have ultimately decided not to refund the 0.05-bitcoin partial orders that have resulted from a series of errors, and allowed customers to complete their transactions out of good faith as many used third party services where refunds were not possible.

We would like to take this time to warn you not to use Bitcoin addresses that you do not own, including but not limited to the following: InstaWallet, exchanges such as MtGox and others.
 
The nature of Bitcoin makes it separate from human interference and devoid of an centralized architecture. If the order database has been incomplete or compromised, then a fail-safe could be utilized to refund every transaction to their original input address. By using third party systems such as the ones listed above however, you give up the control of your own coins, and you then run the risk of your refunds returning to their input addresses. This defeats the purpose of Bitcoin. You will also not be able to prove original ownership of these coins. Our terms of sale will be updated to reflect this before batch two re-opens for the remainder 300+ units.

The Avalon team would like to apologize, first and foremost, for the poor performance that you may have experienced during the sales of batch two of the Avalon units.

"Somebody had to be the first person to eat a crab."

We switch payment gateway and eCommerce solution each batch of orders

we at Avalon however are not playing any favorites.

We have ultimately decided not to refund the 0.05-bitcoin partial orders that have resulted from a series of errors

We would like to take this time to warn you not to use Bitcoin addresses that you do not own, including but not limited to the following: InstaWallet, exchanges such as MtGox and others.

The nature of Bitcoin makes it separate from human interference and devoid of an centralized architecture. If the order database has been incomplete or compromised, then a fail-safe could be utilized to refund every transaction to their original input address. By using third party systems such as the ones listed above however, you give up the control of your own coins, and you then run the risk of your refunds returning to their input addresses. This defeats the purpose of Bitcoin. You will also not be able to prove original ownership of these coins. Our terms of sale will be updated to reflect this before batch two re-opens for the remainder 300+ units.

once they and other higher-priority matter are addressed and done, we will then reopen order for batch two.

When will this madness end?

Bitcoin transactions do not have the concept of a "from" address.

A few services like SatoshiDICE, BitLotto, etc. send winnings to an address that was used as an input in the wager and there are regularly occurring new reports of people losing their wagers by sending from Mt. Gox or other hosted (shared) EWallet service.

This practice should not be adopted by merchants and payment processors.   Bitcoin has no concept of a from address.  Please don't proceed with any approach that assumes that there is.

We would like to take this time to warn you not to use Bitcoin addresses that you do not own, including but not limited to the following: InstaWallet, exchanges such as MtGox and others.

They are skipping about the address space to avoid tax and customs...

a Letter from the Avalon Team

The Avalon team would like to apologize, first and foremost, for the poor performance that you may have experienced during the sales of batch two of the Avalon units.
 
This type of incident has however, been accounted for and is within our expectations. As Bitcoin payment processors and merchant solutions are still a relatively young field, much like the Avalon project itself - issues such as these will, unfortunately, show themselves in a real world situation.
 
    There's a saying: "Somebody had to be the first person to eat a crab."
 
Avalon has been bestowed with an unique opportunity to give several different Bitcoin payment processors a real world stress test: a DDoS-like shopping experience. We switch payment gateway and eCommerce solution each batch of orders to promote both decentralization and competition. In batch one, we worked closely with Paysius to hammer out its issues. This has not been any different with batch two and WalletBit. The lead developer of WalletBit, Kris, has been hard at work within the past several days, fixing the kind of issues that have only appeared from this type of real world situation.
 
This event and your brief inconvenience as Avalon customers right now will ensure that, in the future when a client ( who may not be technically-knowledgeable ) use these various Bitcoin payment processors and eCommerce solutions to accept Bitcoin for the first time, their experiences will be much more smooth and hassle-free.
 
    "May they enjoy the coming delicious crabs."
 
A third purpose of this movement is to spread recognition and funding to those services that are less well known; we at Avalon however are not playing any favorites. BitPay, for example, has been chosen as the payment gateway for batch three long before they obtained investor funding. We believe that competition breeds innovation - much like what happened in the ASIC market - and we can not wait to see what new features will result from this process. We view Bitcoin merchant solutions and payment gateways as an important part of Bitcoin adoption.
 
Batch two situation
 
We have ultimately decided not to refund the 0.05-bitcoin partial orders that have resulted from a series of errors, and allowed customers to complete their transactions out of good faith as many used third party services where refunds were not possible. We would like to take this time to warn you not to use Bitcoin addresses that you do not own, including but not limited to the following: InstaWallet, exchanges such as MtGox and others.
 
The nature of Bitcoin makes it separate from human interference and devoid of an centralized architecture. If the order database has been incomplete or compromised, then a fail-safe could be utilized to refund every transaction to their original input address. By using third party systems such as the ones listed above however, you give up the control of your own coins, and you then run the risk of your refunds returning to their input addresses. This defeats the purpose of Bitcoin. You will also not be able to prove original ownership of these coins. Our terms of sale will be updated to reflect this before batch two re-opens for the remainder 300+ units.
 
We have also collected enough money for several parts with long lead times, and these are being ordered now. Consequently, our attention will be diverted to these parts for the moment, and once they and other higher-priority matter are addressed and done, we will then reopen order for batch two. We are currently not in a rush to collect money.
 
Support situation
 
The Avalon team is comprised of a small group of capable people; however, we are also extremely limited in manpower. Every one of us handles multitude of tasks, and for this reason we will have very limited customer support. This means that you will not hear from us regarding your order until the day prior of it being loaded onto a plane heading to your country of destination. No news is good news. We apologize for this, and we do not expect this situation to change until batch three is in its production to shipping stage.
 
Our number one focus right now and always have been delivery time; everything else is considered a secondary bonus. Avalon was turned from a idea into a physical working product in less than six month because of our devotion and focus, and we have received industry attention for it. Avalon do not intent to deviate from this even as we now face a greater amount of endeavors ahead, such as working on next-generation designs and scaling production upwards. All of these are happening in parallel with our current list of to-be-completed tasks.
 
tl;dr; We do not have a date for reopening orders on batch two.

I just got the email also.. These days you dont know who is telling the truth on this forum. Sorry about that.

I simply reported here what I received on my inbox. Standard practice. Other will confirm that I'm not trolling you, if you feel that there is that possibility.

No update from the 53 units that had the best chance to pass trought the Chinese border, someone must have eaten them.

Just wondering.. why would you get said letter and why wouldn't this be posted by Avalon themselves?

I could have missed something.. why im asking.