Topic: Did BFL mine with my unit for 3 weeks before shipping it to me? - page 3. (Read 18812 times)

 Very well said.

 The sad part is that Josh displays all those negative traits as a gleaming, proud badge-of-honor, and people keep throwing money at them and defending them like some ignorant, weak-minded Stockholm-Syndrome sufferers.

 Josh displays all the classic symptoms psychopathy. Don't take my word for it... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy

 Absolutely unforgivable and despicable behavior; a damning indictment of the entire company that they allow and support their public figurehead to act in such an unprofessional and off-putting manner.

 Quite possibly one of the most conniving people I have ever had the displeasure of doing business with.

 Caveat emptor.

 People didn't jump on an "experimental hardware" ship.  BFL showed they had products for sale and even shipped those products to "reviewers" (codinginmysleep.com  for example) so we could "see their awesomeness".   It's hard to understand were you are coming from to think that the constant complaining does nothing as it actually serves as a tool to preserve the reputation of BFL in the public memory.  It serves to keep other unsuspecting individuals from hopping onto the "experimental hardware" band wagon that purports to have actual products for sale (viable or not)! 
 We aren't in need of a cause - as you can plainly see, we have one!  Just because it doesn't meet up with your lofty expectations doesn't mean we should be quiet about it.  BFL may have shipped lots of miners but the fact that they took more orders than they could comfortably fill has to resonate in this forum until such time as they re-think their business model.
 
 What part of the bargain they lived up to are you referring to?  The 1 watt per gigahash bargain?  The USB powered bargain?  The backlog filled by the end of August bargain? The end of September bargain? (oh wait there was no end of September bargain!) The ramped up production to 400 units per day?   You are just tahnking your lucky stars you got yours when you did and that's all it took to keep your mouth shut.  Try to imagine you are still waiting and your 2500 bucks has evaporated.  Anyway, why would you enter a thread with this title and not expect to see this type of talk?  Telling people to find a "higher" cause is utterly ridiculous here. 

 And for disclosure, I HAVE ordered a BFL device and I AM STILL waiting for it after more than 6 months and I AM pissed off and I WONT ever do business with BFL in the future.  I have also donated to the Red Cross, Movember Canada, Run for the Cure, the Heart and Stroke foundation, The Salvation Army, The Canadian Legion, Wikileaks and others... but I realize that is meaningless in this forum and I apologize for the spam.

Take care

That's a forgiving, balanced and commendable attitude. The main factor fuelling all these threads is the recurring theme of Josh being a deceptive, unhelpful, nasty individual. The whole story would have been totally different with a public figure who knew how to interact with people and isn't cynical in his use of language, manipulation of dates and shows a willingness to be frank with information regarding delays and the size of the company's order book.

The lesson learnt for me is only give money to people who are honest. I ordered a Jupiter in early August from KNC and by October 15th it was clear that the unit wasn't going to be delivered by the promised date. I asked for a refund and had the money back within 24 hours. That kind of honesty and integrity is such a sharp contrast to Josh's behaviour regarding Paypal refunds. I don't detest BFL, merely Josh. He didn't make the devices, just typed crap into forums and misled people.

Alright, should I run through all the diff estimate vs. roi calculators that exist which show that basically no vendor is selling hardware that will pay for itself before it costs more to run than it is earning?  Or can you handle that on your own, then come back? 

Honestly, mining = race to the bottom.  People jumped on the BFL ship en masse then freaked out when they got delayed.  OMFG, a delay with experimental hardware, who would have guessed?  But that bandwagon left a long time ago.  Get a tissue, cry in the corner, then come back to add something valid.  Saying "These guys were late" once a week, every week, in a brand new thread does nothing, adds nothing, and only points out that people just can't get over it.  

If you're that hard off on finding a cause, look for companies basically dumping cancer water into public water sources, pharmas who sell drugs that can kill people with zero legal recourse, or technology companies who basically use slave labor for obtaining their rare earth minerals and turn a blind eye to it.  BFL makes Bitcoin mining hardware and was late on every estimate.  Josh is one employee out of a company who has delivered several generations of mining hardware, more than almost anyone on this forum can say.  

And for disclosure, no I don't have any monarchs on order, but if BFL catches up to the point where it is reasonable to order > ship within a week and their hardware is priced right I would purchase from them again because everything from my purchase to change of address to interactions with employees has been pleasant.  Not the same story for everyone, but otherwise they've lived up to their end of the bargain, albeit delivering late.

I’m inclined to believe Josh’s categorical denial that BFL mines.  If this was something they always did with all customer equipment I would guess other hard evidence would have surfaced by now.  Not sure how long they have been attaching these stickers on the bottom of the PCBs but its pretty easy for people to check their units and see how these dates compare to their ship date.
 

I agree with many in these forums that after 30 some missed “two more weeks” estimated ship dates you have to call that intentionally deceptive.  Intentionally deceptive in the context of selling a product is fraud.  Josh is doing what he thinks is necessary to keep his company viable.  As others have pointed out, in this thread and others, most attempts to bring a viable product to market have ended in complete failure with people losing their investment and getting nothing.  The decision to no longer give refunds in this situation is also likely going to be a problem for BFL.  The FTC will take action on them and people living in the US do stand a pretty good chance litigating this if they decide to spend the time and money to do so.

I’m not defending Josh’s actions.  Just pointing out I can see why he has done what he did.  If he had not BFL likely would have collapsed and people like me would have lost our investment and got nothing.  I won’t get my money back as things stand.  I will recoup some of my investment and I have an interesting black box memento and story to tell friends…

While I detest the business practices of BFL, neither of these statements are factual without some qualification.  They are merely statements.  Perhaps you will never be able to mine as many coins as you paid to purchase the equipment and this is what you intended to state.  In this case it would have been better to buy the coins and hold them until a later date but we can only make statements of fact about that as far as the PAST is concerned.  We hope that the coins are going to increase in value and if that increase is large enough, you may still make an ROI with your dusty old BFL piece of shit which you have been waiting for over 6 months now because they took more orders than they could comfortably fill and are still up to the same tactics today but I digress.  Maybe we can even dust off the old video cards and blow the dust off or our old CPUs... but wait, we are responsible people and would have kept our equipment covered and free from dust so it would work properly lest we need it in the future...

Take care

Do you want to take Inaba's word for it?

Many do not. Nor should they, given the delays and the excuses for the delays. He is the one making the statement where is the EVIDENCE to support that claim. He makes a lot of claims then walks away and never responds to them again. Anyhow if you believe anything he says at face value then I suspect you have a larger order pending for Monarch's right? You accepted his company was going to tapeout in August some 2 full  month ago right? Sorry given his history it is up to him to prove claims because at this point no one believes anything he is saying.

At this point nothing would be satisfactory given the scope of the delays. They should be providing REFUNDS not ignoring FTC regulations. People simply need to report them to the FTC.... here is how... https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/how-to-file-a-ftc-complaint-against-bfls-illegal-business-practices-319522

It is a little more than disingenuous to put this back on people who have legitimate complaints about the unethical and some believe criminal behaviour of this company.

It's also a fact for just about any other vendor you inject into this statement.  Except this is for stuff people are taking money for today.

This is why the mining side of Bitcoin needs to settle and die down to a happy, boring, marginal increase every two weeks when the market is saturated with ASICS running at just about what power costs will allow vs. BTC price.  You're comparing child molesters to people who produce and ship mining/money printing machines.  Get a grip.

I've worked in hardware, while I can't vouch for what Josh said I know damn well we have had to sit on hardware before for 2-3 months (months!) waiting for a firmware update from some component vendor who couldn't get their crap together.  So yes, it sits on a shelf, it collects dust, customers bitched at us left and right, but we weren't about to A) ship out non-working hardware or B) throw our vendor under the bus.  You all would be the same people bitching if they went the KNC route and flooded out tons of half-working hardware that didn't perform to spec and requires a part-time job worth of effort to get and keep running.  But waiting to ship hardware they are sure will work?  That's absurd, we want our miners and we want them now!  Even with a 20% HW error rate!

There is no ROI with a BFL single, little single, jalepeno, or anything else as of right now, if it's not in your hands hashing as of 3 months ago.

That's just a basic fact.

So, the fact that the OP is even asking that question, and is finding a lot of dust in his machine, indicates that BFL screwed him out of real money. Period. End of story.

The OP's post, and many threads regarding BFL, is not indicative of customers going nuts, or having unreasonable demands.

It is indicative of a company that treats its customers like crap and does not ship on time. Just because they actually are shipping stuff, does not mean that we should give them any kind of credit. They are simply behaving a little big better than before.

It's kind of like having a child molester in your neighborhood on parole, after the judge said he was free to go because of good behavior. That does not mean that you're gonna let him play with your kids at the park, or that he is guaranteed to be fully reformed.

BFL is fucking pathetic.

Do you want a webcam on the production floor showing every piece of hardware from unboxing from manu to production and shipping? 

Shit, people gotta stop whining about BFL.  Love or hate them, love or hate Josh, they have shipped tons of orders and people are hashing on their hardware.  Can't say the same for many vendors.  Or you could, look at all the AM hardware that was always overpriced, every step of the way.  Or look at the KNC thread that is almost at 1000 posts where everyone is talking about negative ROI, making your miner actually work, varied results on different firmware, or units crapping out from the get-go because they rushed to the gate without doing their due diligence first. 

If you don't support BFL then don't purchase from them, instead you could buy from HashFast (oh wait), bAsic (oops), put in a new order from KNC that will never pay for itself (or go self-hosted and be totally in the dark), overpay for AM stuff over in group buys, join the list of people who want Yifu's head, support Labcoin (oops again), or drop some cash at CoinTerra or some of the other clone/custom units that, again, you will never make your money back on.

BFL wasn't the best with customer service, but unlike many they delivered and continue to do so.  And I speak as someone who has an order from 3/27 that has been sitting on Fulfilled for four days while the blog shipping dates creep closer to my pay date, and I never asked for a refund because I knew the risk going in and therefore didn't bitch out when things got rocky, I just adjusted my expectations.

Evidence?

  We are, and there not accepting.

I don't think so.  Too much hassle for what is worth.  I think they are too busy pushing the current gen products out of the door before they become completely worthless.  Nobody is ordering BFL products (with exception of Monarch), they are worth much less than their sticker price.

I'd worry about order cancellations.  I'd definitely not mine with customer products, I'd want to get rid of them asap before customers cancel them and ask for refunds.

BFL always tells the truth, come on, everybody knows that.

It just takes 2 weeks (TM) to come out.

/sarc off

By the way, where are my fucking Jalepenos that I ordered 6 months ago?

Most of us don't think so. BFL is doing mining with our stuf, ore else they would be lying again.
They called in burn-in , most people call it mining. Maybee the unit was just a refubished rma one.
But whatever.

Mining with BFL stuff isn't make any profit for more then a month now. There just air heaters
So why , o why please tell me would they mine with them there ROI is already made when they got youre money some long time ago....

BFL is lying in one constant stream of messages. So don't shoot the people , we don't ever gone trust scammy lying and money stealing BFL anymore

Hope they die a painfull death.

Buy a chili board

Thanks Josh

We just build equipment and ship it out as fast as it's built.  For your specific question, I have no idea... the most likely scenario is the unit has a different MOSFET and was shelved until we got a new firmware rev that addressed a heat issue with those specific MOSFETs, at which point it was pulled off the shelf, reflashed, retested and sent out. 

It could be any number of other scenarios, but what is definitely isn't is BFL holding equipment back and mining with it.  Every unit we manufacture is shipped within ~24 hours of it being assembled, sometimes a bit longer, depending on when it goes onto the burn-in rack, but no more than 48 hours.

Really didn’t intend to call Josh out and start a back and forth mudslinging event.  The forum is full of those and they only add noise at this point.  I honestly was wondering why the 3 week difference between build date and ship.  Did others have the same gap between build date and ship date?

Josh, as long as you have joined the conversation I have to ask.  Does BFL mine or do you just make mining equipment?  Why would my unit have a 3 week gap between build and ship?

Thank you,