sr. member
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In China things work differently. Signing a contract is "just the beginning of the business relationship" and "everything is negotiable". You should be honored to buy a Chinese product, it is a privilege. But of course, its always buyer beware.
In the USA, we hold to the rule of law. You signed a shitty contract? Too bad. Honor it or go down in flames. And the customer is always right, and can return anything anytime.
So the Chinese rejecting a warranty claim right away is par for the course. After all, a lot of claims are a result of user error/stupidity and they hope you just go away, and better luck next time. For some reason, in China it seems like blatant lies and scams are frowned upon, but getting the better end of the deal due to circumstances and a little fudge here and there is perfectly acceptable. (which in capitalism, has some similarities to that also)
Personally I learned to fight with "support" a long time ago. If you have the facts to back you up, and you are persistent, it can work out for you in the end.
With the Chinese its ALWAYS CYA, CYA, CYA!
I purchased an Avalon 2 off eBay just to see if it was a viable product when they first came out and were being made by all kinds of fly-by-night shops using reference designs and raw chips (I was running 16 Antminer S1s, and just wanted to see if the new Avalon chip was any good). Fortunately I paid with Paypal, just to see.
When the DHL box finally arrived, you could hear a big "clunk" when you would change box orientations. Ugh. Opened it up and found half the modules and stripped from their mountings and were flying around lose within the case. One of the ribbon cables had been sheared through by a massive heatsink, and the interior was a mess. Had to order a new ribbon cable, tape up some other wires, put everything back together and fortunately it actually worked! But it was a dual-PSU monster that I could tell from the beginning was a failed design. After only running for just a couple weeks I got a phone call from the wife saying the smoke alarm was going off and my garage is full of haze and smells like burnt electrical! Sure enough, dead Avalon 2! Opened that case with eBay/Paypal ASAP, and made sure to play my cards right. Of course the seller first started out with "well it must be your PSU!" But since I had 16 other working Antminers on PSUs I knew that was not the problem, and had already fixed their shitty miner once. Seller promised up and down that "just cancel the case, ship it back to me, and we will fix it." I told them no way I would cancel my case, as then I knew I would instantly be out a few thousand $! Finally eBay let me take it to a "computer repair shop" where I promptly described the problem, told them what I did to attempt to revive it, then said "You can try your best to fix it, but don't waste your time, I just need a letter stating these are not consumer or shop repairable". Best $60 letter I ever bought! Paypal found the case in my favor and I got my money back. Of course I had to ship the POS back to some random address in China, which I did via USPS for $100 or so. But not before I got a Chinese sob story about how "he has had too many returns and this is causing him problems with is eBay and PayPal accounts and they are now frozen!" WHAA! Icing on the cake was all of a sudden 3 months later, after I put this all behind me, I get a the SAME Avalon 2 back in the mail, but with about 10x more stamps/labels, and this time completely destroyed! Like not a single part was still mounted, case dented, holes in cardboard box, everything! I guess they couldn't find the return location or it had been rejected, but fuck them because I returned it in the same shitty packaging they sent it to me in!
TL;DR: Fuck Chinese business practices.
/rant ... sorry I guess that just got me a bit worked up remembering that whole fiasco! Anyway, at least bitmain isn't THAT bad!