How did I come to GAW:
They stated that they will give discount for KNC's Titan buyers, they even replied me answering that this is true.
Knowing that KNC case will take time, this was probably from beginn on a marketing trick. I decided to find out what GAW is and how they work.
My first experience:
First I wanted to test how their system works. I bought from every hashlet type min. ammount. After first week the result was almost the half of that what I do solo. So it was not that profitable like mining with your hardware, especially because the maintenance and power costs are at least 8 times higher than I pay. Anyway, they were profitable enough to invest and I bought more hashlets from GAW (at this time their market on ZenCloud was not available). After 2 months I decided to invest another € 1000 in GAW. But in that time their market on ZenCloud opened.Like on every exchange, I waited 3-4 days after the launch to get dumped prices. During all this time we have build up a small company, my part was to find partners and buy/rent hashing power. There was no company that delivered their product in time that would satisfy me. Actually KNC was most promising but they turned out to be criminal company which stole millions of dollars from their customers to invest into their cloud mining. Good that i did not trust any of these companies and did not order more than 1 piece. Back to GAW.
Game started:
I dropped in € 1000 and bought for that Zens and Primes
As GAW was very promising, some of my investors wanted to try GAW with more investment. I did not approve this because 2 months of testing is not enough and this company is very young. At the same time it seemed to me that the whole GAW team is very young, too young for dealing with big money.
At this time I opened second account, as this one was my test account (which GAW knows since first communication with me). That means that this account was only for demonstration to potential customers. Some time later, one of my partners wanted to see how everything works. I started showing him and transfered by mistake all BTC (€ 4000) to my test account. After BTC has arrived, my partner told me "Lets see how their support is working, ask them to move hashlets to to new account. This should be possible, especially if we invest 4x more in worth". So I asked their support to do this, more than 1 time, they always denied it. But they were more than once suggesting to do this over their market. I did not want to do this as their Market was buggy:
1. You could not see amount of hashrate that you sell
2. you could not see price/mh
3. You do not see what you sell on any windows that asking you too agree.
So actually you agree to sell uknown amount of Mh for price of $ 19/Mh for $ 19. So how many did you really agree to sell? This is uncompleted code which should never be applied in productive system as it's untested. This shows actually the real age of GAW team. Programers can make mistakes, but they are not responsible for a decision if the system is ready to be productive or not. I have screenshots and every proof of what happened.
I decided to try this buggy system out, GAW team told me to do this and if something goes wrong I thought GAW support will solve it. On other side I can see how the process is and if selling works at all. I splitted my Zen hashlets so I had 1Mh for selling. Selling process was very buggy.
Knowing this bugs I realized how easy someone can sell X Mh for price of 1. I could not believe, but that happened to some users. What did GAW do? Nothing . Probably their bots bought these amounts and they made profit of it.
After selling 5 of my zens it happened to me, I sold 15 Zens for the price of 1. I realized it in the same moment as I clicked to agree sale of unknown amount and probably less than 1 second later cancelation was not possible, for sure bot. As GAW support did not want to refund anything or give any information about the owner, I assume their bot has bought it.
As their support was very slow (no answer after more than 1 hour), I oppened a thread at hashtalk. It was closed and I was banned without any notification why ban was activated and who did it (my userprofile there).
Support took almost 1 month to reply that I was banned by users . This really made me laugh and ask myself who am I really doing business with, bunch of kids maybe??? Until now I do not understand:
1. Hashtalk community is hyper active blindfolded supporter of GAW, which is the ground for their business.
2. They want to drive their forum by active users and community should help to decide which threads are bad, good, ... who to ban by lowering users reputation....
3. There is no official support for hashtalk.
Before you ask why, here is one of many reasons: They took 1 month to tell me that my user account was banned by users of hashtalk. First they claimed that their is for sure a reason for my ban. They unlocked my account again. Same day my account was locked again. Until now GAW support did not reply anything regarding second ban. But here is a part of their last answer (by Amanda):
Due to the nature of your inquiry, the Customer Service Center can no longer assist you.
...
What can I say, this is official statement that they deny to give me support. That's a second breach. I could go to the court and I would win this case 100%. As the behavier for me was not acceptable, I told them even that they should refund me for my loss or I will go to the court. So thats a second part of Amanda's answer to me:
Please send notice of your claim by certified mail to GAW Miners, LLC, 34 East Dudley Town, Rd., Bloomfield, CT 06002, USA, Attention: Legal Department.
The notice must include: your first and last name, pertinent account information, a description of your claim and contact information so that GAW can evaluate the claim and attempt to resolve it informally with you. GAW will have 30 days from the date of our receipt of the notice to informally resolve the claim.
Please understand that while we truly feel bad about the situation we are unable to reverse sales due to customers selling at the wrong price. This matter is resolved from a customer service standpoint so this ticket will be closed. We will not tolerate being insulted because of a mistake made on your part and any further contact with support related to this matter will result in your support portal account being suspended.
...
That means that GAW told me public that we can not find a solution and I should go to the court to get my fund back. But actually they told me more than that, that's to ban my account (probably without refund) if I try to contact them again regarding a solution for this problem. Very sad, from this point GAW turned to me to scam companies, even if many made profits, they do not act legally in some cases and there shouldn't be any! That's the biggest problem for me. I could not advice anyone to make deal with them, even if the possibility is big, I can't trust go.
Making 1+1 from my point of view:
1. I came because they promissed me discount for the same amount which was spent on KNC's miner. However, I did not get any discount, it happened otherwise, GAW became 50% of my account , good business for me, isn't it .
2. I lost the half of accounts value because their system was not in productive state and all agreements for buy/sell do not have any legal power, as their is no information about the deal. Bad on this is that I was by far not the first and by far not the last who lost money this way and we should keep in mind that there were users that lost 100s of Primes (1 prime was ~ $ 50). GAW Support adviced me to use their system, later they told me it's my fault and they do not have anything to do with that. Asking in forum why this is possible and why GAW does not make anything against this brought me probably a ban. GAW can still beat it because it's GAWsome , worst is that they shut your mouth by denying support, possibility to ban your account and letting some kiddies block your account on their forum which is in my eyes a part of a bought product. This point remembers me somehow on KNC's way in giving support.
3. I still do not know why my account on their forum is banned
4. GAW support does not give me any support more, they closed all my tickets but they are all unresolved. I have a feeling that they will ban my account (like Amanda promissed) if I ask for any support regarding any question. At this point I ask myself what for is it called customer support?
5. The only possibility I have is to write them letters. Support will ban me if contact them, on Hashtalk I am already banned. Yeah, not to forget Twitter (which actually is not a part of a product, so I see no reason for opening account on Twitter to ask for support on Zen). I will not open Twitter account to contact Josh directly, I assume/hope he knows what's going on in his company and I am sure that he knows about my case and about decisions of his employees like Amanda.
There are still so many other points which I would like to write, but I do not have time, so I will go over to the most interesting question, profits .
Profits:
Even with my lost 15 Zens, I invested over € 5000 in Hashlets. I can not imagine that there is someone outside who did not ROI (except these who lost their investment through buggy market on ZenCloud), who entered 3-4 weeks before XPY launch and converted their Hashlets into stakers, they have made for sure at least 2-3xROI. ROI for is actually a moment where you really pay you out. Even these who dumped their coins for $ 4- $5 made ROI in less than a month, that's really amazing.
Most important point, profit is the only advantage GAW has over all other cloud mining services. Actually, they are the only one who made such profit, GAW investors made 2-3 ROI in less than a month, I can't remember anything that is comparable to this, especially at the time where BTC goes down and most Altcoins are unprofitable to mine.
How did I pay me out:
I got lucky and sold XPY in worth of my investment for ~ $ 14 and during 2 up and downs I got back my XPY and ROI. I also bought additional stakers to place my XPY. Even with this investment, I still ROI.
Final review:
GAW investment was a hard but very profitable for me. I still can't advice it to anyone for bigger investment as there are so many things that go wrong. If you invest in GAW you can expect profits, but my experience proved me that you can loose them all in a second as long as all other make 2-3 ROI and probably you will get banned asking for support until you get it.
Their support is that slow, that it's useless for the speed of how things in cryptoworld develop. Like their promissed discount for KNC customers, even if they give it now to me, that's already another type of investment into another product in completly another market situation. I adviced them in forum and in tickets that they should hire more people for support, as this can have serious negative effect on a company.
GAW Support:
It's useless as long as they deny to make customer support, for me it looks more like internal management than support.
GAW/Paybase community:
In my eyes it's a mickey mouse community, like children that scream when they see cartoons on TV. If Hashtalk can't take constructive critics, then this will be used against then, it's physics. I just can't say anything positive about a community which bans you if you make constructive critics or report bugs. So that's very important point, especially security point. This is world for cryptographers in first line and making donkey of them is not the best way to get worldwide community support, maybe I am wrong, but that's my opinion. You can reflect this on dumps on markets.
Some positive words about their support:
I do not want to forget also some positive about GAW support, I am not joking , they have some competent people which I do not want to make bad when I write about a horrible support.
First of all I would thank Eric from GAW support, he replied my tickets and he contacted their manager couple of times regarding my issue. I can't say I did not get support from Eric, he gave good support and here is for example one of his answers where I feel like a customer not like Amandas answer where customers feel like a trash:
I sincerely apologize, but I have spoken to my superiors and they have instructed me that we can not merge the accounts together.
i have tried to see if an exception could be maid and I was told that we can not merge accounts at this time. if you have any other questions please feel free to create a new support ticket. Once again I apologize for the inconvenience.
Thank you for your business!
Best Regards
Eric R.
Today I read that GAW_CEO is claiming that many are dumping their coins and he warned them. I know Josh and Hashtalk community do not post or come to bitcointalk, but Josh if you read this, answer me. I asked you some questions in my tickets, you did not reply any of them. You can write me a PM or to my email registered on ZenCloud if you want to discuss my issues with GAW.
Hope my report will help communtiy to make right decision and on other side GAW can maybe see that there are some very important points which have to redesigned so everybody can be happy.
I wish you all best in 2015.