I am unfamiliar with the "grey market", could you elaborate?
Unauthorized vendors/brokers selling components of unknown origin (not directly obtained from the maker and no paper trail). Think e-bay. The parts might be good and are cheaper because they are legit factory over runs (rare) or someones surplus inventory. But - they might not be and unless one checks every single piece used against spec there is NO assurance that it will be right.
Counterfeit electronic components is a very serious problem in all industries. If one is lucky they are just out-of-spec factory-rejects that failed testing and were improperly disposed of so someone dumpster dived for them to resell. There have even been cases of chips with no actual die in them! Most common is components which are an older version that have been relabeled to be a new one.
Now to be fair and although they ruined the business we need to not make them look like complete outlaws.They did order from Digi and mouser, but some of the hard to place parts were ordered from "a guy I knew that had them in stock". These were for the harder to find NXP parts and LTC's. But yes,when asked for invoices/proof of purchase we were met with weeks of delays followed by a stack of papers comparable to something you'd find in one of the Junior lawyers offices in our law firm. And "sure you can make copies, but we're closing now,maybe some time next".. bs bs..
I think you are just making this up about manufacturer problems and defective parts.
The reason I say this is that based on what you shipped and how you shipped it, you seem to want to cut corners at every opportunity.
So given the opportunity to acquire sub-standard parts, you likely would have taken it.
In summary, all you do is pretend to care about quality, but you never deliver on it.
At the end of the day, they are the business that has taken everyone's money, and
AMT has the final responsibility in this matter. So they SUPPOSEDLY hired some dodgy manufacturing outfit to produce the miners, and it didn't work out. They want to pass the blame onto someone else to cover their ass, big surprise.
Since the beginning, they sold themselves as the MANUFACTURERS of the miners themselves, now we are to believe it was all outsourced to some incompetent company that has screwed up by buying a bunch of parts off of "the grey market"? Get real. What about QA/QC? WAS ANY TESTING EVER DONE BY AMT?!
What about all those posts about how they have people night and day working to put these miners together? Are we sure the ball wasn't dropped there? These miners look like they were constructed by a 3 year old (smeared thermal paste everywhere, missing screws, missing parts, misaligned parts etc). Please, tell me who's to blame for the bullshit packing job and shipment (aka: destruction) of these miners? Is it Fedex's or UPS's fault? Who are you going to blame for dropping a $6,000 miner into a hollow box with a handful of packing material?
Just like the shipping, every FACET in regards to the build, assembly, QA/QC of these miners - was done HALF ASS. It's as simple as that. AMT's business model = wild cash grab followed by complete laziness. It's like once Joshua had the cash, he stopped giving a shit about delivering on his promises.
Besides, WHAT DOES ANY OF THIS REALLY EVEN HAVE TO DO WITH NOT GIVING CUSTOMERS REFUNDS? No excuse for this, though AMT would like everyone to believe the company was started with ZERO assets, except a drill gun and a cheap acer laptop. Now the customers have to reverse engineer AMT's incompetence for them. Let me remind you that there isn't a single person with a fully working miner, and it's nearly June 2014.
Anyone who believes these childish excuses, needs a whack upside the head. More stall tactics, and more blaming others instead of owning up and taking responsibility. Joshua, you're a fat, stupid, kid that needs his ass kicked. You've fucked a lot of people out of money, and now want to blame others for your own misrepresentations. Hopefully the justice system will deal with this retard accordingly.