Topic: Butterfly Labs Forced "On Hold For Refund" for all my Single SC orders - page 32. (Read 59178 times)

This is not about Xian (although Endlessa would like you to believe it is, now that he's taken out ads against BFL)...

It's about BFL, their shady CEO and equally as shady business practices.

Hey everybody is entitled to a nicely stated opinion.  

Full disclosure, I do have several orders with BFL.  I am happy with my experience.  I am also happy with the returns I will be getting when ever my product lands on my door.

Though, I think that's mostly because I came into this with my eyes wide open, had experience with several different small companies/startups, and am willing to accept whatever loss I take before I see gains until I decide it's too much or a product is delivered.

As, far as the hate speech goes, these are forums on the internet.  Everybody loses their shit eventually on people that annoy them, if it's too much log off or whatever happens is just that.

I just hope people in the future can take responsibility for their actions, maintaining their business relationships, and their own decisions. You'll never be able to sustain a mining business without thinking about business concerns.

Also, I love PBS too I was just being playful I argue only in the hope of doing my best to explore something, or express my own truth.

G' luck peeps

No let's keep the thread up and let us continue to add to the mountain of horseshit that BFL continues to produce... There is absolutely no defense possible for BFL at this point. This is the death spiral we are watching. This will not be the last "cancellation" and "refund" thread.

Even if one person who reads this and decides no I will not do business with these people then it is better than PBS.

1) They believed they could do what they said (Good luck disproving that).  No, if you read the history, not the trolling, they were very transparent about what happened.  
2) Perhaps, but I will still hold that they (right or wrong) thought they could solve the issues and get it working at the times they said.  This can be shown by them drop the FPGA production contract, because they actually thought they'd be delivering. (In hindsight they admitted they wished they had not done this, because they lost a lot of income)
3) There was no victim here.  Each person is responsible for evaluating their own risk/potential.  At any point, any person can exit when they feel the risk is not acceptable.  

This happens all the time in hardware manufacturing of servers, slip deadlines, etc.  During the dot com boom it was rampant, there was nothing you could do about it with out an SLA contract (which you paid dearly with $$ for).  It cost plenty of companies hard money and opportunity.  All you can do is a proper risk assessment  and  decide to pull your order and go else where or wait it out.  Same thing here. . .again it does suck horribly, but if your going to be in the mining "business" this needs to be considered in your assessments.

I paid money to advertise here just like Butterfly Labs. I will take the comparison to PBS as a compliment.

The only thing I have done wrong is get way too upset over not receiving product for over 11 months, and calling the COO of Butterfly Labs out on his poor behavior on these forums in an overly harsh manner. In retrospect, that was uncool, i could have handled myself more calmly, and I apologize, again.

You are right. There is nothing further to talk to you about here. Back to the BFL sycophant shoutbox with you.

lol Ok so let me get this straight.  You stating you've done nothing wrong and have no personal responsibility in the outcome of this matter.  And that you are the PBS of bitcointalk.

Welp, guess there's nothing to talk about here, lets close this thread down people!

There is one other alternative:
If BFL knowingly made false statements about the state of their product (like they would ship in 2 weeks when they had no working chips), you could file a civil case against them for fraud. There are 3 components needed to prove fraud:

1) Material false statements made. These forums are full of statements made by BFL that later turned out to be impossible. We need not discuss them at length.

2) Reliance on the statements by the victims. People hang on BFL's every word while trying to determine when (if ever) they can ship in volume. Whenever BFL reports that they will ship "in two weeks" TM, everyone who bought is reassured.

3) Damage to the victim was caused. Loss of income. If you offer to provide a product or service and then fail to do so, you have damaged the customer if they are relying on that product or service to make money. If BFL never claimed a ship date, nobody could rely on that date for the beginning of an income stream.

I have explicitly stated I do not believe Butterfly Labs is a scam.

In retrospect, it was a mistake to delete my comments. Think I only deleted 2 or 3 of the most bitter ones.

Creating this thread was a public service announcement.

Wouldn't argue anything there. .  .the last part will be seen in the future.  A lot of some companies in niche markets experience this.  Hopefully, both the market and the company will mature together or free market will decide.  Though I don't have faith that the miners won't buy reasonably priced hardware once the product is in hand.  I'd love to see more/better competition, because I believe in free market driving the best product/experience.

Companies who routinely alienate their customers are one of the following: on their way out of business(Amy's Baking Company), have no business (scam), or have a monopoly position (cable companies).  BFL was absolutely with in their rights to terminate the relationship and they did so at no cost to themselves. Since the product was a pre-sale, BFL can't recognize that money until the unit is shipped.

Cisco (for all its faults) at least works hard to hide their disdain for their customer base. They are trying to gouge every last cent out of you, but they are as subtle as they can be about it. They treat their customers very nicely (as long as they pay) and will endure any amount of abuse from them (as long as they pay). Cisco has lots of competition.

BFL has had very little competition. ASICMiner didn't ship product, and Avalon did limited runs. That all comes to an end in August after the wave of Avalon chips hits the market. BFL has 2 more months with little to no competition, then they have to work for their customers. Anyone deciding between "ASICSellerX" and BFL can read the way BFL has treated their customers to date. So why on earth would BFL continue to insult and bully their customers?

BFL must think their reputation won't matter in the long run. Eventually, we will find out why.

Great scenario, but in the instance your speaking of there would something called an SLA (Service Level Agreement).  That would be the grounds you would hold the them liable. Such is not the case with BFL.

Did he have one? No he did not.  
Was he aware he was pre-ordering a product that was not in hand? Yes.
Did he choose to order it anyways? Yes.  
Was a refund available when the product was not shipped on the previous projections? Yes.  
Did he choose to take it? No.
Did he choose to accept the delays by not getting a refund? Yes
Does it give him the right to complain? Yes
Does it give him the right to harm their business? No.
Do both parties have the right to terminate the agreement? Yes
Is this an unheard of situation in business? No.

It may be frustrating but that the reality of doing business. lets talk about facts, not parody of non-related issues.

Example,
A customer purchases a machine that mixes heavy concrete in large batches. The customer purchased it from me as vendor for his use and buisness and the contract specifies I must deliver within 90 days. I give the customer constant assurances that everything is on schedule and the machine that mixes concrete will be on time.

Now I do that for the next 11 months. (remember 90 days was the agreement, promise or no promise)

You do realize that if I miss my target date then I have to inform them with a accurate timeline as to when it may arrive or be completed....and even when it will be delivered to them. I miss more than 20 of those promised ship dates.

----------------

What do you think will happen?

The customer will take me to court, the customer will ask the court to give them payments for damages they incurred by the late delivery of a product they ordered and paid for.

They will get their refund, plus I will have to pay for all the other issues they seek repayment for.

---------------

In this case, Single SC customers paid for a device that produces Virtual BitCoins Currency. They paid in good faith. They paid in full, up front and they were given a reasonable shipping date. Then they were given additional dates for the next 11 months.

Seeing how that became a trend, I find it hard to believe BFL hasn't been sued yet to the tune of the device itself plus monthly sums the customer failed to receive due to BFL's poor business practices and constant date fabrication. (in my opinion)

Edit: It will be like "mining BFL" rather than with BFL hardware. (a small joke)

60Gh/s x 180 days = (Guesstimation) 400 to 700 BTC~!

52,000 to 93,000 USD per BFL Single SC customer....yikes....That is only for one (1) 60Gh/s machine....

I don't think even BFL customers know how much they have lost in the year long wait...

Again it has nothing to do with that.  Nobody said don't complain. Not even me.  I said don't abuse (again I'm not talking about Josh, I'm talking about BFL).

And yes I would say you did the right thing, the damage being done was not the worth the money he was paying for his pittance of product.

IMO

Edit: Don't abuse a company you want to sell you things. If you want to abuse them cancel your order, then by all means free speech and what not

There was always a refund. . .does it suck yes. . . .this is a dead horse. . .by all means keep kicking it. . ..

They didn't blame him for not delivering. ..they lost more money than anybody by missing their deadlines. ..and they are well aware of it and have acknowledged it on several occassions, at least to civil people. Nobody is claiming they're perfect by any shape of the imagination, not even BFL.  

Ugh,

Alright, so if I ran a company like BFL. I guess Endlessa would tell me I did the right thing by giving Xian his money back, despite having legitimate complaints and openly stating various recourses for failing to meet my obligations to deliver his purchased product in a reasonable time frame.

The whole issue has been the chips could not go fast enough. If all they had to do was clock them higher and they worked, BFL would have shipped months ago.

You implied it.  . and been supportive of people saying it.  Do I really need to link the "Newbie" thread?  And the history of your comments is misleading, since you've already stating you were deleting posts while you were begging to get your orders back.  And threatening a lawsuit at the same time (wtf. . .. how did you think that would end). . . .And created this thread. .. all the while in shoutbox begging to get your units.

Corrected it for you.

You overlook one obvious issue, the customer didn't fail the process.

The company itself failed to produce the product the customer already paid for...which results in the customer complaining. Not because the customer wants a refund, they want the product.

So the shit bowl is caused by BFL failing (repeatedly) to meet its obligations. The response so far is to be vengeful to the customer and (with a chorus of BFL suckups) to blame the customer as somehow being less intelligent.

(See the blog post from Jody on people being required to jump from a plane first or openly stating that they ignore all ("negative") emails.)

I take it you all see nothing wrong with this picture?

You mean failed to do buisness with.

Did you miss the part of the 11 months of waiting?

The free market has nothing to do with fairness. It has everything to do with supply and demand plus competition.

What an illogical position....or statement....to make....SIGH

They are entitled, to their purchased product. Cowardice is failing to meet those after repeatedly missing objectives, being aware of it, then blaming your customer for your own inability to produce purchased product.


Vitality?

You do realize the problem is the company fails to deliver the product to it's customers within a reasonable time frame. That alone speaks to it's vitality. The facts testify to the company and it's performance. The only thing the customer is doing is selecting which words to represent that.

Seriously Xian, and I'm not defending Josh's words, your gonna sit here and pretend you weren't aware that you were poking an angry bear?   In addition, as has been pointed out to me, that account is Josh's personal account, not him being a rep for BFL.  So worst case, you were trolling each other.  It still doesn't explain the attacks against the company itself implied or otherwise.  When your buying a product from a company it has to be balanced with mutually beneficial.  I've personally read many of your statements before and after "the event" and I have to say it doesn't appear they were getting much out of the deal.  

Here's good ways to talk to people you have a business relationship with (since you appear to have missed that part of being decent):

"I'm so fucking frustrated with all the waiting and missed deadlines, but full disclosure I have orders and I"m keep them.  They will deliver eventually"

bad ways:

"I'm sick of all these lies!" "These people deal with criminals!" "BFL is horrible!"




when you figure out the difference try remembering it.   You maybe "anonymous" on the internet, but they aren't. They've probably lost more money with you than they refunded. It's not balanced.