Topic: My Beef with BFL (Constructive Criticism Only) - page 4. (Read 21623 times)

I don't know about a tag, but I do think that BFL ought to stop taking new orders until they actually begin shipping.

bASIC closed their orders after they had taken on "enough".  Imagine how much bigger that mess would be if they had left them open.

Now how does that make any sense? It's clear your definition of "scammer" is a bit falsely construed.

Based on your definition, I presume Team Avalon must also qualify as a scammer since they're taking people's money now for Batch #3, which won't be out for many months? They're surely a team of scammers since they promised to ship, what was it, 12 units a day at the end of January? Yet April is upon us and only now are they finishing up the delivery of the first Batch...


How do we know their promises aren't true? (Before brashly responding, think about it from a rationalized point of view for a moment)


Ideally I (and many others) wish this was the case. Down payment now, full payment when a product is available.

If the statement "I'm planning to do {whatever} and expect to do it {whenever}"  is sufficient to avoid a spammer tag, then such a tag is fairly pointless.  Particularly if the {whatever} and {whenever} can be re-set as needed.

BFL seems to have been getting a pass via this mechanism for quite a long time now.  Just sayin'

So you would call even Nasser a scammer?

I think the poster has a point.   A company that is so far behind in promises and make further promises repeatedly and are still taking people's money with ship dates promised out two months should be considered a scammer.   Why that offends your sense of fairness eludes me.   Even if they are working hard to produce the units paid for 9 months ago, their current actions of "order now" and giving new promises which we know not to be true, would qualify them to be labeled as a scammer.

His criticism is constructive.   when you have screwed up, you should stop collecting people's money until you can actually physically deliver what you overpromised many times before.

That is not what I would call constructive.  Deleting your post. 

I have.   search my posts.   have posted links to USA government websites that support both "claims"

Yeah, he was the first reply in my thread and long before I was just asking for info about who had or hadn't. It's been mentioned in this thread, wondering why BFL has such a golden ticket to do whatever they want to on bitcointalk. Because they are paying lots in advertising fees?

I remember when ~bitcoinnv mentioned BFL to some govt agency as an out-of-band sidenote to his ~pirateat40 scam investigation.  Now that brought out the pitchforks.  ~inaba himself went completely ape, but there was widespread scorn from all corners including, iirc, several persons who are linked to bitcointalk.org.

To bad my tax dollars didn't go to work against BFL back at that time (around half a year ago I believe) since it would have saved a lot of noobs a lot of tears and saved Bitcoin itself yet another black eye.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/re-butterfly-labs-ceo-25-million-usd-mail-fraud-a-concise-summary-of-evidence-110805

There is also extensive discussion of this at www.lmgtfy.com.

Please provide proove. I'm sure everyone here would appreciate it.

When I asked who has contacted the government, the pitch forks came out after me.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/has-anyone-actually-filed-an-ftc-complaint-153084

It is a scam they are offering large amounts of money for something that costs little to nothing.

That is your perception.   I would argue they have staged EVERYTHING.   No company in the world would CONTINUE to collect "prepayments" for machines they have failed to deliver on and do not have the capacity to even know WHY they cannot make a PROTOTYPE work.    Ask yourself the question I asked.   Could you go to ANY VC in nyc or the valley with a convicted felon and a software tweaker who has a judgement against him for stealing sat TV and ask them for 20MM to build a hardware device that neither person even understands?    Josh did not even understand when someone told him what was wrong with his photos.   Instead he did what every con man has done through history, attack the person that is pulling back the curtain.
I would suggest you people that have pre-orders with BFL contact the government NOW.   If you wait, your money will be zero.   (and that zero can be given in either bitcoins or the fiat you paid in).

at least they haven't staged anything yet.  It'd be easy for them to film a small box of fans with lights on, and stash an underclocked Avalon running at 60 gh/s and claim to have a working SC single.

Twice actually.  First they supposedly had chips in October, but they were fail because they had a "diffraction issue".  Apparently we're to believe that they were completely unaware of the need to apply OPC to the masksets.

Then they supposedly had another round of chips in December.  The ones with the "clock buffer issues", still in QFN packaging.
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But no one ever saw the first chips. They had clock buffer issues, heat dissipation problems. But again, no one ever saw them. They never proved they could hash anything with the imaginary chips.

Now, they have new chips. Pictures of them even. Shiny. Someone says that they are stable to a specific Mhz. However, in their test rig, they get nothing.

Here is my conclusion on that, is that the chips are bad. I get multi layered boards made from a local shop in 24 hours. In their previous weeks now of silence since they have had chips in their hands, if they only made one board per day and tested that, they could have tested more than a dozen boards. But with how much money is in this, they should be testing several revisions a day.

They obviously have no idea what they are doing, and they have nothing to show for it. It would take all of 5 minutes for someone from BFL to give an update on any of the actual progress. But it's bad news, so they don't. It's better to take some heat for the silence than it is to freak everyone out that their chips simply do not work.

EDIT: Need to add some more.

If BFL had a single working test machine, they would have it hooked up somewhere with videos and pictures and everyone on the planet would know. They would hire more staff to accept all of the preorders that would start flowing in at raised prices.

They have nothing.

Twice actually.  First they supposedly had chips in October, but they were fail because they had a "diffraction issue".  Apparently we're to believe that they were completely unaware of the need to apply OPC to the masksets.

Then they supposedly had another round of chips in December.  The ones with the "clock buffer issues", still in QFN packaging.

It's neither pseudoliberterian, nor bullshit. 

A monopoly is not the opposite of a free market.  A monopoly is one possible outcome of a free market. A free market does not guarantee that you can buy a similar product elsewhere.  A free market guarantees that, if you don't like the product on offer, and you have the necessary capital, then you can start making the product that you want to buy, and hope that others agree with you.

In a market with high barriers to entry, a monopoly can quite easily occur naturally, through no nefarious means or back-door dealings.  And in a free market, if the monopolist abuses their position enough, then the capital necessary to challenge the monopoly will eventually come together to do so.

Now if Avalon's "abuse" isn't enough to encourage others to get their shit together, I don't know what is (see my thread here https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/why-avalons-greed-is-good-156157).  And believe me, I hope it is.

As you say, it was not Avalon that aspired to monopoly, it was all their competitors that managed to completely drop the ball.  But the ability to drop the ball and disappear in a cloud of angry creditors is as much a part of the free market as is healthy competition.  We just had a perfect storm of one competent company and several incompetents, added with a little of BFL's FUD to possibly scare away other potential competitors. 

Nobody said the free market was perfect, and for sure nobody said it was perfect every minute of every day.  But you can hardly argue that it produces the best overall outcomes over time.  We just happen to be in one of the suboptimal regions right now (hopefully temporarily), and I reject outright your assertion that what has come before this day is not the result of the (imperfect) free market at work.

They refunded me on Monday without any issues... but I was only in line for two weeks.

I paid in BTC (~16 BTC) and got back the equivalent purchase price in USD (~680), and felt that was fair.  With the appreciation of BTC, I wasn't expecting them to give back BTC.  It took 1 day for them to paypal me, and I chalked it up as a cheap learning experience...

On the other hand, selling 1/2 my BTC stake from 2010 in the mid forties was not a cheap mistake... so the BFL seems like small potatoes to me at the time.

Personally I would get out while you can, but if I had faith in them I wouldn't be awaiting an avalon.

Actually Yes older Order ... Newer are without refund see New Terms