The only reason I even put money down on BFL was because for nearly a year they were the only bitcoin ASIC manufacturer with anything public you could put money down on.
BFL's ASIC was announced summer 2012. Avalon's ASIC September 2012.
Am i wrong?
But as far as the put money down thing, Avalon didn't take 1st batch orders until Jan 2013. Which filled up damn quick as did batch 2 in Feb (?) and then the full crazy happened by the third.
If I recall correctly, Avalon started Batch 1 in September 2012.
They hoped to ship first on Feb/March, 2013.
Then they were optimistic and changed to Jan, 2013.
Then they shipped mostly on their original schedule of Jan through March, 2013.
BFL took in orders sometime in June/August 2012.
BFL hoped to deliver sometime in October 2012.
BFL actually delivered in bulk sometime in July, 2013 through Now, 2014.
But as far as the put money down thing, Avalon didn't take 1st batch orders until Jan 2013. Which filled up damn quick as did batch 2 in Feb (?) and then the full crazy happened by the third.
I think you are mixing up your dates: Avalon Batch 1 orders had to be paid either in USD for > 30 unit orders or in BTC in September 2012, when there was not even a chip designed. The actual BTC payment I can see here for my Batch 1 units is 20120924
Further batches were only payable in BTC
Batch 2 Wave 1: 20130204
Batch 2 Wave 2: 20130218/19
There are 2 people who did twist Yifu's arm and paid with a wire transfer in January 2013 (he forgot to cancel their standing order) but they only got their machines delivered in May or later, completely screwing them over. A nice bit of Soup Nazi there.
That is somewhat false, people were able to pay with USD without having to order 30+ units. Some paid with wiretransfers.
Also there was no MPP boards with this shipment. And I have not to pay any taxes, the BJ comes with Fedex
Today I received my units in Brussels shipped out on the 28th of Jan 2014 from Canada. A whole bunch of loose screws, some were missing.
Furthermore, there are extra screws like:
I don't know what the washers are for but the black long screw is used for mounting the water cooling fans to the top. In this unit all 8 screws are present so this is a mistake that happened during the assembly. All in all I'm not impressed by the quality of what Ciaratech delivered...
As for taxes,
the commercial invoice from Ciaratech states each unit costs $608.8 so FedEx in Europe will send you a VAT invoice for that after customs has done their job. It does list
"Engineering Samples" but that won't stop customs from googling and finding out the declared value does not match what you paid.
Woops, that seems to be a case of fraud.They had better call customers and customs quick to resolve the issue.