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Recently several of my S5s started to behave erratically: hashing boards disappeared and then appeared again with various frequency, sometimes they hangs completely, one of them have two dead chips now. They was out of warranty period already for 1+ months so I decided to try to repair them and asked the price for controller board and got this answer:


Nice business: sell crap quality product with 3 month warranty (which can't ROI in this period of time) and abandon support for it. Repeat.

do a search of the 'sidehack 8gb usb miner" he has a few 'mod' threads on such and other projects ..from what I can tell they MAY be looking at a way to upgrade
S5's etc to a more robust machine for a modest fee (pod miner?)

anyway just a thought may help :)

here is the link i think it is this one ..he has a few.....I think the ideas for such an upgrade plan start on page 99 or so

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=995675.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=995675.0)

if nothing else his sidehack 8gb (oc to 16gb) usb stick for 25 bucks is a hoot your ROI is a smile...I got one simply to follow his project on that thread alone :)

anyway hope it helps and I'm in the ball park on the S5 (I have zip for antminer so if I want in on this will likely have to find a used machine)

you can pm him also he may have an idea on the controller issue just on your symptoms?

hope this helps :)

I read that thread, nice idea to recycle old hardware, but I'm not interested in toy miners and this thread is about quality of bitmain's products and (luck of) warranty.

Bitmaintech has not been that good with warranty service.  Many threads on it.

Some people have run 2 s-5's off one controller.  Here is a link :

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1151460.0

I think some posts in the thread above talk about 2 s-5's on one controller.

They also have been getting more strict if anything.  Now of you do a fan mod or anything without permission it voids warranty.

I still remember the letter that came with my S5+ it was like do anything to your unit... lose warranty.

Someone mentioned they void your warrantly on the S7 if you don't plug cables into all 3 jacks, which is funny because it's a 1200W machine that "requires" 10 cables to run but their 1600W PSU on gives you 8 (and that 18AWG). Double standard much?

About a year, year and a half ago Bitmain was taking enough flak from everyone that they actively worked on improving customer service and warranty fulfillment. It looks a lot like they either stopped caring or decided it wasn't a worthy investment.

I'm guessing they realized people will buy their stuff regardless because they are just starved that much. Bitmain's communication at the moment seem slow and poor and their customer service is horrible on RMA. And having to ship back is expensive and really not what one would expect of a warranty.

also I inform you that paying bitcoins have a duty to save us or dispatch, or declare a low price for customs.

That would be nice, but Bitmain actually declare a fairly high value so this is not applicable to this situation or Bitmain in general. You can only do that when you do it user to user, not company delivering to end users.

must begin to change policy, I can not buy s7 I do not want to pay customs duty of 350 €

Again don't expect them to carry spare parts and if they can repair it they will use parts off of another.  Poor to say the least.  Yoshi finally helped me out of costly loop of repairs but don't count on Bitmain to repair non current miners.

Complaints about import duties should be taken up with your national government rather than the manufacturer of the goods. It's not a business' job to lie on legal documentation. Governments need funding to run, and every dollar they spend has to come from somewhere - if it's not import taxes, it's sales taxes or income taxes or somewhere else. The US government was pretty much entirely funded by import taxes for the first century or so.

Complaints about bad customer service and ignoring warranty claims, yeah that's definitely their responsibility and they've been dropping the ball pretty heavily all this year.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1200065.0

rate to the survey to increase the warranty period

if I pay in BTC, they can declare that the product is priced at $ 350,

no one knows that I paid in BTC.

Customs sees the price declared by bitmain.

That's great, until customs looks on Bitmain's website and sees the price is $1600 or $1600 worth of BTC. Doesn't matter what currency you paid with, the price is the price.

In a selfish way I'm glad I don't have to pay much in import taxes on mining gear from China, but at the same time I wish we actually had higher duties on Chinese imports in general. The point of import duties is to benefit local economy - import taxes incentivise domestic production and you don't end up sending all your money to another country in exchange for whatever junk you're trying to buy. In the case of specialized equipment like bitcoin miners, where currently there's only a few manufacturers in the world, it hurts, but in the case of almost literally everything else that could be manufactured locally, it's foolish. At least from where I'm sitting. Not everywhere has the raw material and engineering resources that the US has - but then again, not everywhere has a culture simultaneously dominated by greed and laziness like the US either.

But this is a warranty complaint thread. Different thing to be annoyed about.

Bitmain APW3-12-1600-B2  PSU is with 12x PCI-E cables.
Old version Antminer S4 built-in 1400W PSU was with 9 PCI-E cables.

Ah right, my mistake. It's listed as six pairs of 6-pin ends; is each end on its own cable or are they shared?

This is like the 2nd or 3rd warranty thread.  It's getting rediclous.  Bitmain does not do things for free so anyone wanting a year warranty... it would be tacked on every single sale.

The other popular thing is about the declared value.  If bitmain is known to a country as shipping incorrect amount's there will be some sort of trouble for them.  It would be illegal in some countries and crazy for a legit business to avoid vat/taxes.   This is really where the customer comes in.  Some need to say it sucks but their country is not made for mining, and find a data center to host.

Also keep in mind the long break bitmain had.  I bet they have TONS of emails to anwser.   Chances are some sent multiple emails, so imagine sorting that out.  They have a big obstical right now on getting caught up.

They would not have a need to get caught up had they communicated with us prior to going on vacation.
It would shock me to see companies I do business with to go on vacation knowing they had a major issue and would not be shipping product on time. There are very few industries where this would resemble anything close to acceptable, and when you are talking about a box which literally makes currency it certainly is not acceptable.

If they had communicated there would not be as many posts or threads.

It has, is, and will remain to be normal business practice to issue coupons for huge mistakes which unfortunately only causes the cycle to repeat. I hope no one is fooled by this coupon concept. This company certainly is not giving up the amount of currency they are letting you believe you are saving. Coupons do not work that way in any business, much less with this company who anyone that is being honest knows they are making more than a good profit.

The fact they have their S7s online in hashnest is not a surprise, but it is another slap in the face to everyone who ordered batch One. It is as good as saying out loud through an announcement they have been hashing right along with a full load of S7 miners. Probably, even many of the ones which should have shipped.

It is and has been an unwritten understanding in the community that when you order batch one, especially when it is a real pre-order as this has obviously turned out to be, that you would receive some form of benefits. Be them early adopter benefits of having the product in hand and being able to hash with it for a respectable amount of time before the other batch orders ship. Or, say an additional product with real value, not a coupon, or if there is a mistake, a real refund. They could offer people X amount per day of hashnest equivalent.

There are so many options for them to make and keep customers happy which cost them so little, but as many have stated and many more know it is obvious they no longer care if they did last year with the customer service campaign.

I understand issues all too well. I understand missing a ship date. It happens to the best companies. You definitely do not want to ship poor product, and I would rather my order be late than function poorly. However what goes with this is communication. Companies who are successful and build relationships with their customers actually care those customers succeed. You grow together and provide information people may use in executing their own business plans.

Imagine you are a miner who is barely scraping by every month and just took a loan to pay for a huge S7 order and now you are way behind on hashing to pay that first loan payment. You are having a bad day, many days in a row.
Obviously taking out a loan for miners is a bad idea at this point, but it wasn't such a bad idea so long ago. Now if you do so I do not think you have good decision making skills because there is no one you can trust to deliver on time. Maybe if you are mining at the Spondoolies 110TH and you are buying enough of them, but if, if, and if. You certainly cannot make plans based on the information provided by bitmain.

It is sad to see so many fellow miners in this shape. So many of us sent our BTC in good faith we would have our miner in hand by now functioning at 48xx. I do not think most of us are confident when we will see a miner shipment, and an even lower number of people are confident they will receive something hashing at the 48xx.

The way a real company does business would have been to announce there was issue X weeks ago and outline the plan they were executing to address the issue. You do not go on vacation, even a national one, you ask for volunteers from any department needed and you pay them double-time. You have food brought in, and you work your ass off to make things right for your customers.
Your customers recognize what you do for them, they appreciate it, and everyone continues working together towards an even more successful relationship.

You can go back and allow people to take staggered time off, allow extra concessions, and if anyone doubts bitmain would still make a very nice profit they have not ran the numbers and do not understand the margins bitmain is already working under. They are huge.

I, like so many, can only shrug and express my disappointment. I could try again to look forward to a time when bitmain does not handle business this way but I am more of a realist than idealist in this regard now. Don't get me wrong, I still hope we will see fair product for fair price in fair time, but after the majority of my personal experiences being at the level they were, now I go through this with the S7 along with so many others it may be time for me to evaluate my own position in the mining scene.

If I believe the two candidates running for President in the US elections are both evil and as a society we have been taught, pressed, told that we should select the lesser of two evils. I stopped doing such years ago.
I now think the same thought process is the direction I need to go with regards to mining. I only have one real choice and as much as I think there is revolutionary technology at stake, it will continue to be manipulated to the point it is in the same shape as the fiat currency is today. Maybe if people had stopped voting for the lesser of two evils 50 years ago things would not have been allowed to simmer along, and maybe if people sincerely stopped supporting bad service it would change as well. As much as I enjoy it, it does begin to wane and cause considerable discomfort when we cannot even garner a proper Public Relations person to make current announcements.

I haven't given up yet on either my country or bitcoin mining, but I do not plan to allow myself to feel as though I have no choice except to accept whatever I am told or given. I am not a doormat, and neither are any of the other people out there who paid over a month ago and still wait on proper communication. Make sure you are heard. Make sure you tell them directly and publicly how you feel you are being treated. I think everyone who has money on an S7 order should make at least one post in the S7 thread stating their experience good or bad. It would be good for everyone to hear you if you are having a great experience, and I have seen a couple. I sure hope there are more of you, but I fear there are more of the other, who are also, being looked upon as door mats.

Thank you for writing that sloopy, I totally agree.

I agree overall after reading compensation for S7 batch 1.  It was suprising to say the least.  I was expecting 100+ on coupons and they did not choose this route.

This is not to do with the customer service but the break.  I fell like it's a different culture on the holiday they truly meant it as a holiday giving employees the day's off.  Which would normally work fine. But the time the holiday was during was pretty awful luck on timing.  Could not have been much worse.

There are some silly things here.

It was a public holiday, no one was working. Its like getting annoyed that Comcast didn't reply to your 16 emails over Thanksgiving.


You are welcome to take your business elsewhere if you think that coupons are some giant conspiracy.


No one knows if its actually know its pure S7s, they might offset low hash rate with previous gen stuff and pay for the extra power themselves.


You agreed to purchase something in batch 1. The subsequent selling of a batch 2, 3 or 800 has no impact on your agreement to purchase that batch 1 product.


Then you would have made a bad decision taking a out loan to fund an already extreme risk venture.


You know that's not how it works. The entire country stops and vacates.


You don't allow people to take off public holidays.

dogie: Do you work for Bitmain?

I guess they shut down the internet as well in China, since they can't work overtime and answer customers over e-mail..

No.

He did work for bitmain and Dogie you have always presented a skewed view for bitmain. You run panting to their defense even when they apologize for many things you've said and done, but hey, keep being that faithful lapdog. I'm sure they will throw you a few treats.


BTW, what I meant when I said we haven't heard anything, is they knew well before the Holiday there were problems. You say what you want, but there are very few idiots who have been here every day keeping up with every post who will think they did not know there was a problem before they went on vacation.
The fact they knew there were problems and still not only chose to take their vacation rather than take care of customers, they didn't say anything about it which causes even more complaints when the units roll in.

A real company would have taken care of their customers, and yes, there are plenty of companies who answer the phone on thanksgiving.
Bitmain is nothing compared to comcast, nowhere near the size, the volume, nadda. Compare apples to apples, how many employees does bitmain have and how much do they care about their customers?

You can message the helpdesk and get told to email info@bitmaintech and then be ignored for a while.
They could have handled this much better and no amount of your awful analogies will change the facts.

Be a good boy and go back to working for bitmain. Wait, you don't anymore right? I bet that was one of those "mutual" breakups wasn't it?

Good boy, run along and squat to pee, but don't start fucking with me. Your missy little hall monitor ass already has half this forum hating you and you get a handful of people to run to your defense any little time someone tells you how it is, stop being a nancy puppy. If you want to start with me you haven't thought things through because I am not someone who is going to play that game with you. I don't play and I don't whine to the moderators. You start bringing me into your little nonsensical half baked bullshit ideas you express here and I will teach you how to pee standing up boy.

You were that kid no one liked in the corner weren't you? The one who didn't know what hygiene is? The one who always wanted to run that d-licker to make it sound like you know something when you really only knew enough buzzwords to string together a sentence but if it was anyone who knew about the subject they could tell you were full of shit?

Those are life decisions where common sense is involved. Have some humility if you understand what that is and think before you type. It must suck to be in whatever relationship you are trying to get with bitmain. I actually feel sorry for you in that regard. Either you just need the money that bad, or you really believe half the shit you spout. I don't know which is more sad.

Make sure you click report so you can whine about how you get picked on in school and it brings back the bad memories so mommy will make them go away.

They were moving support to https://bitmain.zendesk.com/hc/en-us with tickets.  Not sure how far they made it on it.  I kinda feel they get so many emails they never fully made the trasition.  I would agree if they had a more concrete help desk type system it would be much better.

I am not a fan of their recent moves on compensation.   But we gave them the trust to do it.  There was no solid TOS or anything that protected us.  We kinda went in blind and suspected if anything was truly late they would fix it..... so it gave them full power on it.  They choose a pretty crappy compensation no doubt.  But there is not much we can do. 

I mean it's already midday Monday in China.  If bitmain wanted to come out and say "Were sorry heres some coupons" or anything they could have.    I hate it but I feel no amount of these threads or posts will change their mind. 

Zendesk is not for EU buyers..

I received today from China S5+ NEW fan and repaired S5+ blade. 5 blade from my 2x S5+ are still in China.

https://i.imgur.com/bRPEwbE.jpg (https://i.imgur.com/bRPEwbE.jpg)
Click to enlarge

Dark and smoky radiators are not from my miner. Perhaps from some of the S7 . But they are definitely from some bad burned miner. Burned with flame and smoke.

Interesting sad to seem them use parts like that.   I would hope they would at least clean them or something.

I feel sorry for EU buyers as zendesk is pretty nice few times I had to use it.  Did the blade seem to run fine after they sent it back?  What are the results?

The picture you've provided shows absolutely no evidence of "burned with flame and smoke". Did you upload the right one?

dogie- Go back to your kennel and  bark there.

Images can not transmit the smell of burnt, that came unscrewing the bubble wrap.

second image

https://i.imgur.com/8g62BJM.jpg (https://i.imgur.com/8g62BJM.jpg)
Click to enlarge

Still nothing useful as to proving a board was "burnt with flame and smoke". If you're saying its due to the smell then its probably from someone unglueing heatsinks off a dead board with a torch. If you're saying that the dark ones are a different color because they've been in a fire, that's even more ridiculous - its nickel plating.

The only solution to this is for people to stop buying their overpriced, used & abused products, which nearly no one seems to be willing to do.  You will have no luck complaining to a Company like Bitmain when they are selling miners as fast as they can remove them from their farm.

The dark one are different color , because they are not cleaned and sooty.

New and better pictures with macro  shot will come, if I get a few more S5+ blades  back from  China.
5pc have not been shipped yet.  Expect new surprises, and the  miracles of Bitmain Repair Service.

I still am not sure if I was really lucky or you got a dud.  I uploaded a image again I'm at 16 day's without issues.   

I've had great lucky with my S5+.   Still all hashing modules work great.   I have had no issues.  Only weird thing is if I run it for 2 weeks or so with low hardware errors it shows negative hw errors.  So it's equation long term has a error in it when low HW errors.

At this point I have to assume you're trolling or shilling, because you're a grown ass man with a technical profession claiming that the nickel coated heatsinks are actually "covered in soot".

https://i.imgur.com/bRPEwbE.jpg (https://i.imgur.com/bRPEwbE.jpg)
Click to enlarge

Here,  On this picture is only pure  aluminum radiators. Let your eyeglasses prescription renewed.

Nickel coated heatsinks are on the  other side of the blade.

Clean one then. If you're honestly trying to claim they're that color because they're dirty, clean one and show us.

Just ignore him Tupsu.
He isn't happy unless he is being the bitmain fanboy of the year.
He is probably still getting paid under the table by bitmain for various things.
No matter how many times they openly state to the forum he doesn't represent bitmain and has been an embarrassment, privately, they probably still use him and laugh at the stupidity he wallows in as they do so.
It is pretty simple actually. If he was an asset and had any knowledge then they would have him onboard, and praise him. For the most part he pisses people off, especially once people learn the absurd advice he gives while always arguing over stupid little things which have little to no bearing on anything.

I appreciate you sharing your experiences Tupsu and look forward to more updates of the mining gear you purchase.
The Avalon warranty starts the day you receive it. Do you have any inside scope on picking up some of those? If so, I would be interested in going in with you. I want to get at least a couple right away, but I may get more to meet a 'MOQ'.

Pic looks like soot on heatsinks to me.
I have components of different products which are nickel coated. If there is not a friction point the coating is a superb idea in a saltwater environment. Even 20 miles away from it, it makes a difference. Every "Mild Steel" you purchase, or aluminum, or stainless, whatever has a certain nickel content. Along with Chromium, Iron, etc.

Nickel coating over other materials is and has been a common manufacturing process for thousands, probably hundreds of thousands of years. This is a requirement if you have a potential exposure to a volatile environment where the potential exposure to saltwater environments exists.

Maybe Bitmain built a batch to go to a huge farm close to the sea and had some heatsinks left over?
Anything is possible.
I wouldn't call Tupsu a liar unless I had facts to back me up. I might ask him to take close up pictures of the nickel coating, if, IF, I even fucking cared. Some people do not need facts, they simply spout off whatever and whenever. Eventually, some people have enough of that shit and call it out. Because Tupsu called someone out they want to follow him around whining like a little bitch.
I have no reason to doubt him, he has always been honest in everything I have read. I won't say he, or anyone hasn't made a mistake, but I know for myself, again, who cares, we all do.

In closing I would have to say for the people who love to run in riding the dog. Simply read back and see what he has done in this thread, and then, check out a couple of these. Quite entertaining:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=905210.0

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1018906.0


Don't spend all of your time in one or the other of those threads. It will burn you out seeing the same crap time after time.
What they do not provide are enough specific examples of the bad information he has given people but it doesn't take much reading back through the posts to see all of the times he does exactly what he did in this thread. Post behind someone trying to make them look unintelligent without any reasons at all. If Tupsu has been guilty of anything it has been due to a language issue, but the mutt wants to badger and badger without any realistic reason. People like Tupsu are valuable to our community. He actually does things with equipment and posts about it. Maybe Tupsu should regurgitate the manufacturer specifications and clutter the forum with such.
 

I cleaned them all, not just one. Already when I got back to the rest of the two blades from repair.
But I'm not trying to prove anything.

You are here this person who  are all suspects.

I am satisfied with the guarantee.

I packed today 3 x S7 of over heating  burn out blades to ship them back to China. And I also got UPS shipping label.

S5 + is for me already forgotten phase. All work perfectly in the end. They work for me as single cubes with S7 controller each of cubes. I found them a place where electricity is 0.08 euro kW/h and they are used for heating.

2 units are still for sale (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=858962.0)

So you can show us how they changed color and the nickel plating magically disappeared, right??


If you're not willing to back up your serious allegations then don't make them.

He made a ridiculous and damaging claim about a product which he is now unable to back up. I guess you two aren't used to being called out


Yes, by posting disparaging statements in every thread in order to 'expedite' his warranty claims.


He is more than welcome to do so, as are you and anyone else.


As with those threads (which were run by one person with 18 account accounts (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1064824.0)), I don't back down to shills and alts. Whether you think you're shilling for a pool, for an exchange, for Bitmain, Spondoolies *cough*, for fun or otherwise, I will call you out every single time. Bitcoin is too important a technology to be rotted away by corporate interests.

http://www.reactiongifs.us/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/picard_clapping.gif

Altruist of the year here folks.  

Interestingly enough you don't have much problem with the corporate interests when they align with your own in the form of income.

I was going to make some similar snarky remark, and was amused to see someone else beating me to the punch ;)

Meta isn't one of dogie's strongest suits...

If you want to continue to discuss that you can do so in meta or a scam accusation. It doesn't matter who pays or doesn't pay me, I get accused of being biased in both and all directions at once which doesn't make any sense. Even now its being claimed that I am somehow biased in this situation when:

1. The claimant provided a picture of a mixture of nickel plated and non nickel plated heatsinks claiming that its not actually nickel plating but normal heatsinks from a charred and burnt miner Bitmain sent him.
2. A claim has been made that when he cleaned the heatsinks they changed color to match the others
3. The claimant made these claims during a period he was struggling to get Bitmain to agree to a warranty return.
4. The claimant posted these claims in every Bitmain thread in an effort to force Bitmain to accept his return in response to his silence.
5. The claimant now refuses to provide any proof what so ever to backup the claims, even with continued involvement in the thread, a camera and heatsinks which would "prove" the claims.

That's some Katete level logic going on there if one is to conclude that is a bias....

Keep on chewing that bone, dogie. You're cute when you start barking in that squeaky voice of yours.

first picture
https://i.imgur.com/bRPEwbE.jpg (https://i.imgur.com/bRPEwbE.jpg)
Click to enlarge
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Three today's image

https://i.imgur.com/IowvQwf.jpg?1 (https://i.imgur.com/IowvQwf.jpg?1)
Click to enlarge


https://i.imgur.com/3fuN6KP.jpg (https://i.imgur.com/3fuN6KP.jpg)
Click to enlarge


https://i.imgur.com/h77LAK5.jpg (https://i.imgur.com/h77LAK5.jpg)
Click to enlarge

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

First of all, I was wrong - I have never cleaned this blade which is in the picture.

In this blade   all the radiators should be nickel plated heatsinks. From original left only 12 nickel plated heatsinks, others have been replaced in China. Therefore they sent me someone else's burnt and repaired blade for replacements . It is not mine blade, as I thought at the beginning of posting picture.

I cleaned only  S5+ blades with pure aluminium radiators, I have a total 27 x S5+ blades. So there is nothing strange in this, that I mixed miners.
I also have 3 blades, having both sides of the blade nickel plated heatsinks. How is this possible ? My one S5+ miner was complete with 3 difrent type of blades.

The radiator is now cleaned himself with hot air flow.

Thus, it is very easy to see the difference first picture and today's images.