Topic: I think BFL deserves a bit more benefit of the doubt - page 4. (Read 4578 times)

Everyone should be requesting refunds, because the risk that BFL will go out of business or be shut down grows with each day they fail to ship products that were 100% paid for months ago.


The promise of being first to market is PRECISELY what BFL sold...honest abe. The fact that they've failed so spectacularly while lying about nearly everything at every turn while Avalon and ASICMiner have succeeded in designing, building, and delivering ASIC mining hashes in less time should be a wake up call for BFL investors, but you need smelling salts to rouse many out of their slumber.

This is what happens when ppl open their mouths in the conditions of:

1.  Low information
2.  Lack of critical thinking

The value of the phrase "keeping people honest" is lost in today's society.  Most people will believe anything and not make the effort to inform themselves.


Fin

I have been dealing with them for about 3 months now. They have always returned every email I have sent them in a timely manner.  I was going to be in the area (this ended up not working out) and asked If I could tour the facility and see the build process.  They told me sure no problem but they expected to be extremely busy trying to get everything lined up so it might be better if I give them two weeks..  They also told me they want to be a long term mining partner and warned me not to buy a mining rig if I was hoping to just make fast profits.  They said realistically it would be about a year ROI to get the money back. 

So far, the company has been professional, honest, had a good attitude about it.

Now for the people who are going to jump in about how they have not delivered in 7 months, I have to say.

I have been doing some homework on what it takes to design an asic, get it produced, and turned into a finalized product.  Hint* not easy. 

Now I can believe that maybe these guys are kinda learning as they go.  And they are using everyone else money to do it.  I grant that.  But the same could be said for almost any new business.  I started a company 8 years ago out of my garage, just poof made it up one day.  And Yes I had the basics down in the beginning but honestly we were not that good at what we were doing for a few years. 

Also, Successful Business veterans quickly learn that its very easy mistake to make which is to not properly set a customers expectations.  I can see that BFL is obviously guilty of this.  It is clearly documented that they have said multiple times when something was going to happen and it didn't due to unforeseen complexities in the process. 

But lets be honest for a moment.  From what I can see, if they are a scammer company they are doing a very bad job about it. 

1) Have a public office where anyone can visit any time they want
2) This is their 2nd round of hardware (fpga's to asics?)
3) They are putting alot of money into R&D into software, and hardware design in support of the community with relatively low returns.  Probably working insane hours to do it. 
4) giving refunds to unhappy customers
5) offering lifetime warranty on all their products.

I say give them a break, If you don't believe in them, don't fucking buy anything from them.  But to openly accuse them of fraud, cheating, lying, and all the other shit I have been reading seems to be unwarranted to me.  I ordered a minirig from them and I want it to work correctly for at least a few years.  I want it to be well built and if that takes a little bit longer to make it awesome, then so be it.
I don't want some piece of shit they just slapped together so I can have the 2 week advantage over everyone else.  I would rather it take a few extra weeks if that means they are going to do it right. 

Another point is, we need companies like BFL who are willing to invest in the infrastructure if bitcoin is to survive long term.  Yea they have some faults, hopefully they will learn their lesson and start doing what every good business man does.  Under promise and over deliver.  Right now they have been over promising for a while and I think that is why so much negativity is going their way at the moment. 

I know I'm probably in the minority given the tone on these forums but I just wanted to throw out my two btc.