Topic: A letter from Avalon (Read 6383 times)

I got nothing. Thought they had it fixed on Sunday the 3rd, but apparently not.

Don't see anything like that.

Is anyone seeing the batch#2 orders made on the 2/3rd of Feb being entered into the system under their accounts?

Hmm, I have not heard, but for God's sake, it is interesting how the avalon will deal with the united order.

As said before, order by payment date, not order number

Yes, my order of February 2nd is now also confirmed by Avalon with a higher(#4077) order number compared to my lower(#1133) order number of February 18th which was already confirmed the same day.

The order also from 2-3 February?
 It is interesting that received the latest buyers.

I think they are entering the 'old' February 2nd orders into their 'new' ordering system by hand, hence the high order numbers. I have #4077.

Funny that 2 orders combined into one. I don't like it.

One question, what is the order number from those who had received such a mail?

You are incorrect

Same here,

I've opened a ticket on support.avalon-asics.com the they of the mess, they answered me quickly, but I got no order number no other kind of confirmation apart from a "your order is ok"

spiccioli

And I have not received even such a letter...  2 orders, the first was confirmed (!) on February 3, about the second I have only the assurances Walletbit, that everything is OK.

Day 24 after shipping: 12 x 24 = 288 units should have shipped by now.

He said that they were attempting to ship out 53 units, and they would know by Feb 2nd if they had "made it out" or not.

I'm guessing that no news is bad news in this case, and they did not in fact make it out.

Probably means;

before we shipped we weer online 24/7 talking all the time keeping ur asses informed big time ...becourse we must take ur BTCs in batch 2....
But now you all can just go to hell ....


Something like that i think...!!!

Totally confused, what is the purpose of this letter

Just wanted to say WalletBit's support has been very helpful and responsive so far and I have had a positive experience with WalletBit.

My comment was directed towards Avalon not Walletbit. So far Avalon has not responded to multiple tickets on their site nor emails. I was merely pointed out that for Avalon to make the statements they did in their letter, while not responding to most people, was both absurd and concerning.

Avalon's letter also states they will not refund incomplete orders, which is in direct conflict with the statements made by at the start of this thread (and were due to Avalon's technical issues not the customer's). Again it is not professional for them to make these statements and why I've decided to back out.

I do indeed believe it is unlikely Avalon is mining themselves...unjustifiably arrogant d1ckhead. If they were mining for themselves why in the world would they mine on such a high profile pool and completely trash their reputation? Why not solo mine or at least mine on P2Pool where they could maintain a lower profile? They did say they would not mine on main net...or did you miss that tidbit whilst attacking and insulting everyone you disagree with?

I further believe it is unlikely that one purchaser has in their possession 22+ Avalons and has been connecting them slowly to the network. Therefore I believe it is ASICMiner.

If you have any reasoned points to add then I'd love to hear them, but if you just want to lob your usual petty insults then feel free to STFU.

Why would I lie about this?  
I never even received a confirmation email for the ticket submitted to them. Trying to log in to their system to see the status of the ticket fails. Attempting to change the password fails (I get a new password and trying to log in with it fails).

The only acknowledgement I ever received was in a PM from bob:

"Re: Avalon order
« Sent to: Elokane on: February 08, 2013, 01:07:04 PM »
« You have forwarded or responded to this message. »
Quote  Reply  Delete  
For security reasons we cannot discuss order details on Bitcointalk. Your email should have created a support ticket in our system but if it didn't please submit a ticket to http://support.walletbit.com/ and we will make sure to look into your request."

I answered this one as well and never received a response.

None of my mails to their support email ever received a response. Not even an automated response. Same for the support ticket I created on their site.

I'm fucking sick of dealing with this crap.

If its ASIC miner there is no reason for them of not having 10s THs online now. They can test one or 2 units. After that they can power all the rack. Its not like they're assembling 12 units/ day.

Again they're reaching for 10s THs, you would have thought they get their own pool up from start?

Guaranteed PPS at this early date might be too tempting. Get the easy money in a predictable manner.

If its ASICminer, why dont they solomine? Their project is big enough and they're technical enough to make their own "pool".

Why is that genius?

Is it unlikely Avalon is mining themselves?

Anyone can speculate on anything. The problem is when people act like its true and start demanding answers. The facts are clearly stated on Avalons website. Until a certain deadline is not met people really cant scream scam as there is no proof to it.

I have also speculated on that being ASICMINER and not Avalon.

http://www.btcmu.info/articles/138-1-3-terahash-per-second-user-on-btcguild-pool.html

I understand you saying this. But again this is just speculation. Even the one in China that was posted wasnt even on this forum.

Very unlikely to be 22 Avalons hashing on one account. Almost surely ASICMiner at this point.

the rumor is that is friedcat and his project. nothing to do with avalon.

but please correct me if i am wrong.

https://www.btcguild.com//halloffame.php

Rank   User   Estimated Speed
1   67117   1,471.86 GH/s

bitsyncom stated those 53 were mailed and had the best chance to get out of the country.
and yes.. most people on this forum were the ones who ordered. i highly doubt at least one forum
member is not in that batch UNLESS it was just to 1-2 large customers who bought many.

We have no idea where those 53 units went. Its VERY likely these 53 units are either people that dont go to this forum or even plan to post that they have their units. Hundreds if not thousands of people stay away from the forums and other social aspects. They have every right to keep private on what they have for mining. There is no proof they haven't sent these 53 units.

Realistically no one has any right to bitch until March 1st. Unless of course they said we shipped YOUR product and never proved they did. I have not seen this case anywhere.

This is just the facts here.

Where did they state this exactly?   I know they gave an estimate on how many would ship per week/day and what their hard deadline was, the deadline is what matters, they are dealing with many logistical issues including CNY, international shipping and customs along with any internal issues with the product that they may be tightening up.  At this point, I sent my money and I have to take it on faith/calculated risk.   I knew what I was getting into when I ordered.   

In closing:

Jesse Livermore (1920's) once said: "Sometimes it is hard to sit tight and be right"

you're not concerned about the 53 units they said they shipped out by January 28th?  At least 16 days in the mail now and not a peep.

^^^^  I agree, I would rather them focus their efforts on shipping Batch #1 and Batch #2 by their deadlines period.  He stated "no news is good news" as we need to take it at face value that they are on schedule and have focused their resources on meeting these goals. 

Basically Avalon has noted how they will be conducting business going forward. Take it as it is. If you like to know if your order went through ok you need to contact http://support.walletbit.com

If your looking for more information. Customer contact. ButterflyLabs might be a better purchase for you.

Avalon is a small group of people and they would like to keep it that way.

At this time they have Until March 1st to ship all Batch 1 orders. If they ship all of these orders by March 1st they have met their deadline. They are focused on meeting deadlines. ButterflyLabs have missed deadlines but have customer service.

You choose on who you spend your money with going down the road.

That is a pure lie. Otherwise prove it with a support ticket number. Walletbit has helped at least a dozen people I know with the Avalon Asic order now. Does spread lies.

If you sent from Bitcoin-Qt (or any other client in which you have the private key, ... such as MultiBit, Electrum, or Blockchain.info/wallet) you can use the Bitcoin-Qt client to digitally sign a message to prove ownership as nobody could do that except someone with the private key for that address.

If you sent from a hosted (shared) E-Wallet, such as from Mt. Gox, Instawallet, Coinbase, Paytunia, etc, then you are pretty much out of luck as far as being able to prove that the payment came from you.

How to prove that the sender for a payment was truly me?
 - https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/how-to-prove-that-the-sender-for-a-payment-was-truly-me-4411

There are creams and lotions you can get for that. So I've heard, anyway.

SHUT UP AND EAT YOUR DINNER

But but but butbutbut I'm allergic to crabs. 

How does that help? I've sent you emails, opened support tickets and sent you multiple PMs only to receive no response.

Please contact WalletBit support immediately.

When thinking philosophically what is the fundamental difference that when buyers are using 3rd party systems like MtGox it is wrong and defeats the purpose of bitcoin, but when seller uses 3rd party systems like WalletBit it is great?

When thinking practically what is the fundamental difference that when buyers are using 3rd party systems like MtGox and in doing so stumble onto a minor inconvenience that prevents Avalon from choosing one from a group of several possible avenues of action demanding that suddenly bitcoin network transactions work in a way it was never intended to work it is a huge problem, but when a seller is uses a 3rd party system like WalletBit and it completely fucks up the whole process because of incompetence in the 3rd party system implementation and from Avalon in the selection and evaluation process of choosing the 3rd party system it is actually hugely good thing for which Avalon should be praised for?

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.


The arrogence coupled with the outright misunderstanding of bitcoin here is absolutely astounding.

Bitcoin absolutely does NOT have the concept of a "from" address. It is perfectly valid to pay a merchant using a transfer from InstaWallet, etc. To say otherwise is absured. Relying on from addresses for your mechant website is a problem on the merchant's side, not on the customers side.

I'm begining to believe Avalon does not have the competency to develop a working ASIC with good enough yields, if this is their childish attitude and they can't follow-up with a mere 100 customers...

And after only a week of letting customers squirm in a pit of FUD?  You're too kind!
 

Avalon is the first company to use a 'shopping cart' on the 'internet?'  No wonder there were so many unforeseeable problems; it was simply destined to be a giant fiasco.


What on earth persuaded you to switch from a working solution to a WordPress hack?


No favorites.  Except JG and the BF.  Got it.  Seems legit.
 

Scams usually don't refund orders either.


A little late for that, isn't it?
 

Blah blah blah techno babble excuses makes customers liable for Avalon's mistakes.  Because Bitcoin.  And standing on Principle.


IOW, we still don't have our act together.



 

Mister Gornick, could you please elaborate or link an explanation of this? I was recently trying to seach on this subject and came up empty.

if I send bitcoins, how do I prove that these bitcoins came from me?

many thanks to anyone who can solve this riddle for me (and if I can successfully figure this out, perhaps a small ((very small, I'm bitcoin broke atm)) donation

thanks in advance

--shmadz

Wait...

They had time to compose and send out this letter, but they don't have time to send out order confirmations to a mere 200 people?

I want my 75 btc back.

Thank you for the update.  No news in good news.   We just need to sit back and let them get units produced. 

Call me nuts, but the letter copy was too well written, perhaps penned to dwarf recent concerns. Now, I'm curious as to who wrote it, and if that person is part of Team Avalon or some paid entity.

Most of what has been written by the two top dawgs of Avalon, including their above par website, doesn't even come close to this quality copy.

It would be nice if Batch1 got some communication too. When batch one had ordering snafus it was much more responsive. I knows it's a small group and that the effort is on making and shipping but I'm sure someone could spend a few minutes keeping the customers updated rather than feeding the trolls here and taunting Kano or Inaba. I'm sure you'd get volunteers to help if you needed it.

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.

Please forgive my ignorance, what does "skipping about the address space" mean?

They are skipping about the address space to avoid tax and customs... and it is going to end badly if they continue like this.
Gone are the days of inept Chinese customs departments and lazy officials.

Chinese Customs has been honed into a highly efficient machine, designed to deal with and recognize Technology and smuggling operations.(they deal with it every hour of the day.. both in and out of China)
The staff are highly technical with a computer infrastructure to match...,once they have both eyes open, they come down on you in a matter of days....

Part of me is upset i did not buy an asic to mess with. Another part of me is glad i avoided this fucking drama.

Is it just me, or are there no grammatical errors in this excellently written copy? I believe this was not written by one of the top two Avalon guys, though believe it did come from their camp.

Don't worry at all. I always post what I receive and I always have someone complaining about the source

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

any DHL updates?  I know people were calling and asking if there were any inbound packages to their zip code/name etc.

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.

Seriously. I've never paid 4500$ for anything without receiving ANY sort of feedback what so ever. 10 days and counting.

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.

Then why has NO ONE from batch #1 been notified?


That really needs to be addressed. Is our BTC sitting in a blackhole or has it been correctly taken as an order? I know some people are concerned that they've paid for other people's orders because the shopping cart software was so fucked up and showing random people's names and addresses. Without a confirmation, Avalon is just causing undue stress on its customers. Listen, you (Avalon) fucked up. You need to address it. Man up and resolve this open issue.

The orders of batch one might have required a cash injection to finish them?

They told us nothing about the orders from batch 2 (confirmation emails).
No one knows, if his order was successful.

And the second thing, when they only have a small team,
why they don't hire some friends? Don't they have enough money?

I know that there where a lot people who asking
shit questions and it cost many time to answer to this questions.

But it is the wrong way, to create a shop with wordpress,
and sell items over a payment provider named walletbit.

Nice to read this:

Hm? How much orders? 300 in the first batch and this was like a DDoS test?
To generate an address who some user will pay some bitcoins and get an confirmation after paying? Thumbs up

What is with the orders from Batch 1?
Why does no one have their tracking id?

tl;dr crabs are ugly but taste delicious. As long as avalon team continues to deliver I can forgive the lack of customer support.

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.