Topic: Another ASIC company[Could be a scam?] - page 2. (Read 27334 times)

ASICrigs I'm happy to detail evidence to the contrary to this board via a visit in person as discussed and agreed upon before, however that last reply did you no favours.

You promised not to accept payment unless you had further confirmation on sourcing chips and further developed your design, so as not to be in a similar position to BFL Josh over promising and under delivering, yet although you may not be heavily promoting your sites through traditional marketing means, paid Adwords etc. your site is live for accepting funds which is the opposite to what you previously suggested, further more although there is some wordage explaining devices are not ready currently onsite, it's not entirely overt.

If we consider a competing European company who like you claim to have a known chip manufacturer in co-development, KNCminer there are several goalposts they have achieved with supporting evidence, these are;

A known chip manufacture who have themselves written a press release detailing their intention to partner.

Two products in place with draft designs completed as well as an idea of power consumption.

The owners have publicly revealed who they personally are and thus put their necks on the line.

They have at least one electronic engineer plus the support of an acknowledged chip manufacturer.

They have expressed willingness for a personal pick-up as well.

Yet they are still not live for payment as they themselves admit they want to move forward more and create a working prototype prior.

You also promised me some idea of your founders backgrounds, stating some tech involvement and that you had an Internet marketing background. I have worked in both advertising and venture capital as well as having a background in engineering and with all due respect have to say that KNCminers actions, whether sincere or not follow a logical path required to generate investment. People need to know who they are dealing with, their experience, their plans, how they intend to determine and reach goals realistically and provide supporting evidence.

My gut feeling is you lucked on a cracking domain name, have over promised somewhat and under anticipated the demand. It would be an utter waste to use the domain; asicrigs.com on a scam as it's resale value alone could net you more than the scam if ASICs become the future of mining, that domain resale would drastically decrease if having been affiliated with a scam as no future party would want ties with the negative historical connotation a scam site would have had.

Your recent response is not that of a veteran internet marketer. I wish you all the luck in the world if you are genuine and my offer still holds if you are. I would pick up and pay in person and document that publicly to put everyone's minds at rest on this board and beyond, but if you are genuine you have to stand by your originally stated intention not to accept payment until further positive and proven developmental progress has been made, buddy you have to remove the Bitpay option.

Regards, A.

But you seem to be fully unwilling to stop taking peoples money.
I wonder why...
 

Ok, so now instead of removing 3 links for the payment of your phantom product you come up with this bullshit.
Putting a website online and pointing a DNS entry to it is (at least in my country) considered publication.
By publishing you have brought it to the publics eye.

I won't do business with you but that doesn't stop me from informing others about the way you're trying to scam people.

The fact that you're unwilling to make a minor change to your webpage tells us that you are actively fishing for payment without actually having a product.

Your opration is very probably a:
SCAM!

Stop taking money for your non-existent product!

Anyway, if you won't remove the links on your page i will open a thread in the Scam Accusations section of this forum to warn people against your operation.
If you won't remove it by monday i think it will be time to have a little talk with HM R&C.

Okay, so I have just got out of a meeting with the company owner and after bringing up several of the suggestions, comments and concerns in this thread, this is what has been decided.

No, we will not be changing anything on our website, unless we absolutely have to.

We were not the ones that brought it to the public eye so we are not going to make any changes until we are ready to do so as a company, you don't like that, don't do business with us, plain and simple.

Once we have further information about our ASIC line we will let everyone know, when we are ready to, not before hand, ask away as much as you want on here and any other message forum, you'll be given the same answer... None.

When we are ready to let you know about the technicalities and finer points of our product line, we will.

Bottom line is this, no matter how many times we answer people's questions, no matter how many times we have gone out of our way to try and assure people we are a legitimate business, we are still getting slammed.

Well, slam away, we're going to be focusing on running our business and getting all of our products ready for market, not speculation, rumor and opinion posted on a message board by anonymous persons on a witch hunt.

We have been more than willing to discuss the issues as they have arisen but people obviously do not want to listen to, or believe the answers we are posting whilst those same answers get twisted out of their meaning by individuals looking to make them fit their agenda.

Right now, we do not care if you want to pre-order any of our ASIC models (that are currently not available to ship) or wait until we have honored our agreement to send the first 5 to members of this board by escrow facilitated by John K, but the bottom line is this...

Think we are scammers? Out to screw you over? Don't do any business with us, it's that simple. It's your choice.

We tried the 'this is where we are at route' and its obviously not what you folks want to hear so fuck it, when we are ready to let you know more about our ASIC product line, we will, until then we will only be posting publicly about our GPU Rigs product line.

Deuces...

So when will your co-workers of your business-run-from-a-house be able to give you confirmation that the developer of the site is indeed being gotten hold of?

Needless to say your website is still accepting payments for your non-existen products.

This thread may potentially be of great use to ASICrigs if their main hurdle is sourcing ASIC chips and they are comfortable with PCB and case design. Would mean increased power consumption in comparison to BFL (approx +30%), but that's not as important as bringing a working competing product to market fast, neither is the case size. It can be significantly larger, like Avalon's case;

https://forums.butterflylabs.com/bfl-forum-miscellaneous/1860-we-just-got-fucked-avalon-selling-tons-asics-chips-~25$-per-gigahash-~6w-ghs.html

Note: you will need to copy and paste the link, for some reason the post is not hyperlinking the full address.

Avalon's chip sale page: http://store.avalon-asics.com/?product=avalon-asic-chips-10000


Also: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/diy-pcb-with-avalon-the-quarter-stick-needs-help-161715

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/work-in-progess-burnins-avalon-chip-to-mining-board-service-179769

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/closed-avalon-asic-chip-distribution-177827

Wait, you need to source components and still need to do the board design and production but you've got your website running online with payment options activated?
How vicious...

This was an argument you used against my critique of the company.
The basis of your argument was that i shouldn't be so critical because the guy promised to sent out 5 units.

Your confusion is your own problem but let me clear it up for you.
Untill the usints are actually shipped and received the company deserves no respect or legitimacy for them.
As i said earlier, i promise you you will get the 500TH/s machine, once i've sourced the components.
Does it make me any more legitimate just because i've made this promise?
So these 5 machines carry no meaning in this discussion of legitimacy because they are simply not yet delivered. It's bad that you have mentioned them because they only confuse matters.

Alex,

We've always had BitCoins as a payment option because the site is pretty much an exact duplicate of our GPU Rigs website so we had our developer include everything so that when we were ready to let everyone know about the site, it was 100% ready to go, ranked in Google and the other search engines so that we can grow our business quickly, efficiently and ship product out to customers quickly and efficiently.

That being said I believe that we're currently trying to get ahold of the developer of the site to get those buttons removed in the interim.

In respect of Paypal, we wont be using them, whilst they do offer some protection on the consumer side of things, as a merchant, they offer none, zero, zilch, zip.

We may as well just ask every known scammer in the world to order through Paypal using a stolen credit card or actual Paypal funds and tell them once they have the product 'in hand' to just cancel the transaction... In that instance, we're fucked as a merchant and we close shop due to mass fraud or 'friendly fraud' as the banks call it.

Again, thanks for the opportunity to answer everyone's questions, comments and concerns about our ASIC product line, I must head out now though as I have to head to Sheffield for a few hours.

Sure you are. The fact that you're willing to refund some mysterious pre-payment is proof of that. Meanwhile your site stilll links to your bitpay account.

What about people that didn't read this thread?

The only option for your company to not look loke a scam at this point is to take the website offline or at least remove any payment options and just blatantly state on the site that you don not at the moment have a product.

If you don't then i think it's pretty obvious that you are doing all this on purpose and i can be pretty confident that you are a scam of sorts.

I'm confused at no point have I said the 'promise' adds to the legitimacy. For sure, the promise depicts GPU Rigs as cooperative in meeting the demand of the trusted public forum, but I quite clearly state; "it's additionaly verifiable independant sources that add legitimacy to ASICrigs intentions to sell working products." These sources are not verifiable until the products are in their hands and they are satisfied to the point at which;

1. They are vocal on the subject and content with the device.
2. They have agreed to release funds because they are satisfied early adopters.

Well, apparently it was findable and that means you made it somehow findable.
It is impossible that someone just typed in the right URL at random so somehow you leaked the info.
In any case it is funny how ready your site is (including having an arrangement with bitpay) and all information is geared for sale while you have nothing at all to sell and have no idea when/if you'll have a product.

It is ironic how you cry about people coming to your site that you havent announced when you can take it offline anytime.
Instead of taking it offline you actually added a payment method while you were fully aware that the site had been spotted.

In fact, you could have changed the DNS entry instead of writing this whole story.
But you didn't so i'm left i'm wondering why you act in this scammy way.

Yeah, that is what you said later.
But what i was refering to was:


Here you claim that the promise to send these 5 units out adds to their legitimacy.
As i said above, the whole point of sending out these units is to establisch wether they deserve any legitimacy. The promise to send them is meaningless untill they are delivered.

With all due respect, this is precisely why I remain neutral; staying firmly on the fence allowing you (GPU Rigs / Asic Rigs) to respond and provide timely updates towards your progress. I am not jumping to any conclusions, but it's only fair to air doubts towards a newly formed company offering specialist tech and permit you the ability to provide an adequate response. Likewise if this results in working product in hand I will do everything I can to provide independent proof beyond reasonable doubt to confirm such a product exists *when/if* that happens. As it currently stands you haven't in my eyes been anything but straight forward, you certainly have not evaded responding to criticism, much of which has been aired by posters who haven't fully read and understood the thread.  You've also been willing to accommodate my request of pick-up and payment in person which negates any risk on my part in return for an independent review.

I do however share some reservation in permitting payment, even bitcoins on your asicrigs.com site when you promised you wouldn't until you had a firm idea with respect to entering production. With regards to GPURigs.com , that is understandable; you are fully operational there, can easily source and build mining rigs with current graphics cards for sale and as such require payment.

For what it's worth your potential ASIC source ON Seminconductors is a well known and reputable chip manufacturer, their products are high quality and it should be easy to ascertain a response from them concerning such a specialist order to the UK should it occur.  I'm also rooting for a British company to add ASIC Miners to the mix!!  

As I requested before, can you please any relevant backgrounds of those involved in the project?

Best, A.

Okay just to clarify something here...

Yes, we do currently have BitPay on the website, however we have not actively started promoting the website yet.

The ONLY reason any of you folks know about the site is because it has been posted on this message forum by someone else, we never posted it, have not promoted it and as such, do not expect to get any sales until such a time that we start doing so.

The ONLY site and products we are actively wanting to promote at the present time is our http://www.gpurigs.com website, the fact someone discovered our ASIC site, prior to its official launch (we are currently in soft-launch) does not mean that we are doing anything to promote it, in fact as I stated yesterday, we are getting 50+ emails a day about a product that presently, we are not shipping or selling actively thanks in part to the posting of our website URL on this very board by someone in a sticky thread that hundreds of people can see.

We realized there would be a lot of feedback about our ASIC product line which is why, in my introduction thread it was never mentioned, we simply were not ready to start fielding questions, comments or support issues with that specific product line however, now that people know we are currently working on an ASIC line of models, that seems to be all they are interested in talking about LOL

In hindsight, we probably should have held off putting the ASIC Rigs website online until we were able to provide people with a lot more information than we presently have from our vendors and chip manufacturer however, what's done is done so we are doing our best to maintain the business on our GPU line whilst fielding questions and answering issues on our ASIC model line.

Just to re-iterate, presently our ASIC model line is not actively being promoted by anyone except for the people on this message board that keep posting about, we would much rather have the focus shifted to our GPU model line as we can currently take payments, fulfill orders and ship the product on that line.

The emails, if anyone is interested, that we are receiving about our ASIC model line are all pretty much the same thing, when can you ship, when can I pay and the responses we give in email are the same that we give on this forum, we don't know a final shipping date but we can ship anywhere globally & at the moment we are not taking payments for the product lines. Of course, anyone that has sent a pre-payment, is welcome to confirm that fact on here and we will obviously refund them if requested, I can say though with 110% certainty that at the present time, we have not had a single paid order for any of our ASIC models and honestly, right now, that is what we would prefer until we are able to have the models in hand and ready to ship.

Again, as a company, WE were not the ones to bring our ASIC Rigs website into the public eye, a member of this message board was, we have not, and will not be soliciting customers for that product line until we are certain we can meet the demand and fulfill the orders.

As I stated towards the start of this thread, even though I have done so several times since, I am 100% certain that despite yet another post to the contrary, posters in this thread will still say we are taking orders and continue to ask when we can ship and if they can pick the models up in person, because it would seem, no matter what the 'official' company word is, people still have it in their head we are trying to scam them and they just want in on this witch hunt without even reading the responses to the same questions, comments and accusations they are going to post or if they do, they post again in the hopes our answers will change so they can exclaim 'gotcha'.

mobo dick: "You make it look as if the fact that they promised some people to send the 5 units is worth peoples trust.
That's pretty LOL because the whole reason these units will need to be shipped is to start a trust relation in the first place."


BS, no I haven't, again you haven't read my post, these were the last two lines:

"As a casual observer I certainly wouldn't be parting with funds, especially Bitpay, unless they have fulfilled these above promises of my delivery in person and via respected third party held escrow that they have agreed to."

Please don't confuse the issue by jumping to conclusions in desperation to make some form of response instead of actually taking the time to digest what was written.

With that in mind the entire premise of my offer is to call out any potential scammer, and back that up by following through with the legwork and time taken out of my own day to add validity *if* their intentions are sincere because I live in the UK and can feasibly manage this. If they are legitimate let them prove that fact and be rewarded with more business than they could possibly dream of once verified as genuine.

Anyone parting with cash or bitcoins prior would be nuts, and yes irrespective of this forum, there will certainly be some individuals making such a mistake as payments are now live on their site, despite ASICrigs assurances to the contrary. They specifically stated their intention NOT to accept payment prior to securing ASIC chips so as not to repeat the mistakes of Butterfly Labs.

GPU Rigs: "We'd rather start selling once we know for certain we can ship based on demand not just take peoples money and constantly delay their shipping, that is what happened with BFL, we want to learn from the mistakes of others, not duplicate them LOL"

Since they have nothing they can promise anything. All the while taking payments in bitcoins on their site.

I can promise to send you a 500TH machine once i've sourced the proper ICs. Does that mean people should trust me?

You make it look as if the fact that they promised some people to send the 5 units is worth peoples trust.
That's pretty LOL because the whole reason these units will need to be shipped is to start a trust relation in the first place.

Greyhawk - God knows, perhaps because i'm English?! They have a facebook page with only three people on it. I'm one of them, i'm hardly hiding behind a web of deceit. It's obvious who I am on there as i'm asking the exact same questions that have been asked here.

Mobodick - Agreed, hence the reason I will meet them face to face in person, or no deal. I'm certainly not going to pre-order with anonymous cryptocurrency on blind faith. Again, the option for payment wasn't there last week, this is a new development and contradicts what ASICrigs have previously claimed and disputed in this thread; namely the fact: they couldn't be ripping people off as they weren't accepting payment due to the fact they had no product yet and were in the process of sourcing ASIC chips. Furthermore that they insisted they didn't want to put themselves in a similar situation to butterfly labs where upon they had a mountain of orders to fulfil with no specific and assured timeline to production. The fact they have now disregarded that comment and are now clearly accepting payment for a potential future product with no protected means of returning funds appears to best irresponsible and at worst entirely deceitful. It's the polar opposite of what they claimed their intention was since their has been no certain update on procuring chips or further conceptual design/prototype.

Best, A.

This escrow blabla is pretty meaningless when the site has the actual sinkhole of taking bitcoin. How many people that visit that site don't know that this escrow is available?