Topic: Butterfly Labs Forced "On Hold For Refund" for all my Single SC orders - page 59. (Read 59168 times)

+1

i dont agree with you wrenchmonkey , when you collect money from people to make product and lie about time they delivery date then some one complain you refund him !!! + you used his money and other to build this project .

I just wonder if one can make allegations of criminal nature against BFL.... no matter if they deliver it is a scam as they are 6 months late and the competition is way ahead of them. People have trusted them and lost a lot of money already no doubt. So even if BFL has made a fortune on preorders they have some questions to answer. This should not be left like that...

You just overdone things. Even if they are late and made false advertisements, they deserve a little bit of respect. I'm pretty sure they work hard to bring this products to the market. It's just way harder than they expected.

 I messed up. Fine. Waiting on my refund of $4,698 USD

to be honest BFL people are Screwed   every one that chosen BFL shit will regret his life on it as me.

i should have bought Avalon but i wasnt lucky in my choose batch 2 Avalon shipped and 0 in BFL .

You messed up big time matey - purely from a strangers point of view and reading your posts about BFL.

wrenchmonkey - your posts have cracked me up - you need to come and work for me in the UK - but you'd need to tone down the langauge

AFAIK this is completely legal on BFL's part, it also makes perfect sense for BFL to do this.

Given that BFL's business will flounder without generating pre-sales to fund their production, they need to continue collecting new investors. They can't collect new investors if the old ones fill these forums with complaints. If Wired or Ars Technica stumbled across one of these threads full of BFL pre-orders shouting and brandishing their torches & pitchforks then BFL is toast.

By publicly evicting a few outspoken critics, they hope to silence the complaints of their pre-order base. If the complaints swell to a critical mass, people might start asking for their money back en masse and BFL cannot abide that.

Plus, Josh's ego won't let the sort of things the OP said pass without some form of retaliation.

In other news, Avalon batch 2 is shipping.

P.S. Maybe you could ask Avalon to sneak in 1 extra unit into batch 2 for you. It might be a PR coup for them

IMO it doesn't matter what they set out to do but what they did do which is punish a justifiably upset customer for expressing their opinion and profit from it in the process by not having to fulfill their end of the deal after holding his $5k for almost a year.

Why exactly do they believe the "business relationship had become untenable"? Were his posts causing more delays somehow? Nope. Were his posts damaging the company? Maybe. Will canceling his order solve this problem? Nope! Will acting professionally and eventually delivering his order solve this problem? Yep!

I need to take exception with this. If I have x Dollars invested in BFL pre-orders, what rational reason would I have for contemplating Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt for BFL essentially being six months behind schedule, with no accurate information for delivery, going on almost a year now.

Do I admit to being a total angry asshole for being strung along ? Yes. Has anything I said been a lie, slanderous, or false ? I certainly hope not; if it is I will apologize and issue a retraction.

That's really not the point, let's be honest they aren't really a reputable enough firm to be calling the shots here. Criticism is warranted from current customers, although abuse is not.

That said, for all those on this thread slating the OP and laughing about his situation, you're not exactly wearing your thinking caps.

BFL are potentially on a knifes edge here. All you know is what they've divulged to you, which from a bystanders point of view is that they aren't being totally honest and what little they've produced has been for the aid of external public relations.

There has been no proof they have been handling customers funds in any way legitimately. They've openly lied on several occassions, that's indisputable. They also have manging directors who have been convicted for fraud. Whether they've turned a new page(and I believe everyone should be given a second chance), or not it means any dispute raised with trade commissions etc. will be taken a lot more seriously.

It only takes one genuine complaint, certainly a few and they could end up having production halted. If they are found to have behaved in any way outside the law (again - especially with prior conviction for fraud) that could be production terminated. Pre-order funds would be frozen until authorities had finished their investigation, which could take months.

Is that really what you want when time is of the essence and you're already in a race to get a product to market?! Even if production is suspended, what use is it if its delayed another couple of months.

Really, really dumb, this could be their tipping point or the start of it. Angry customers or ex-customers can quite easily take BFL out of the game if they wanted.

No it doesn't. Because AGAIN, we're talking about the remainder of the sentence "among other things". Go look at his post history. He dedicated a good portion of his time to spreading FUD about the company, about Josh, about Sonny, about BFL as a company, about developers who are working with them to improve the product, etc, etc, etc.

If ALL he had done was told Josh to "Eat a bag of dicks", it's unlikely he'd have found himself in the position he's in now. But that's NOT all he did. He made a hobby of trashing BFL. The insults to Josh were merely incidental to that.

 ... still waiting ...

It really does remind me of the scene in the now infamous "Amy's Baking Company" episode where the owners are yelling and getting physical with a customer who was simply unhappy his pizza was taking over an hour to make. It's pure insanity. HOW DARE YOU COMPLAIN THAT YOUR ORDER IS OVER 7 MONTHS LATE CAUSING THOUSANDS IN LOST PROFITS NOW YOU GET NOTHING!

Nope. That's not how it works. They used a merchant service that handled the transaction, and conversion from bitcoin to cash. That's like saying that if you paid somebody in quarters that later turned out to be rare and worth more money, or some foreign currency, that later appreciated/depreciated, that you demand to be repaid by those same quarters (despite those quarters having been dropped off at the bank the same day you made payment). Not gonna happen. The product was denominated in dollars. Bitcoin isn't a 'legal currency', therefore there's no requirement for them to hedge your funds and refund them however you like.

If Bitcoin had fallen through the floor, you people would be demanding refunds in dollars, but it went up, so you think you deserve the bitcoins.  


They didn't set out to get a "free loan" from him. They just decided that the business relationship had become untenable, and chose to end it. If they had set out from the beginning to get "free loans" from people, there might be an issue with that, but this is a result of HIS behavior, not a result of some 'scheemy-scheme' to borrow a lousy 4000 bucks, interest free.



Libel is hard to prove. However, it was plainly malicious and defamatory. They're not suing you for libel, they're kicking your ass to the curb, for trashing their company, and insulting the owners/officers. Big difference.


More like, "Hey there, we haven't been able to deliver your propane due to issues with the truck. We're still working on fixing the truck, but in the mean time, we've heard you were going around town talking shit about us, calling us crooks, telling people that we took your money and you think we might just be using it to put propane in our own houses.

Remember when you saw the truck driver at the local bar and told him to "eat a bag of dicks"? Remember how you show up at that same bar every night and try and pick fights with our guys?

Yeah, well, we're still not certain when we're gonna have the truck running, in order to get you your fuckin' propane, and we're sick of your antics, so we're dropping your account. Find a new propane company. Let us know where to mail the check for a refund of your pre-payment."  

 It will certainly be enough once I receive my refund. This entire experience has left me shell-shocked.

And enough is enough

The problem with this argument is that it completely ignores Josh's behavior which should carry a lot of the blame for Xian01's "shit talking". I find it unbelievable that Josh comes to these forums to roll in the mud with unhappy customers only to turn around and cancel their orders after he gets them all riled up with his own "shit talking". The fact is that it's the trust in BFL from customers like Xian01 that made it possible for BFL to bring ASIC miners to market. Regardless of Xian01's behavior, BFL owes him a debt of gratitude for letting him play with their money for almost a year based on broken promises and outright lies. In many ways, these AISC pre-order schemes are like loans where the interest is paid via mining profits and BFL did not pay their interest to Xian01.

Everything is relative.

I don't think so. Op leaned out the window way too far the last weeks. Everyone can read that and judge for himself.