Topic: Is Butterfly Labs breaking the law? - page 2. (Read 11513 times)

You are welcome to an opinion.  Mine is that BFL has been scamming people for a year and today has only delivered 1% of the hardware they promised to deliver nine months ago in November of 2012.  

My fear is that people who do not know any better, and perhaps even see BFL ads in these forums, purchase their hardware assuming it to be legitimate (they have a very slick website) later finding out that they have been scammed by con men (read: Sonny).  It is clear that people responding to my poll agree in overwhelming numbers.  

Is Butterfly Labs breaking the law?

Yes, American Federal Law   - 33 (50.8%)
Yes, Kansas State Law   - 2 (3.1%)
No   - 10 (15.4%)
I don't know   - 14 (21.5%)
Nobody Knows   - 4 (6.2%)
Yes, European Law   - 2 (3.1%)

Total Voters: 65



My advice to anyone who has been scammed by them to contact one or more government agencies immediately.  If they are not scammers they will be fine when the FTC shows up at the door.  So given the two possibilities:

1) they are a scam and the regulators have not yet discovered the scam.
2) they are not a scam.

If I were a customer of theirs and they refused a refund as they apparently have, I would call anybody who would listen.  

Stealing ~$1000 from 99% of 30,000 people is a serious crime.  


Any victims of the BFL scam should read the top two posts on this page: 
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=250985.60


 

IMHO, if BFL tells you that a condition of your order is that all sales are final and no refunds will be given, and you agree to those terms and purchase anyway, then you shouldn't cry to the FTC and ask mommy to make the bad man give you your money back.

Thanks for the info. noted.

1 25Ghz from early april 2013, 2x 5ghz from late april 2013. If they could give me a shipping date, I would probably have kept my order.

What's your approximate order date?

Thanks

I asked for a refund on June 27th and just received email confirmation from BFL that they were processing the refund today. I haven't seen it hit PayPal, but I presume that will happen over the course of the next few days. Once that happens, I'll cancel my CC chargebacks.

While I've seen others get less than stellar customer service, other than a bit of a delay in the response, I personally haven't had any problems.

I asked for and received a refund on one device June 26, 2013.

Yes, American Federal Law    29 (51.8%)
Yes, Kansas State Law    2 (3.6%)
No    8 (14.3%)
I don't know    12 (21.4%)
Nobody Knows    3 (5.4%)
Yes, European Law    2 (3.6%)


(European law was added after the poll began)

BFL refusing to refund, date July 4, 2013 and indicating people may be contacting the FTC

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.2657249




IMHO being open on July 4th is un-American

Not 100% required but chances are pretty high IMO they are shipping to a municipality that has laws, regulations or codes.  It's on everything that plugs into the wall for a reason.

Do I need to have the UL Mark on my product in the United States? Is there a law stating that my product should have a UL Mark? Does our product require UL testing?


Manufacturers submit products to UL for testing and safety certification on a voluntary basis. There are no laws specifying that a UL Mark must be used. However, in the United States there are many municipalities that have laws, codes or regulations which require a product to be tested by a nationally recognized testing laboratory before it can be sold in their area. UL is the largest and oldest nationally recognized testing laboratory in the United States. UL does not, however, maintain a list of the jurisdictions having such regulations.


http://www.ul.com/global/eng/pages/corporate/contactus/faq/general/background/

It also appears as though BFL has shipped Jalapenos with no UL cert on the device OR the power brick.  Can this company do anything legitimately?

Self-certification

Depending on the level of risk of the product, the CE marking is affixed to a product by the manufacturer or authorized representative who decides whether the product meets all the CE marking requirements. If a product has minimal risk, it can be self-certified where manufacturers a Declaration of Conformity and affixes the CE marking to their own product. Manufacturer then must do several things:
1. Decide whether the product needs to have a CE marking and if the product applies to more than one directive it needs to comply with all of them.
2. Choose the conformity assessment procedure from the modules called out by the directive for the product. There are several modules available for the Conformity Assessment Procedures as listed below:
Module A – Internal production control.
Module B – EC type-examination.
Module C – Conformity to type.
Module D – Production quality assurance.
Module E – Product quality assurance.
Module F – Product verification.
Module G – Unit verification.
Module H – Full quality assurance.
These will often ask questions about the product to classify the level of risk and then refer to the "Conformity Assessment Procedures" chart. This shows all the acceptable options available to a manufacturer to certify the product and affix the CE marking.

[continued ...]


Legal implications

There are mechanisms in place to ensure that the CE marking is put on products correctly. Controlling products bearing CE marking is the responsibility of public authorities in Member States, in cooperation with the European Commission. Citizens may contact national market surveillance authorities if the misuse of the CE marking is suspected or if a product's safety is questioned.
The procedures, measures and sanctions applying to counterfeiting of the CE marking vary according to the respective Member State's national administrative and penal law. Depending on the seriousness of the crime, economic operators may be liable to a fine and in some circumstances, imprisonment. However, if the product is not regarded as an imminent safety risk, the manufacturer may be given an opportunity to ensure that the product is in conformity to the applicable legislation before it is obliged to take the product off the market

Source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CE_marking

Excellent, thank you.  Please do report your findings here.

To clarify the EU position, I send an email to the Swiss Customs.

Added European Law as an option to the poll.  Should that read "European Union" law?  Excuse my ignorance.



"BFL ASIC seized by EU , european & german Customs"
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/bfl-asic-seized-by-eu-european-german-customs-248406

Looks like a straightforward violation of the FTC's Mail Order Rule. They can take the position that orders are "final" only if they ship the item ordered within 30 days. Once they fail to deliver, they have to give refunds. They do not have the option of keeping the money and not delivering product.

In the early days of the dot-com era, many small companies got into trouble for this. Their "online stores" would take every order that came in, without checking inventory first. The FTC clamped down on that. Now, almost everybody who sells online has the order system connected to the inventory system, so the order is rejected if it can't be filled. That fixed the problem.

OOOPS. I seem to have goxed it all up.   Fixed.

Butterfly Labs, El Monte Street, Leawood, KS  

Probably one of the choices should be Kansas laws.

As seen above, BFL (Butterfly Labs Inc.), owned my Sonny Vleisides, was giving refunds as late as June 19, 2013.


So, if a customer read the above, and up to two weeks ago read that people were getting refunds, he felt safe to order. Due to whatever circumstances, said customer asked for a refund but was denied.

What the fuck has changed, BFL?

I thought fraud was part of the common law. They're certainly guilty of that.