Topic: Why not we all request refunds on a mass level? Power in the people! - page 2. (Read 5376 times)

Okay well I'm just going to state my opinion, although I think this thread should be moved as it has little to do with mining hardware and reads as a riot act against BFL.  The process of producing ASIC hardware is a massive endeavor, esp. when you are dealing with a relatively new concept (that concept being Bitcoin).  Yes, it does come down to hashing SHA-2 (SHA-256) values in most cases, which has been around for over a decade, but that does not make designing custom chips any easier.  I bought a Jalapeño on February 9th of this year.  I could have paid with bitcoins but instead used my credit card so I knew I was paying with fiat money.  For me Bitcoin is a hobby, a hobby I am passionate about but a hobby nonetheless.  I could have bought a Single or multiple Jalapeños and still had money to pay the bills, however I have a personal rule regarding Bitcoin, which basically states that I will not spend any money that I'm not willing to lose.

I can understand that many others, especially hardcore miners, don't share the same view that I have.  However I don't understand the anger towards BFL.  Yes, they have missed deadlines for various reasons, but as far as I can tell they have kept the public well informed along the way and perhaps most importantly, have kept at it (even if it meant a temporary loss for them).  Yes, if you kept your bitcoins they would be worth more today than when you spent them, but things could have been different and those same coins could be worth little or nothing.  I guess I'm just not understanding how some people feel that BFL is profiting while screwing over everyone else in the process.  If you think something is fishy then yes, I highly recommend you attempt to receive a refund (which seems to work just fine).

I have been a part of many electronic projects big (well my largest project had a budget of $250,000 - which is big for me) and small, and sometimes it really felt like anything that could go wrong was going wrong.  I've always keep anyone involved updated of the situation and have struggled to meet deadlines as soon as humanly possible; which appears to be exactly what BFL is doing now.  I can tell you now that a mass refund campaign is not going to be successful, especially at this stage, but if you feel the need to educate others about an injustice you see as happening, just try and be factual and expect a lot of opposition.

I'm going to order an Avalon just because I'm thinking those will be out before my BFL order. I think my friends will do the same, but they will also request refunds from BFL. I think there is a trade law that if a company cannot produce something in 90 days they HAVE to by law refund money. Not even ask the customer, they are supposed to just do it with no questions or comments.

I hope the Avalon's go up for sale soon. As least they have working units in the wild, mining away.

This is what they do.

I will admit I do not have ALL the facts. I can't keep track of them all and I can guarantee the truthful/real facts we will never really know. I thought this power of the people thing would at least get your attention and make BFL really think about what they've done already. Seriously, if there isn't a working prototype yet I can almost bet no one will get a BFL ASIC unit until the winter holiday time. The process of making something new never done before rarely ever works the first time around. If you put all your eggs in the chips you guys just made then maybe that's just another monster bad decision by BFL again. I myself don't have the right to "start" anything, but my friends are all too optimistic and happy all the time and let people walk all over them and take advantage of how nice they are. Who is actually leading BFL? Who's making these decisions? My friends jumped on the opportunity instantly because of the financial reward to get a first ASIC's. But when other companies that weren't even considered because they weren't even a company (the one ran by the kid) who are actually shipping ASIC units across the world now really makes BFL look pretty bad. And my friends are scratching their heads like what just happened here? Nothing was ever guaranteed to them, but they obviously backed the wrong horse in this race for sure. As a lot of people are still scratching their heads. I asked a question about how long people are really willing to wait? No one answered. To me this means people are willing to wait indefinitely on just the hope they will actually receive something here. If you really aren't attached to your money that closely, then by all means I'll be making my own ASIC miner and will have it on sale in 2016. I'll create a rude pre-order page you can order from and I'll go on vacation with your money and maybe I'll get around to making some hardware. This is not a personal issue here, it's all business.

In my opinion, no working prototype in the electronics industry = at least 6 more months until a finished product rolls off the line. If you don't have a working prototype then you have nothing at all.

I paid 93.5621BTC on 6/28 for the 8pack upgrade  

$6.551798217440609/btc on 6/28= $613
$46.438/btc on 3/13= $4344.84

 

Presumably BitPay also had to sell off most of that BTC to pay USD to BFL.

BFL does not received BTC directly, and instead they use BitPay to transfer those BTC to USD immediately at the time of purchase. You pay BitPay the BTC, and BitPay gives BFL the USD in their bank account.

If anything, BitPay is the one laughing all the way to the bank, not BFL.

i was thinking the same thing...stopped reading after first few sentences...but to the OP...BFL doesn't care if you manage to get 1000 ppl to get a refund...they are probably getting tons of new preorders a day and don't care about ppl that invested in them from the start

Even if every single customer got a refund, BFL would still make out with massive profit due to the increase in the BTC-USD exchange rate.  Back in July 2012 I bought a Jalapeno for 24BTC = $150.  at the current exchange rate of around ~$45, my 24BTC would be worth over $1000. 

You should've just stuck it out with your original orders and kept your place in line, IMO.

BFL_Josh - are these real pictures of you guys assembling bgas?  http://imgur.com/a/CMazz#2

I posted this message in BFL's forums, and I was banned. I think you deserve to read the post, and take your conclusions from this event:

------------------------------------------------
Dear fellows,

working in a high IC brokerage company in California (I may not disclose details), I have access to privileged business information, even some under nda's.
I can tell you that BFL did contacted a few enterprises, but just for budget info. From then, no more contacts were carried on that I know of on this business area.

If this forum is really official, please note some points:
   - Agressive anti-return policy (changing threads' names, complicating procedures, etc..)
   - The development schedulle is quite odd: they did not made a first debugging batch just for testing purposes, as usually companies do before starting full production.
   - Although current state-of-the-art simulators contemplate a lot of phenomena, it is quite strange they can give so accurate specs without hands-on.
   - Please note https://forums.butterflylabs.com/off-topic/1262-extremely-dumb-questions-regarding-butterfly-labs-asics-2.html that some forum users are advocating BFL in a rather suspicious way, what suggests that they are either obsecated with this company, or they are just dummy users, registred by BFL.

You should be ready for some disappointing news: either the chips are not being made were BFL_josh says, or they just wanted to have a clue on plausible numbers, to perform what I could classify as dishonesty.
----------------------------------------------------

To what the last point is concerned (dummy users) please beware that they could have also dummy users (run by BFL) on this forum, which is a common technique used in social group theory.

Best regards.

BFL has a LOT of money.  I would like to be employed by BFL to manage youtube, photos, video, questions etc.
I would make a great promoter, and public relations manager!

BFL:  PM me for my resume!  I code, I edit, and I use spellcheck!
I accept bitcoins, paypal, westernunion, etc!

Avalon:  Same offer!

I am confident people will need someone to field questions during the months to come of people waiting for units to be delivered.

You have a BFL_Josh account, use it. To someone who doesn't read every single post you make, you are hiding the fact that you are a BFL shill.

The only part that was fucked up was the fact that I said 10 blocks instead of six, while I was thinking of 10 minutes.  Call me out on that if you like, but otherwise feel free to piss off. 

I'd love to see you try to explain the bitcoin network to someone that asks you on the spot when you aren't expecting it and haven't prepared anything.  Good luck with that.  I'm sure I'll hear all about how you'd have done better (or someone else will pipe up) ... but just like developing ASICs, I don't see shitheads like you out there putting it on the line.  All I see is a bunch of whiny bitches coaching anonymously from behind a monitor.  So until you and whoever else complains actually steps up and gets out there, you're nothing but a pathetic basement dweller, your opinion on the matter is irrelevant.

My bet is, you're the same type of person who calls out people who post music videos of themselves singing/playing an instrument/what have you on Youtube and telling them how shitty they are.  But again, unlike you, at least they are doing something. They are putting it out there and they have at least enough self confidence to do so... what have you got?  Nothing. Your entire contribution to the process:  Complaining about someone taking action.

I was just about to pen something similar.


Seriously? Then why the 8' fence and 20' tree?  


It's times like this that I wish I had an anonymous sockpuppet user account so that I can link that recent YT video of somebody explaining how the Bitcoin protocol works under its name.

To be fair, if I were to explain it, I too would fuck it up, but I think not that badly.

opentoe - Why don't you just go knock on the door?

http://i.imgur.com/gqLIlf2.jpg

or, alternatively:

[redacted photo showing a member of BFL's home - the information is widely available but I don't want to cross any boundaries]

BFL clearly isn't trying to hide.

No, you're the one missing the point - I'm a pretty vocal BFL critic - but even if every single Batch 1 customer cancelled their order, all that would happen is later orders moving to the front of the queue.

Where BFL is vulnerable is their bulk order.  Once they commit to production of those 63,000 chips, they need to be able to sell them.  If Batch 1 has been delivered and works as advertised, this won't be a problem.  Despite the ridiculous delivery times, people will continue to pre-order from BFL because there's currently no-one else from whom you can order ASICs in any quantity you like, any day of the week.  BFL originally expected to have 100,000 chips, which would have made X number of units producing revenue of Y dollars.  They will now have 74,000 chips, which will make J number of units producing revenue of K dollars. That's a non-trivial deficit which needs to be offset, and there's probably no way to offset it with the first 11,000 chips - so sales from the bulk order will be critical.

Personally, I believe BFL should stop taking pre-orders until they've caught up on the backlog of existing orders and can offer an order turnaround time of less than two weeks - but as long as the community is willing to wait months for delivery of their order, BFL has no real incentive to abandon the pre-order model and do whatever it takes to close the order : delivery gap.

Why are you so certain that BFL hasn't borrowed money to develop ASICs and/or fund their operating expenses?  It's pretty certain that the months of delays have blown their budget to hell, but that doesn't mean there was never any source of funds other than pre-orders.  It's highly possible that they have lenders and investors breathing down their necks right now as well as customers (and from a practical point of view, they're more accountable to those stakeholders than they are to customers).

OMG ROFL! This quack hasn't even been around long enough to know that Inaba=Josh, and somehow he feels confident enough to make very detailed accusations statements about BFL's support staff¹, funding², product shipping history³, product suppliers⁴, manufacturing discounts⁵, manufacturing processes⁶, prototype development⁷, shipping schedule⁸, and global affect on the BTC economy⁹.

I'm not sure what the age of the account here proves or disproves, it's merely a date of wanting to take the infatuation with cryptocurrency into a public setting. Unless you're referring to the fact that i didn't know the account above was BFL_Josh, then yes, you're right.

As with anything in life, i'm only going by what i've learned, and what i've experienced. If i am wrong, i'm more than capable of admitting it and eating my share of the crow. My interactions, combined with what i've read online, led me to those statements. If i'm wrong, then i apologize ahead of time. I obviously didn't know you were BFL_Josh when i quoted the 'paid' comment. Perhaps correcting me on my misunderstandings, or directing me towards some information that does, would go a long way to clearing up any negative thoughts myself or others have? Just a thought.