Topic: YES, you can get a REFUND from BFL - page 8. (Read 45589 times)

 I am Josh's complete lack of self-awareness.

The animation is a bit long, but if you'd like to understand the chip creation a bit better(though still complicated)  you can check out http://www.umc.com/English/about/p_1.asp  The link to the Service flow is also informative.

Hey now, you cant have all the blame. You know math and electronics. I specialize in mining (not crypto) with many science based principals. I dont know how chip foundries work and it sounds very complicated on top of being brand new product I can actually see how things can get gacked very badly in short order. I apologize for my ignorance in the electronics part of the world. Thanks for the civil debate BCP!

Josh, I understand how you must feel being under attack most of the time but if you choose to treat those that are trying get at you like they are idiots, it really does make you look bad. The internet remembers my friend. I'm sure I have dues to pay in cyberspace that have not come around yet. But they will. And I will have to accept that.

I have to accept blame for this one, I was under the impression that steel foundries had a much longer lead time.  I know from talking to my daughter that they do need a continuous supply of raw materials and that they run 7 days a week as the cost of refiring a cold furnace is far greater than keeping them running.  In my mind I envisioned a more complicated process taking days or weeks to complete.  Using that I figured an order made and begun, but not yet finished, would never get a refund if cancelled at this point due to the materials already being processed but not completed.

Any more refunds given by BFL without having to resort to claw back techniques? Thought not. Shady.

Quoted for future references of false statements.

You can't "send specs" to multiple foundries.  You have to choose a foundry before you even begin a project, because each foundry has their own tools, methods and expectations.  Once you choose a foundry, the only way you can switch is to basically start from scratch for the most part.  What many people seem to overlook is that BFL started out at 130nm (at one foundry), switched to 110nm, then to 90nm then to 65nm, with three foundry changes along the way.  The design process for the current generation chip started long before pre-orders were taken.

The comparison of Ridicuss' company and BFL is impossible on almost every level.  BFL did not have the resources, supply chain, personnel, etc... of a 60 year old company, nor does the established industry even exist that the mill enjoys.  65nm was brand new, state of the art just 7 years ago, not only is there not enough time to develop an industry similar to a steel mill around the 65nm node, the technology moves so fast that a robust industry like that would never even have time to develop. 

It's very easy to claim that "BFL should have done this. BFL should have done that. I would never do this.  I would never do that," but the simple fact of the matter is, pretty much any technology company that deals with end user customers on the scale of BFL or more has very little direct customer communication.  Why do you think this is?  It's not because they can't hire people to deal with them, it's because it's counterproductive, as we have now learned.  BFL is easily one of the most open privately held technology companies in operation today and by far and away the most open bitcoin ASIC developer and it's proven to be nothing but a detriment to our core business model. 

The reason you don't see the likes of Sony, Toshiba, Samsung, et al communicating with their customers is because it's harmful to their business (I'm not saying BFL is in the leagues of the above companies, by any means, just using them as an example).  They have the money and resources to engage their customers but they don't... they've already learned that customer engagement just leads to what we see here today.  Irrational, angry people lashing out as a coping strategy.

I tried and use a different tact when dealing with the exceptionally irrational person (usually not a customer), and it actually has it's merits but it's incredibly time consuming and probably on balance as a company grows I can't imagine it being a viable method as the customer base grows.  I do find it fascinating to watch the exaggeration, fabrication and misrepresentation of nearly every aspect of BFL grow almost daily.  Ridicuss' is a good example of either parroting what he's "heard" or exaggerating/fabricating imagined transgressions so that he can justify his actions to himself.  I have been impolite to very few actual customers, the majority of my ire has been directed at non-customers who are pot stirrers.  The few "customers" that have been the focus of my ire are the ones who are the most vocally irrational, rude and unacceptable of the bunch.  Again, I do enjoy pointing out the fact that I never start a vitriolic exchange, merely respond to it.  I've challenged every single nay-sayer to provide evidence that I've started an angry exchange and to date not a single person has been able to come up with the smoking gun.

The simple fact of the matter is, politeness and respect get the same in return.  Rude, irrational and angry gets what it deserves.  Be an adult and you'll be treated like one.  Be a spoiled, tantrum throwing child and you'll be treated like one.

It's simple... when I purchased I had a choice between a $250 USB and a $274 Jalapeno.  I knew from my GPU that I'd never make 2BTC from that USB (It was averaging .005BTC which = 400 days with no dif inc).  I also knew there were 11 months of orders ahead of me on the Jala even though they were shipping (20 July at that time).  I could not afford anything but these 2 items, so I ignored the expensive toy that had people drooling and paying 2-3x AM's selling price and bought the Jala which was 15x as powerful.  I've left my GPU running(300MH) since my purchase and I'm at 0.67372445 BTC since 2 days before I ordered.

My computers will be running whether I mine BTC or LTC or XPM or even go back to Mersenne (kinda doubtful... I like seeing the pennies roll in).  The GPU is reaching the end of it's useful life and eventually I'll have the Jalapeno.  This is more of a game to me... see what I can do with it.  I nearly doubled my earnings by investing in AM shares.  I've had good and bad investments, but overall the game has been good to me.  I'm curious where this game will end up 10 or 20 years down the road.  Half the fun is getting there.

Yes it was refreshing to read this conversation, gg guys!
: )

Please take no offence, but this sounds to me like a contradiction.

First you say you don't want "overpriced toys", then you say that it "doesn't matter to you" if you chose a suboptimal money-making strategy.

Either you are in it for the money (and you should use optimal strategy) or you are in it for the lulz (and "toys" should do just fine, especially if you can actually have them instead of being of imaginary thin air).

We must be the 2 politest people on BCT.

Agreed on all points you make here. I doubt on # of individual direct customer numbers we are even close to 1/10th of BFL numbers.

Thank you for you service to our country.

Now how the hell did get through all that without swearing at each other. LOL

Indeed, I was wrong, I did not realize the level you are used to running at.  It is obvious to me now that a mill foundry should never be compared to a chip foundry.  I thank you for the education.

No, I am not affiliated with BFL.  I do however have an above average grasp on mathematical models and a fairly extensive background in electronics having spent 20 years as an aviation electronics technician in the Navy.  By just taking 1% of the 'net worth' of BTC on Jun 23, I could see what the effect would be if that were used to purchase from BFL.  From there it was easy to see the spiral that we are now seeing due to the price increase in BTC and the deluge of ASIC products now shipping.  It would have been much worse last Oct.

Your views on the customer are correct for your business model, but I'd imagine your customer base is likely 1/10th of BFL's or less.  You are unlikely to be venturing into uncharted territory like BFL has done.  3 companies took on the challenge and each approached it differently.  Avalon and AM went for volume as they were make 333 and 400MH chips.  it's easy to add a few extra chips if you get things wrong.  BFL was more ambitious.  I don't honestly know what speed they were going for, but they ended up around 4GH which was slower than they had planned on.  Compared to Avalon and AM they had a major problem with a need for 1.5-2x the chips they expected.  Unlike your business, the customers here seem to operate under the feeling that they alone would have the ASIC and they'd have BTC rolling in hand over fist.  When the bubble burst and reality crept in they lashed out and in far greater numbers than your company ever had to deal with.

The supply chain issues would also not work.  Chip technology today is in many different sizes.  180nm, 150nm, 110nm, 90nm, 65nm, 55nm 28nm.  I doubt you could send the same specs to 2 different foundries and get the same results.  I could be wrong.  But from the foundries they have to be sent to a bumping facility.  Somewhere in there the chips have to be 'binned'.  I asked a question about binning and was told Grade B and lower were only used on Jalapenos.  Grade A normally encompases only 60% of a wafer of chips, however I was also told that a majority of the Grade B were testing out at Grade A, so it sounds like they had a good FAB there.  From there you need to populate the boards.  Unless foundries have bumping facilities, you already have 4 different companies working together between the foundry, bumping fac, PCB manufacturer and the Assemblers.  And the product isn't even to BFL yet.

Your foundry is simplicity indeed when compared to a chip foundry.

I respect your candor and your stance. We will have to differ on certain matters as it pertains to BFL. I have to agree with you on the actions of swearing and so forth and will not deny that I may be guilty of such.

It generally is not in my nature and most the time I get to delete it before it get posted. Or hopefully before it gets quoted.  

I like to say I do this as a hobby, that's my own brainwashing to let me accept i lost money. Speaking for myself here, no one else.  

I agree on overpriced toys but I do have some. Never naive enough to think they will ever pay for themselves at any rate. Again, Hobby justification.


Respectfully,

R

I can't help looking at your other post...

I've read through my fair share of old posts as well, and I know exactly what you are saying, but one problem with the internet is people will lash out like they never would in person.  People also jump to snap decisions based off of faulty logic or assumed insults.  It amazes me I can write 3 or 4 paragraphs and some troll will pull 3 or 4 words out of it and turn the meaning 180 degrees out.  I also tend to laugh at the people who feel that swearing is necessary and who will double or triple thier swearing if you mention it.

I was brought up to be respectful to others, but I am human and I can only take so much.  I doubt Ghandi could keep his cool with the onslaught the people around here tend to dish out.  I can see Mother Theresa wading through here with a yardstick in her handslooking like Luke Skywalker weilding a lightsaber, swatting people left and right to modify their behavior.

You have your views and I have mine.  I personally have been courteous and respectful in my communications with BFL and they have been equally as courteous and respectful in return.  While I view responses to others as outside my purview, you, by your admission, take umbrage with them.  That is your perogative.  Each person has their own tolerance levels.

Unlike you, none of the other companies offer a product within my budget (I refuse to buy the overpriced toys AM sells).  I had a good idea of how long I would wait and what difficulty would be by the time I received my order and I was satisfied with that.  I currently make more from 5 CPUs mining XPM than I will likely make from my Jalapeno when I receive it, but that matters not to me.

I can say with complete honesty that I have made more BTC due to BFL's problems than I would have if they had shipped on time.  While I understand the same is not true for all of BFL's customers, I am fairly certain from my modeling that very few who had not gotten in on the 1st day or week of orders have truly 'lost' much.  Sadly we'll never know for sure, as I can't see BFL releasing the information to make an accurate model.

Unfortunately, your foundry is a poor analogy, but you chose to use it. Mill Scale is highly available it is a byproduct of steel manufacturing, among other sources, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mill_scale

We have been in business for over 60 years and we don't make mistakes like running out of raw products, and if we did, the purchasing manager would be out of job. We keep enough raw material on hand to keep us running for months in advance. Constant inventory replenishment. There is never "We can start on your order in x number of days" It is delivered by rail car within the week we ask for it to be delivered.  And as for our products they are delivered on the site when requested.
We don't do just in time ordering, and we don't run out of products, our own or raw materials purchased.

Now to address the only company using said foundry; No we aren't. And no we don't only source from one company. We use a pool of lowest bids. Maybe BFL could learn from that. Multiple sources can prevent you from running out. And "God forbid they did have to start from scratch" and look where that has put them. Did somebody get fired over the colossal supply chain snafu? Did they apologies to customers and do everything they could to make it right?
Were they transparent at every level and let their customers, mm investors, errr not quite right either, Monumental assholes I think thats the one know what was going on?
Or to at least give the customer the impression they did? The antics of the face of BFL would suggest otherwise.

We cant afford to do it the way BFL did it, we have competition. If we followed the BFL model, we would be out of business.

I can guarantee this as well:
 Customer relations can be a very tricky thing. Do we have customer complaints. Absolutely, not many, but they do happen. How do we resolve complaints? By treating the customer with respect and doing everything we can to make them happy, even if they don't know what they are talking about. Are the customers always right? We treat them like they are, even if it costs us money. The reason for that is we know if it was to cost us a little now by retaining them it gains us more in the long run. If any agents of our company were to become a bit disrespectful to a customer they will be terminated. Have we ever lost customers? Unfortunately, yes. Most have returned after realizing it isn't always greener on the other side and  a lot of grandiose promises cant be met. We never ask for an apology from the customer. If they come back, they are treated just as if they never left.

I get this feeling, you are affiliated with BFL?  Not just a customer?  If you are an agent or affiliate please take some of the information provided above to try and save your company. Even if you just use the customer retention strategy above, you will keep a few more customers. If BFL had treated all customers as I stated above, BFL would still have my money wise on my part or not, it is the truth.

We are definitely talking about very different products here, but at least the supply chain strategy and customer retention strategy do work, and would work for BFL.

From some of your questions to me, I feel you dont have much experience in industrial manufacturing. And from the fundamental nature of your question about running out of steel from a foundry. Do you think GM, Ford, Chrysler run out of steel?

Yes, we are on that level.

For me it comes down to this, BFL needs a fundamental culture mindset change.

Unrelated tidbit. We also use a very effective employee retention strategy.

Regards,

Ok, answer me this then, are you the only company using said foundry?  When you place an order, are you not told it'll be X days before they can even START on your order and that it'll then take Y days to complete and to expect it on a certain date?  If you realize you made a mistake a week down the road and need 2x your original order, you'll have to again wait your line in the queue to receive the rest of your order, will you not?  BFL ended up with a mistake like this... IIRC, they were to have 1 chip for Jala's and 4(?) for LS's and the full 8 for Singles and MR's.  Even if they did not need to fully double their quantity of chips  needed, they had to order more.  If you received your mill order and found out you really needed 1.5x a much, how long would it take you to get that extra?

Chips foundries take on average 100 days from order to completion.  I highly doubt your steel foundry has quite that much lead time.  A lot can happen over 100 days and god forbid you had to start from scratch.

I'm happy and a bit relieved to know that at least one has actually tried to do some math and there is a sound reason if he didn't ask for the refund.

I mean, I don't know if your math is correct, and I also disagree with your optimism about actually receiving your order, but at least you thought, and this is very good. Time will tell if you were or weren't right : )

Please don't forget that once the funds run out and the ship is sunk, it's too late.
Consider this.

I must admit, I am one of the "tons of people who just wait and refuse to ask refunds."

A little background might be in order, I did order from BFL, once I failed to get an order in the first round of the avalon batch 2 clusterf**k (Feb 2 I think?) I panicked and placed an order with BFL. -- a couple weeks later avalon re-opened their batch 2 order (Feb 18 I think?) and I was able to get in on that *(thanks to the ASIC gods, that order actually arrived and reached 100% ROI less than 2 months after arriving)

Since it now seems that BFL is slowly working through the backlog, I am still confident enough that when/if I finally receive my order I should be able to mine a commensurate amount of BTC when compared to the fiat price I paid. (which at the time was half the price that they later started charging)

I hope this will clarify the thought process of at least one of the "tons of people who just wait and refuse to ask refunds."

(*edit*) - I will of course seek a refund if this fiasco stretches on beyond the end of October.

Which is fine, once a sale has been completed. But until the item is shipped, no "sale" has occured. The FTC requires BFL to notify customers of delays and offer full refunds. BFL is violating FTC regulations. Why the customer wants a refund is irrelevent.


The difference being BFL units are exactly the same from order to order. These are not custom products. Every Jalapeno is exactly the same as every other one.