I purchased an Ant S1 from Bitmain and they shipped it to me with a bad Ethernet port. I cannot even plug it in to have it start mining. Clearly they either did not plug it in and test it OR they just knew it was a bad Ethernet port and shipped it out anyways.
I also have a friend who has recently received and Ant S1 from BitMain with a bad Ethernet port as well. Expect the same to happen to you.
It took them 6 weeks to send my friend a new controller board with a good Ethernet port on it. Great customer service.
I have been waiting for 48 hours now for them to even reply to my email to get a new Controller board.
Now I sit with a useless ant that I invested over $480 in. It now is making $0 a day until they ship me a new part. AND they want you to ship the bad part back before they will even ship you a new one. To ship it back to them it cost $44! Ya, prolly three times as much as the controller board.
If your going to purchase an Ant S1 I recommend getting it through a distributor in your country. At least they plug them all in and test them to make sure they are working before shipping to you. Otherwise you will end up with a brick like us and have to deal with the crappiest customer service I have seen thus far.
This is my biggest fear with ordering products directly from Chinese manufacturers.
Perhaps Bitmain can offer coupons that cover the purchase price in BTC for DOA items that are shipped back to them within a couple days of receipt?
Also, note that another poster had trouble with a S1 he ordered from 112bit, and they simply referred him back to Bitmain. If distributors are going simply going to refer their buyers to Bitmain for all problems, I see zero reason to order from them instead of just buying directly from Bitmain. At the very least, distributers should offer their buyers some level of protection and handle RMAs.