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Topic: Black Arrow 28nm 100Ghash Bitcoin ASIC from $0.49/GH/s - page 231. (Read 787053 times)

sr. member
Activity: 504
Merit: 250
So how do you get Minersource to refund you, I have 2 X1's on batch 2 but every time I ask to shift to my order to a antminer they say not at this time sorry, and when i ask to cancel they don't reply not good.
newbie
Activity: 32
Merit: 0
That's the one thing that I haven't seen any mining hardware mfg do on their pre-orders,.. Lay it out like it is and say "Hey,.. without your amazing willingness to fund/support a new (risky) product,... We wouldn't be here,..so YOU deserve a reward,. for that alone if nothing else. But I guess I'm biased, I've run several startups and I give away the lion's share in order to fund the next big project every time, because I know it's the people who "take the leap" with you, that deserve a huge part of the credit for any/all success.

This is a very sensible way to go about business and one that is terribly lacking in the world of crypto currency. Call it business savvy, karma or whatever you want, but it is going to make your future business endeavours so much easier - and likely more fruitful too.
jr. member
Activity: 40
Merit: 10
Thank you for the update Black Arrow. This is nice specificity and transparency.

Unfortunately difficulty increases are killing the positive ROI on these. I hope you revisit your compensation program when you get closer to delivery.

Lets phrase that as a question and see if we get an answer...

BA, since you originally promised customers that if they did not hit a positive ROI within 6 months, and now you are telling us you will have extra miners and a brand new facility to house them in for the expansion of the Rent a Minion program, is there a plan to revisit the compensation package to make your customers happy?

Positive ROI on what terms, USD or BTC, whatever currency they paid in?
I am thinking this could turn into big mess quickly.

The only thing people are going to measure against is "What would I have today if you had delivered on time" That's the line in the sand, be it in BTC, or in USD. You can't really say "what if I would have had your miner and exchanged BTC low on day 4 and then sold high on day 16 of not having it" b/c that's all 100% theoretical. What you can say for a fact is, if I got this on time I would now have X BTC. Or I could cash them out today for X USD. And even that scenario works against us as the price has been dropping, but it's the only real measure I can think of that isn't complete theory math.

I personally would like to see a menu of compensation packages to choose from comprised of different ratios/combos of:
A. Discounts on scrypt hardware (which is great for BA b/c they're making this stuff, so it's a win for them)
B. Time on Farm hashing
C. More hashing hardware. If profits are there,.. eventually throw me an X1 or some minions along with my X3.
D. Pool payouts (Setup a "Founder" pool that does nothing but kick some coins back to gen1 "Founder" orders forever) Am I wrong in assuming everyone would like a 100% constant free trickle of small amounts as an option? (this would allow BA to "be the good guys" and turn the amounts up/down as their profitability allows.) Sell it as a "share" that we can buy or sell from each other within the pool and let BA take a per trade comission like some of the new profit share pools do. Again,..win/win.
And yes,.. I sent all this to BA as part of their survey.

Considering that you're only compensating the people who initially funded the effort g1'ers, (assuming BA sales continue and they don't botch another pre-order) at some point, it's going to be a trivial thing to "pay off" or even god forbid "overcompensate" those people for their investment.

That's the one thing that I haven't seen any mining hardware mfg do on their pre-orders,.. Lay it out like it is and say "Hey,.. without your amazing willingness to fund/support a new (risky) product,... We wouldn't be here,..so YOU deserve a reward,. for that alone if nothing else. But I guess I'm biased, I've run several startups and I give away the lion's share in order to fund the next big project every time, because I know it's the people who "take the leap" with you, that deserve a huge part of the credit for any/all success.
hero member
Activity: 1372
Merit: 783
better everyday ♥
Well said, Pentax.

It still boggles my mind that in the face of this 3 month delay, they still had the audacity to start a scrypt miner project with their customers money...

Soon to be BFL Junior.
Soon? BFL atleast did some refunds...

Believe alot of the Minersource refund requests have been processed, although the BA ones(ironically) have been very sketchy.

Just want to see the next couple of updates first before I personally make a decision to kick or stick.
legendary
Activity: 1792
Merit: 1008
/dev/null
Well said, Pentax.

It still boggles my mind that in the face of this 3 month delay, they still had the audacity to start a scrypt miner project with their customers money...

Soon to be BFL Junior.
Soon? BFL atleast did some refunds...
hero member
Activity: 1372
Merit: 783
better everyday ♥
Well said, Pentax.

It still boggles my mind that in the face of this 3 month delay, they still had the audacity to start a scrypt miner project with their customers money...

Soon to be BFL Junior.
legendary
Activity: 1202
Merit: 1181
This $50 fee to cover the "time taken" for a refund is bullshit. If anything you should be getting paid an extra $50 for being screwed around for so long.

I'm gonna have a long hard think this weekend but as it stands at the moment, come Monday, I too will be requesting a refund
hero member
Activity: 682
Merit: 500
Got a reply this morning:

Quote
Dear Ben,

We are sorry to hear that you do not wish to continue with your order. As your order has already been put in production it is difficult for us to issue you with a refund. However, we do not want to make anyone unhappy therefore we will do our best to refund your money by moving your order to a new customer.

We trust that Bitcoin mining will be profitable in May as well or all the Bitcoin mining will stop. The online profitability calculators are wrong just because nobody in the right mind will keep doubling the hashrate of the network every month if they are loosing money. The hashrate of the network will keep growing only if the bitcoin value goes up again. For this reason and because we provide the lowest prices possible we do not think that our miners will have a negative return of investment. However, we understand that you might not agree with us and we'll offer you the refund if you decide to go ahead with it.

We understand that the 25% extra mining power is not something that will consider as right compensation for the delay.
We improved our compensation offer - to conditions below.
* 25% of your purchased hashing power, free of charge, from our Rent-Some-Minions cloud program for 6 months.
* 10% discount from for all Black Arrow ASIC products which you will purchase from us. The discount will be valid for any further
purchases for the next 22 months (until the end of 2015).

If you wish to proceed with the refund, please understand and agree with the following:
1. A refund request is final. We will not accept to reinstante your order if you change your mind later.
2. As per agreed terms and conditions of sale, we are not obliged to issue you with a refund and this delay is acceptable. However, we are doing our best to keep everyone happy and we'll issue the refund.
3. To cover time used to refund this order, for each transfer needed to be made, we will charge 50 USD and all 3rd party fees. In some cases, we might also need to charge a further 30 USD handling fee for each incorrect or incomplete transfer information provided by the customer.

If you have paid in fiat (USD/EUR/GBP etc) please note that we cannot refund you right now. Please provide us with your complete bank details and we will be doing our best to send your money back within 1 month.
BTC refunds are available sooner and we acknowledge your BTC Wallet that you have already provided.

Please let us know if you wish to continue with this refund and feel free to contact us anytime for further questions, thank you.

Sincerely,
Sylvia

I have responded and will update her when I recieve my refund.
newbie
Activity: 55
Merit: 0
Reading the status updates.. just feels like they're jerking us around.  Just waiting for the other shoe to drop with their email saying they're delayed another month or two because some random part that no serious miner cares about is not 100% to their standards.  They don't seem to be in any rush since its other people's money.  At this point I'd rather them start buying parts from bitmain and ship that, I'd at least have something I can mine with.
newbie
Activity: 51
Merit: 0
Hello, bobsag, please confirm my refund request. I wrote you to pm, to your thread. Cant get response, so writing here too.
hero member
Activity: 682
Merit: 500
Has anyone actually received a BTC refund then? They have even opened my 2 support tickets...

From BA no, from Minersource yes.

Well that sucks Sad
newbie
Activity: 32
Merit: 0
Has anyone actually received a BTC refund then? They have even opened my 2 support tickets...

From BA no, from Minersource yes.
hero member
Activity: 682
Merit: 500
Has anyone actually received a BTC refund then? They have even opened my 2 support tickets...
sr. member
Activity: 434
Merit: 250
Is shipping by approximately five weeks from now still a realistic goal?
depends how you look at it. I have 170GH here and i'm now mining alt SHA coins - and dumping them. I'm making more BTC selling them early, than if I were to mine BTC (which I now only do via cloudhashing).

I guess congratulations?

I wouldn't go as far to celebrate just yet... it's a hobby, that's all.
hero member
Activity: 1372
Merit: 783
better everyday ♥
I was a bit of an apologist in the beginning, just waiting for any good news from this outfit.

If there's any trace of a delay again in next couple weeks, I'll have to line up for a refund like everyone else.

Sucks, because Black Arrow had their window of opportunity in February.  Truth is they don't even have a working prototype this late stage of the game.

We'll see what the next production update gives us...
full member
Activity: 168
Merit: 100
Depending on how much BTC you initially spent for it, it may be worth it to request your refund now and invest it in an antminer before the difficulty explodes when/if BFL and BA start shipping. Requesting additional hashpower in the existing footprint would require a redesign and probably set them back additional months. You'd be better off asking for them to double your order and let them continue working toward the existing design.

I'm refunded except for my very first X1 order directly from BA which I will wait out because the exchange rate was better at the time and I think it will still be able to eventually return more BTC than it cost, assuming it ships before July.
hero member
Activity: 682
Merit: 500
blackarrow

You post from 21 March 2014......

Bitcoin Miners progress update – 21 March 2014

14. We got the BTC refund document back from our solicitors. We are updating few legal and we should be able to release this as early as tomorrow.

When you return us our money?


This.

Is shipping by approximately five weeks from now still a realistic goal?

No.
sr. member
Activity: 434
Merit: 250
Is shipping by approximately five weeks from now still a realistic goal?
depends how you look at it. I have 170GH here and i'm now mining alt SHA coins - and dumping them. I'm making more BTC selling them early, than if I were to mine BTC (which I now only do via cloudhashing).

ADD: but remember, BA haven't yet given us the "we are having some stability issues" theme yet. that's still to come  Wink
legendary
Activity: 980
Merit: 1040
It's an important step in the fab process. But looks like this is the first physical testing of the die... They could find something wrong here I guess!

They dont have any dies or wafers to test yet. A probe card was delivered to their package house, all that means is that the package house can prepare for receiving the first wafer.
full member
Activity: 194
Merit: 100
blackarrow

You post from 21 March 2014......

Bitcoin Miners progress update – 21 March 2014

14. We got the BTC refund document back from our solicitors. We are updating few legal and we should be able to release this as early as tomorrow.

When you return us our money?


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