As much as I hesitate to agree with Inaba, he does have a point...
When I was first going through the list, and saw that you were using BFL as one of your rating points, any thought about objectivity about this list went out the window.
Keeping the list is an important thing for people to be able to compare how a company has performed, but only if it is objective.
It appears that the maintainer/administrator of the list has a personal axe to grind and is using the list to do it with, and sorry, but that gives your list as a whole, a lower ethics rating than you probably want it to have.
There is no question that BFL has earned itself a lot of bad karma with the community in the past, but the way the list digs specifically at BFL, it makes it appear that no matter what BFL does to make things right and improve their image, they will never be able to raise their reputation as far as the list is concerned.
Guys... your list suffers by doing this. Be objective.
=squeak=
When I was first going through the list, and saw that you were using BFL as one of your rating points, any thought about objectivity about this list went out the window.
Keeping the list is an important thing for people to be able to compare how a company has performed, but only if it is objective.
It appears that the maintainer/administrator of the list has a personal axe to grind and is using the list to do it with, and sorry, but that gives your list as a whole, a lower ethics rating than you probably want it to have.
There is no question that BFL has earned itself a lot of bad karma with the community in the past, but the way the list digs specifically at BFL, it makes it appear that no matter what BFL does to make things right and improve their image, they will never be able to raise their reputation as far as the list is concerned.
Guys... your list suffers by doing this. Be objective.
=squeak=
If anything it points to the limitations of the system in that it gives BFL a higher rating that it deserves given the millions they have stolen from people. Let us not forget that fact.
There is nothing in what BFL stands for as a company that would warrant a positive number on any scale or system. They are an abject failure as a company and to agree with Inaba with regards to giving BFL a "fair" shake? Pardon me but where was that fair shake for their customers the past 2 years? Seriously... when do customers get the benefit of proper and timely refunds, honest specifications and a company that rectifies their customers problems. If that is the scale we use then BFL gets a failing grade on all accounts. This is just funny that anyone would argue that BFL needs to be given the same scale to measure them on. At this point their failures should remove them from any scale and a big red warning label applied DO NOT BUY FROM BFL EVER is all that needs to be said. Right? I think everyone except Inaba will agree with that assessment.
Though BFL is by far not the only scam company out there, and BFL actually delivers sometimes (although often very late).
BA has not delivered for almost a year now and they don't communicate nor refund either.
Now in what way is BFL worse than BA? You either ship in time or you don't, you either honor refunds or you don't, etc.
Personal vendettas have nothing to do with it.
I have been a victim of both BFL and BA but I don't consider BFL to be worse than BA, in fact in my opinion, if anything, BA is worse.
The whole posts about them discussing about tape out internally, while they announced tape out months earlier, and they were well aware they would not meet deadlines, but they decided it was better to let customers believe they would meet the deadlines, that indeed a horrible hing to do and no company should EVER lie to their customers. Lying to your customers is a dead sentence to your company and your ethics as a person. But do you really believe BFL is the only one doing this? It's quite clear other companies do this as well. If they announce they'll ship in February, but continue to make up excuses, despite being "ahead of schedule", for months in a row, and every time it is "shipped next week", and don't even ship 9 month later, and at some point even claiming that they in fact did ship (they did send a prototype version to a handful of people just to be able to say that they shipped), some of these prototypes even caught fire and now they are using that as an excuse to not ship. From the facts it's evidence that they lie to the customers, yet they get a higher ethic rating than BFL while they do the same horrible things.
Lie about shipping date? Check
Lie about quality? Check (they claim their quality is military grade and that's why they can not keep their promise of matching their price with competitors, which proved to be a lie)
Lie about refunds. Check
Lie about have tape out? Not confirmed by chat logs, but by evidence we can assume they did indeed lie about this
Lie about being on schedule. Check
Lie about having shipped? Check (well technically they did ship, but I don't count shipping a failed prototype to a handful of seemingly randomly selected persons to be actual shipping)
What else can they lie about? They lied about pretty much everything.
Keep it up !
