Topic: Alpha Technology Litecoin (Scrypt) ASIC Miner Order Batch 1 Now! - page 184. (Read 529095 times)

You probably need to read my posts regarding UK consumer law

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.7276409

If you have not paid with a CC you will need to complain to the UK Citizens Advice Bureau. Fill out the form in my post and submit it. Or call the number. This will bring Alpha to the attention of UK trading standards who will inform them that they have to refund you 100% or be prosecuted. I have already submitted a complaint. You should too.

You can do this even if you are a business, as Alpha took no proof at purchase. So unless you paid through a business account or card you can claim your refund as a consumer.

@futune. Yes you can contact your CC company ask ask for a charge back on anything Alpha are withholding (£70 +whatever %)

That is real cute.  Things just got ugly here.

at this moment we are screw up - scammed

17th June 2014 7.05 pm from [email protected]


Hello there,

I am very sorry but as per our cancellation policy it has been longer
than 5 months since you placed your order therefore you are no longer
eligible for a refund.

Best Regards,

Alpha Technology Team

If I decide to get a refund I'm on the same boat, I did a bank transfer.
Any info on this?
Or how one goes about a refund if not with the aid of a credit card charge-back.

So just to be clear, we all payed for the pre-order, so if we want refund, is it illegal for them to charge that 70 dollar handling/administrative fee? AND that we can ask visa to refund the amount lost when they wrote in their terms (refund % after amount of days since you payed)? I live in Canada so I don't know about UK laws.

Hey Searing, that's probably a wise move.

Just to clear up a misconception about charge backs. You have 60 days from when you realise the problem to report it. Not from when you purchased the item. The transaction date can be much longer. Visa gives 540 days of cover in the UK.

For example. If you bought a camera a year ago but it goes wrong today, as long as you report the fault to Visa within 60 days of noticing it, you will be completely refunded as you bought the item within the last 540 days. So a charge back with Alpha should be 100% covered.

Also its illegal to take an "admin fee" to process refunds. They could withhold some or all of the deposit if the item was bespoke, which it isn't, its being sold in identical batches and they are reselling cancelled orders. So don't feel any guilt at all, trying to withhold even a penny of your refund is against the law.

So, who didn't use a credit card to pay the preorder how can get back his money??
I sent them an email some day ago, still no answer!

yep ..amex did not care...paypal did not matter....no sh*t told them this and said jan 2013 and did not get an item by accident and she said she would have to step away to go that far back....(not sure where that woulda gone can they go back that far?) corrected to jan 2014...but man maybe they can go back that far? anyway

again with only getting 217 usd back out of 667 back from my 30% down on my vyper 50mh...using the alpha rules

figured wtf do I have to lose?

also I'm a legal usa miner (don't ask due to bank screwups had to file or woulda been in trouble..lucky i did so all is good)

but have to pay taxes on any coin i make mining...but can take off depreciation on equip (50% 1st year currently to stimulate economy)

assuming i can write off equip as per IRS current rules (sure to change for asic miners) wrote off my bfl loss of 8.5k last year (now got a refund that is income this year ouch) so know this works

I can depreciate about $225 out of the whole 667 loss if I remember right in 'real dollars' otherwise paid to IRS should I lose the 667 complete may take a couple  years of tax loss on equip not delivered...so always that route round about thou it may be

so no real risk just going straight to amex (that and the fact i'm kinda p/o'd) whatever odd miner in usa that i am it is doable

on the other hand if alpha just wanted the 70 british pounds penalty i would have paid that ($120 bucks) that would be fair
for me getting out this late..but $450 gone out of $667 naw....I'd rather lose it all with an amex dispute and get the $$$ back
thru 'real' tax equip loss taxes otherwise to IRS in the next few years as an equip loss then take their 217 usd deal

we will see...the amex lady basically agreed w/o updates/the TOS/the timeline of july 15th with little info no prototype etc
had her following me around to the alpha pages etc

anyway i'll let  you know...they are just.too greedy on stuff i never got
..again the 70 pounds is reasonable penalty...guilt for wasting their time would
let me pay that ...but man ...no paypal anymore ...no credit card option yet? their main PHONE OUT due to technical difficulties (maybe that is fixed now?)...who knows they say squat.

so boys i''m doing the below

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FPELc1wEvk

"run away run away"

(heh side note I know some ww II vets who have medals...they basically say they had a medal cause it was a fubar..and the above running away was not an option...all their stories start with 'tactical retreats' on how they got their medals when that did not or could not work well heh)
Searing

hey Searing so you paid the initial 30% by Amex but it was via Paypal, so you didn't bother with Paypal because it was already pat 60 days so you went straight to Amex

is that correct?

Well sorry to say I pulled the plug on my Vyper 50mh ...I contacted Amex to get my 30% refunded (ie around 667 usd more or less) went straight to amex
under the alpha rules I would get 217 back...so did not think that was fair ..also showed the amex lady the alpha-t site their terms....their lack of info on their page
since may 27th...the fact they no longer take paypal..the fact their phone (at least recently) does not work and the fact that they keep claiming they will have
a cc order next week...main point is (lady agreed) even if alpha is legit with their timeline of middle of july shipping a miner with the level of confusion and according
to the amex lady ..their TOS was not thrilling to amex lady..well she put my dispute in and they will do all contact/etc with alpha for my 30% refund from jan 6th
back....immediately credited the full amount back

if alpha was only gonna charge the 70 british pounds for my cancellation from jan I'd let them keep that 120usd more or less as fair..but 450 bucks on a product
with no info .naw

so amex can see what happens ..if i lose the 217 i could have gotten by pushing this so be it....rather lose it all then buckle under and get reamed and only get
217 usd back

i'll let you go how it goes

Searing

Indian Gunda Mafia Miner

People should research and ask people in India about companies before buying or you might realize you just gave your money to the Indian Gunda gang running this.... 

I am certain that they are keeping the accounting business separate from the mining one. They are looking or working on getting the payment processor set up for the mining business. I am sure they don't want to obfuscate the two, at least for financial reasons.

A bit make or break with the credit card set up right now, unless thex have a working unit and then people would be less heistant to pay ba bank transfer (no protection outside os getting a lawyer).

IAS

They're not a start-up, they've been around for many years. Which is the point I'm underlining, why are they having issues? They weren't a cryptocurrency company to begin with, and it's still not their primary business according to their filing. So something else is going on. (edit: they recently got into crypto last year, according to them, but defended the length of the business for over a decade)

KNC dropped credit card processing as a strategic move, because they needed to keep as much cash as possible after their 2nd batch of original gear. This later became clear when people found out what they did with their 90%+ profit margin and startup money. Paypal was a fluke, I'm surprised they offered it because Paypal doesn't like doing business with cryptocurrency companies.

AT can't expect everyone to remit full payment if they can't offer credit processing, as it was something they offered during initial buy-in. So many people expected to remit remaining payment with credit. Without that, they're going to lose a lot of funds.

More and more reasons to question their capabilities to follow through. So far during the last 90 days it's been fly by the seat of their pants, design changes (feature removal) after money has been taken, failed to meet their spring deadline of final chip design (or whatever they called it, they just recently completed that), no answer to the CE issue (which requires another feature removal or worse), no 'transparency' of value at all through any part beyond the initial payment acceptance.

And, speculation here, if they don't have the funds to back credit processing, how are they going to have funds to complete system buildout, testing and shipping, if most of their userbase has failed to provide payment?

I'm simply examining facts. This isn't FUD. If I had an order, I sure wouldn't remit payment.

You're right. Getting a Merchant account with a UK bank isn't easy. I'd be very surprised if Alpha  even come close. They're a start up, with no accounts, in a high risk business. Normally you need at least two years of accounts to even be considered.

Merchant accounts are seen as an extension of credit and UK banks are heavily scrutinizing all forms of credit at the moment. I'd be amazed if Alpha started offering worldwide CC payments any time soon. I guess we'll know soon enough.

You can't even get a UK bank account if you mention cryptocoins.  I'd imagine a lot of established payment processors would be just as nervous at the mention of cryptocoins.  They did originally offer Paypal for deposits although even KNC has dropped credit cards now and you can only pay with Bitcoin or bank wire.  I don't know many manufactures who do or did offer credit cards or PayPal in the last six months at least.

Slight difference between KNC and AT: KNC is an experienced engineering/design team with delivered results, using a pre-existing platform which has been proven. The chassis, overall design, etc.. all pre-existing. Suppliers? No issue there. Assembly and testing? They have several teams and access to automated systems. Their Titan series didn't require any physical changes or supply differences. The mainboard and ASIC were the difference. They already have everything else.

Alpha Tec? To my knowledge.. none of that. They admitted they hadn't even figured out the physical case redesign. They're a mom and pop who are outsourcing as much as they can, and to date have admitted that it's all fly-by-the-seat-of-the-pants in order to make their own deadlines. It's not to say they can't do it just because they're a smaller outfit.

It's just that, with so many odds against them, and their lack of clarity and response, and the fact they can't obtain credit card processing after a month of trying, is cause for concern.

And from a personal standpoint, why on earth doesn't a company like this already HAVE credit card processing?

KNC went from working delivered chips to shipping miners in about a week.  Maybe if AT dropped the included PSU's they could too.  Saying that though with Bitmine it took them at least a month after receiving the working chips to starting to ship and they had major problems with their PSU supplier which greatly slowed down the volume they could ship.  If AT can announce working chips and PCB's this week or early next week then I'm confident they can still pull off starting to ship devices before the end of July.  AT usually have given official updates at least every two weeks while now is the third week since their last official update.  A reason to be concerned yes but not the loss of any deposits yet.  They've not broken their contract unless they don't ship your miner before September 31st.  Although they'll now look very bad if they don't start shipping in July.  Trying to prove an argument they they won't ship in July for the 'good' of the public is one thing.  Although the FUD'ers saying you've already lost your deposit is just that FUD.   

You mean the payment processor they were supposed to have working before June 5th? I can go to any bank within a 5 mile radius, and for $250 I can acquire credit/debit card payment processing, even without having a bank account at that bank (it just costs a few more to setup). And yes, this is with business registration. There are at least 20 online processing companies who will have you setup in 15 minutes.

There's something preventing them from getting this otherwise extremely easy system in process. Any sensible person who understands business has to ask themselves, what is that? Something doesn't add up, unless there's been some shady stuff in your business/personal history--typically fraud. This is all speculative thought, but it's worth wondering why they can't get it.


Their announcement should've come 1-2 months back (which, coincidentally, is in line with their original projection of foundry/bump/chips). If you've been following the concerns here, there's legal and engineering deadlines/milestones which aren't physically achievable right now, even if they had functional chips+pcb's, if they're expecting to meet their July deadline without any further changes.

They have extremely high depreciation that is pegged to the profitability of the coins they mine.  GPUs have a market in gaming and graphic rendering and the cycle between releases is typically 1 year.  So you ca be assured a slower depreciation as there is always someone that wants a used GPU because last years model is now in their price range.

These miners have a single purpose and the cycle between releases is very short and random.  Case in point is when a manufacturer ships and a buyer gets their shipment delayed in customs for about a week.  Because miners are competitive the miner that is delayed is 1 week behind and has lost opportunity.  The product they receive eventually is now worth less and did not capture the return expected.  Plus there is the other units that are being delivered every month or two with better performances.  I would say most ASICs have a 50% depreciation over 60 days.

One sold in auctions for .3BTC so I guess technically they aren't completely worthless.  One thing to note:

"Reselling & third party buying

For now we do not allow orders to be resold and do not acknowledge the reselling of that order if it were to happen. We cannot and do not ‘transfer’ orders from one of our customers to another party. Orders can only be kept with the party that accepted our terms."