Topic: YES, you can get a REFUND from BFL - page 17. (Read 45631 times)

What about those who want rather than need? Why is selling a beanie baby on eBay immoral? It has no value other than how much a person wants to own it. A public auction is a fair method to dispose of things. I had a laser printer that was large, loud, expensive to run and wanted nothing more to do with it. However, there was nothing wrong with it functionally. It 'lasered' and scanned and networked just fine, so to speak. Someone who needed a large laser printer/scanner for their office snatched it up for what I felt was more than it was worth. It was also for a lot less than professional printers can be has new. I don't think that was an immoral transaction, I just think someone else could get more value out of it than I could.

The flipping of pre-orders is low. But bitcointalk.org is not the entire market anymore. As long as the auction starts at a fair price and full disclosure is made as to the state of the product, there is nothing inherently immoral about using Ebay. That is to say, it is possible to make a moral transaction of mining equipment using ebay.


"Passively" Auctioning something in the hopes that it will go for an absurd and non-useful price to the other person is immoral. (my standard may not be yours)

Most of the blades were auctioned here. So I consider that selling into an informed (if not rational) market.
There is a caveat with the USB miners. Selling one or two as a novelty item is fine. Like numismatic coins that contain a little gold, they are a terrible investment, but are shiny and pretty. I bought a gold plated buffalo coin for far more than it was worth, because my daughter wanted one. Also, the USB sticks are a reasonable way to democratize the bitcoin network. Selling them at 2BTC was ludicrous, but I could see $40 or so being reasonable.

I consider doing business and leaving someone on uneven footing to be immoral. That is the moral standard set forth in my mindset. I realize there are many others out there who are not sharing that standard.

You know why people go to ebay to discharge their miners. Because they couldn't otherwise get a "too high a price" for it, if they tried to sell it among us "who know better" on BitCoinTalk.

They go to the corner of the internet where they barely have enough sense to rub two brain cells together.


"Passively" Auctioning something in the hopes that it will go for an absurd and non-useful price to the other person is immoral. (my standard may not be yours)


Whatever the reason, the sellers and distributors knew what they were doing.

They even defend their practices vehemently to this day. Shielding themselves under many pretenses that "the impossible" or a "miracle" might happen for their customers to get a useful intended purpose out of their resold miner....at too high a price.

+1

While you and I agree on some terms, I think we can agree to disagree on others.  I stand on the point that BFL *is* shipping, albeight slowly.  Slow in this instance means that people see RoI vanish and get frustrated.

IMHO, blaming the company for the faults of the customers is wrong.  BFL did what it said it would do, admittedly not in a good timeframe, but they have continued to work on it and have not ducked out with the cash.  In one aspect BFL is like ASICMiner.  When they unveiled their product there was sufficient hype that far more orders than could reasonably be processed were made.  Unlike ASICMiner though, BFL stuck with their pricing and didn't set out to fleece the customer of every last dime.

All of those people who ordered ASICMiner actually received their devices within days of ordering them. ASICMiner only sold what they had in stock.
Greed led people to believe they would receive ROI in every ASIC purchase. A miner's greed is not BFL's fault, nor is it ASICMiners fault. However, with ASICMiner all the customers received their devices. 85% of BFL's ordered hash rate is still waiting to receive anything (I am sure by now some percentage of that has asked for refunds). Shipping slow is actually worse in this case than shipping with lower hash rate. People should have preferred 2.5GH/s back in April over 5 GH/s now.
I would have been far better disposed towards BFL if they admitted that they could only deliver 50% of what was promised, but could deliver it back in April.

@PuertoLibre: Auctioning something on Ebay when you are done with it is not immoral. Creating a marketing scheme to paint a rosy picture of a bleak scenario in order to move product at inflated prices is immoral. The reason ASICMiner was able to sell so many units at such a crazy price was because of the pent up demand for ASICs. This was due to Avalon and BFL being unable to deliver product to the marketplace. They could take orders, but they couldn't ship them in time to keep up with demand. ASICminer could and it was they who profited from it. I spent a small amount of time trying to convince folks that the USB sticks would not have a positive ROI, but it was swimming upstream against a fast current.

I am saying, I believe he made a network full of scammers.

That is why he could end up with most of the profits and each distributor with their own portion of ill gotten gains.

They sold a product that didn't do it's ultimate intended purpose in an effective way.

Alot of people on this forum think it is perfectly alright to mine the crap out of their miner and when it stops being useful...go to ebay and sell it to some retard for an enormous amount of money.

There is always some idiot who will. Then they come on here and claim "it is all good" what they just did.

There ain't a moral bone in their body.

You just confused me, are you saying you disagree that "he didn't scam a soul", so that you agree that he DID scam?

I disagree.

Normally, I like Friedcat...but he knows what he is doing.

He created a market to sell miners past the brink of returns. He established distributors who could take those miners at unreasonable rates and resell them at an even higher unreasonable rate. (It's almost an MLM)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-level_marketing

Just because someone IS stupid enough to buy it, does not mean you consciously should sell it to that person. There is nothing on this earth that will change my mind that Friedcat didn't know or do this with willing intention. There are plenty of distributors on this forum who will try to shut you up for saying that their practice is unethical.

Even now, he only lowered his prices because someone let the cat out of the bag. Otherwise blades would be selling for 40 BTC and USB models for about 2 BTC still.

To be completely HONEST, BFL *is* delivering, they are just SLOW.  Until they have completely stopped shipping and run with the money, it is just your opinion that they are truly a scam.  I haven't seen them stop shipping yet, so the jury is still out.

ASICMiner used peoples greed against themselves to make huge profits on the USB devices that would not have earned RoI at 1/4 their original price and those people used even MORE peoples greed to bone them even further.

To me, ASICMINER is the guy who worked at Best Buy when they PS3 came out and was able to walk off with 50 units at cost instead of selling them to customers, and then turned around and sold them on ebay for 10 times their value.  I personally would not have paid over $15 for one of those cause I knew how badly he was screwing people.

@PuertoLibre:  Yes, Josh has stated that you can profit with these devices even at high difficulty.  AS HE EXPLAINED, he was talking COST OF ELECTRICITY VS VALUE OF BTC MINED.  Greed led people to believe RoI.  Perosnally, I believe the smart WILL attain RoI while the stupid bail out.  Time will tell.

AS to your doubt about ASICMiners' sales: As of Jun 7th, more than 4,000 USB miners had been sold.  8,000 BTC valued at almost 1 million dollars for a whopping 1.332 TH.  He sold less than an original MINIRIG for in excess of 1 million dollars.  Yet, he didn't scam a soul.

They (Inaba/BFL Josh) also made "assertions" that people would make a profit on these devices (Jally's for example) up to a difficulty of 2billion if I recall correctly. With a useful life (at the time speculative) of about 2 or 3 years.

Now, things are different. 90%~ of the orders across many product lines have not shipped and they are soon...no longer profitable.

So yes, add buyers remorse to the long list.

--------------------

I should also add that Inaba/BFL Josh stated that there would be a trade in program for ASICs. Now look at this:

https://forums.butterflylabs.com/pre-sales-questions/4388-upgrade-route-monarch-card.html

Lets see what he responds to customers who have already received their products. There are already accusations that he is deleting any such commentary. I don't know if that is true, but I do recall him saying so many times.

-------------------

As far as I am concerned BCP, the items were not delivered. Therefore people are open to ask for a refunds. That is the law.

People are epicly blind to the matters at hand.  

I am the one that made the case for the ASICMiner products being way over priced.

As far as I am concerned they are being priced at "the greater fool" rate. ASICMiner is obviously selling it for as high as it will go. Though their products are now at the end of their useful life. Just like a Jally is.

No doubt about it. ASICMiner sales depend on resellers who can exploit the dumb and retarded.

I doubt ASICMiner has that many sales.

As for me being happy about it. I think you might confuse me with someone else. At times I will admit that I do consider the entire affair of people losing purchasing power to be beneficial. Honestly, I sometimes wonder why I even warn anyone. Must be my conscience. People are said to still have those.

How did they do this? By auctioning off hardware and then shipping it to happy customers who got it within a few days of ordering?
Or by creating a mining cooperative like they said they would and paying dividends like they said they would?

The difference is big. BFL promised a product and didnt deliver it. ASICMiner released an overpriced product but it was delivered. There is no shame in that. Most people lost out in buying mining hardware, but at least ASICMiner delivered what people paid for. BFL have not, and their incompetence over the issue means it's not even worth to receive their goods now. If they'd released an imperfect product at least people could ROI. Most will not, and international customers, like those in the UK will have to pay extra import+VAT for these shitty products. It's not worth to receive them now, period.

Sorry, but I cannot agree with you that ASICMiner were scammers. BFL are 100% for sure and I really hope someone in the US gets them investigated. I am sure they have broken many laws (it's hard to to in an overregulated USA anyhow). BFL_Josh needs to see the inside of a jail for a few years, so he can think long and hard about his actions.

Sonny, BoA on line one.
Josh, Well's Fargo on line two.
Sonny, Citibank is still on line three.
Chase is on line four, five and six.
Josh, Poodles-r-Us is on line seven.
Josh here. Pink and orange for the read, blue in the middle, and a green and yellow head. Cost is not a problem.
KCTV is still in the lobby, Sonny.
Josh, a customer on the shoutbox is asking...
Just press the "edit" button.

In layman's terms, your first sentence equates to Buyers Remorse.  The sad thing is that even though they (and others like them) basically fucked themselves by ordering 1,000's of Golden Geese only to find out they've killed the gold market, they're blaming the company that offered them the golden geese rather than themselves.  This is evident in how many have run after other golden geese offered by the other companies that will in the long run turn out exactly the same as the ones they demanded refunds on.

The build-up of GPUs could have caused this same thing to happen except there, the people intelligent enough to create the programs kept it quiet for a long enough time that when released, it was more dribbles and spurts instead of wholesale KABLAM!

The most hilarious thing about all of this is how blind everyone is.  BFL offered ASICs at a price and then when they realized they would cost more than expected, basically doubled their prices 10 months down the road.  Yet what about ASICMiner?  He's screwed people who then turned around and screwed others even worse.  2BTC for a measly 333MH USB ASIC... 1BTC..... .54BTC.... .35BTC.... Screwed over after screwed over after screwed over.  Where's your righteous indignation here?  "Oh... well, HE was shipping so it's only fair he screwed so many people over, BFL was worse!!!  They undercharged and raised prices and are slow!!!!!".

IMHO ASICMiner has scammed more people out of their hard-earned BTC than you guys claim Sonny has, and he did it in such a way YOU'RE ACTUALLY HAPPY ABOUT IT!!!!!

I, too, don't want to sound like a..., but can us three set a time for the ménage à trois? 

 My gut is telling me that the fact they are only doing bank wires (or bitcoin), with zero consumer protection for this round, is going to be the final nail in their coffin. Pissing off Paypal is one thing, but pissing off the banks that wire you money because of customer complaints down the road is another matter entirely. It's liable to officially draw more heat from various alphabet agencies, and finally ring the death knell for our favorite ASIC manufacturer.

http://tarspublishing.com/butterflyrefund/


https://forums.butterflylabs.com/pre-sales-questions/3675-refund-policy-10.html#post53286

"I don't want to sound like a queer or nothin', but I'd kinda like to make love to you tonight."

Me. I got them shut down. I called Paypal about this and the woman on the other end got really angry at the story and told me she was going to close them down. And to quote her, "when we close people down, we block everything - they can't sign up again". The first step is an account freeze.