Bitcoin Forum

Statements from BFL Josh/Inaba/BFL themselves

http://www.butterflylabs.com/bitforce-sc-release-notes/

October 10, 2012
https://forums.butterflylabs.com/showthread.php/104-Shipping-in-2-3-weeks?p=1461&viewfull=1#post1461

https://forums.butterflylabs.com/showthread.php/188-Information-from-Bitcoin-Magazine?p=2636&viewfull=1#post2636

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=112543.0

See further in this post: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=112700.msg1297999#msg1297999

Come on guys... if this was ANYONE else except for BFL they would have had scammer tags already!  The community has given them hundreds of thousands of their dollars, waited month upon month, and has not seen a word of honest discourse from them about the state of their products.

If you're waiting on something, why not tell us?  Why not tell us what it is?  Why not at least provide process details for your ASIC like Avalon?  Ridiculous.

Maybe I'm not getting upset because I've been through this before with the FPGA's. Just keep mining with your video cards and try to enjoy the holidays.

Seriously. Thanks for another wonderfully useless BFL thread OP!

Maybe I'm not getting upset because my existing GPU/FPGA farm is making decent money for me already... Also I got bought BTC8.5 worth of pies from a local farmer yesterday... gonna be a grand thanksgiving day.
 ;D

On the other hand, those of us who've dealt with BFL before... were expecting these sort of delays... as should anyone who's ever worked for a small business...

When someone asked me when ASICs were coming out (about 6 months ago) I said well BFL says oct. but it probably won't be until march. I stand by that statement, as it was made then.

With more competition (Just wait Tom's gonna release on time). . . it's becoming more important that BFL get product out the door before Jan. But I wouldn't count on it.

+1

Collection of shitloads of money: tick
Delivery in October: fail
Delivery in November: fail
Release of specifications (at least some basic stuff like manufacturing process): fail
Working Prototype: fail
Community representative (Yochdog) visiting BFL premises: fail

Here we can watch Inaba troll his own customer base!  What a guy!



https://btc-e.com/images/chat/12.png

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=112700.msg1350101#msg1350101

Well I'm going to cancel January 1st My order number is in the 10,000's early October. I don't have any mining equipment.

Some have suggested I sell my units order positions and frankly I have no idea on doing that. I see the difficulty increasing daily and the reward dropping.

Yea I'm bitching but I'm bored and out a little under a grand so I guess I have a little standing here. I would liked to have known a head of time that I would be waiting till March. I thought if they start shipping November and I ordered in October I should expect DEC or Jan.

However to tell us October then recant it and say November now I see them saying late January. I hate being dicked around.

I'm not a fan of this.

BFL Jan 1 = Cancel

Flame away

"By the end of January assuming no snags or anything." -quote BFL JOSH
link below
https://forums.butterflylabs.com/pre-sales-questions/393-orders.html#post5587 (https://forums.butterflylabs.com/pre-sales-questions/393-orders.html#post5587)



1 single little SC and a Jala fresh sale
10/10/2012   10706   N   0   1   0   0   -   Mooc Tals
10/12/2012   10833   N   0   0   1   0   -   MooC Tals

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=89685.0;topicseen (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=89685.0;topicseen)
  

Customer base? You call that clown Frizz23 customer base? Even a customer? With his dozens of fake accounts pretending to have ordered everywhere, but actually hasn't anywhere?
The real question by now is: Should tacotime get a Troll tag?

If they did not allow refunds i might agree. But since they do, no scammer tag for them.

At http://www.butterflylabs.com/index.php?s=refund they say :
In my opinion a good refund will be when the customer wants it, not a condition like this.

That sucks ^ People ordered with a much earlier ship date in mind..

How would you know? Do you work for BFL? No (although some might think they pay you *g*). Do you have access to their books? No.

So again guessing and speculations - a BFL asshamsters favourite waste of time.

I understand why BFL did that.  I would think they anticipated that people would start demanding refunds once the delivery date was delayed by so many months.  They also should have known that the date they were publicly stating wasn't possible.  The concern for the customers should be when these aren't delivered on January first and the flood of refund requests come in.  This would most likely put the company in severe cash flow problems as I would think they have already paid their suppliers, rent, and employees.  

(All the above is obviously speculation as I am just basing my theories on general business operations, and have no specific knowledge of BFL.)

I am almost positve, based on a diff thread i read, they would do a refund for anyone who asked. But that statement above by them is very shady. Almost like they knew their initial delivery date was bull crap. As well as saying nov. I wonder when they decided on that refund boiler plate agreement. Prob after most orders were in.

Pirate paid quite a lot of interest until his operations shut down, and everyone thought it was legitimate until they lost their money.  What happens if everyone wants a refund from BFL at the same time?

This: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=123719.msg1340618#msg1340618

Well, I guess I'm not the only one who has lost confidence lately, there's 5 ASIC preorders for sale in the buy/sell forum...  I wonder why they just don't ask BFL for a refund if it's so easy?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=127177.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=127003.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=126695.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=124233.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=126764.0

I never had confidence.  That's why I won't order until I see they actually exist and calculate my ROI.  Sure, if they do materialize, I'll be at the back of the line on receiving, but I don't have to stress out over whether I just lost several $1000 on vaporware. 

https://btc-e.com/images/chat/12.pnghttps://btc-e.com/images/chat/12.pnghttps://btc-e.com/images/chat/12.png

(only if Inaba gets one too)

And wtf has BFL to do with pirate and his mostly retard clients thinking there is a thing called free money? Running out of arguments?
I don't need to see their books to know what a lying troll you are, wasting time bashing BFL is your specialty with your shitload of accounts to play with here and at the bfl forum. With your made up identities, orders and complaints, come on, give us your order number or put it the the SC order thread at the marketplace section?

Anyone asking for a refund at BFL has gotten it promptly. Only a few asked, because they needed the cash for who knows what.
But hey, never mind, keep trolling, spreading fud, plain lying like Frizz23, it's pretty obvious the anti BFL league is kind of loosing their minds over their soon obsolete mining farms.



Fail. Have you read the comments why they are selling? Or did you have so much haste to troll something new that you skipped that? Go on, read them. No one complaining BFL did not want to refund them, most are singles with a trade in contract to a new order, one wants to make a nice profit by asking 50btc for 2 jalapenos. One is related to the closure of gblse and his mining farm.

That and the fact BFL probably already cashed out to USD.

Yes BFL should get a scammer tag.

LOL  ;D ;D ;D ... that was meant to be sarcastic, right? Or a joke. Please tell me you are not that dumb ...

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Yeah what has BFL "and his mostly retard clients thinking there is a thing called free money" ?

I see, you were one of the clowns that did! ps: 40 GH/s -> 60 GH/s = +50%, professor Frizz

Oh hell  >:(  .........these guy's have 4 days off folks,its gonna be fun  :D

http://i204.photobucket.com/albums/bb185/MyChemicalAllysion/one-flew-over-the-cuckoos-nest-s-1.jpg

Refund is in current USD equivalent, so all they'd have to do is rebuy bitcoins with the same USD.

Look who else earns a well-deserved holiday:

http://www.littlereview.com/goddesslouise/art/cuckoo/coycuck.jpg

Oh yeah.........................if she weren't so snooty,she might be kinda sweet  ;D

They don't need to cash out. They haven't even seen a Bitcoin. They are being paid in cold hard fiat US Dollars via BitPay.

I doubt they'll even do a refund...

If theymos could, create a BFL section strictly for BFL, please! bfl this and bfl that, everywhere here :p .

My understanding is that a few already have gotten refunds.  So much for that bit of speculation.

Within the last couple days?

If they did not refund at any request, it would be mentioned here immediately in 6 topics at least, wouldn't it?

While looking at one of the 80 BFL threads I swear I saw a quote by BFL mentioning that purchases are non refundable on ASIC products..


either way. I don't care..

I agree with having an ASICs or BFL forum for these posts.

I also agree with the notion that it would spread pretty damn fast if they didn't issue a refund. People would start pulling out and issue charge backs and all of that. I know I would.

That being said I think people should relax. Honestly. Of course this company gave a date that was far more exciting than the final shipping date... That always happens, even with much larger, much more trusted companies. If you really don't want to wait then cancel your order and let us know how that goes.

This is a project technology guys. It's custom made. This is not them slapping together some GPU/FPGA parts and selling them as a package. It's an entire project. The only thing I would begrudge them for is not giving a more realistic shipping or completion date. But I hold that against so many companies, especially gaming companies.

Just... relax... If you didn't have the money to waste then you shouldn't have paid for some new fangled technology that only has one single purpose and had a release date months down the line...

If you ask for one,they will give it you.Several folks have asked & recieved them on the BFL forums recently.

Even with FPGA units they had horrible shipping delays, still do for all I know, so it is not like people should have expected anything different with ASICs it seems to be SOP with this company.

Pretty sure they're doing refunds despite the shady notification that pre-order funds are non-refundable. I've also seen posts from BFL reps suggesting a conditional refund policy. Something like, "we'll honor refunds if we don't ship by 1/31/2013" or some such.

All that said, I think they've been completely dishonest about this entire thing. They NEVER should have opened their pre-orders so early in the year, and they definitely never should have promised a date they couldn't deliver. People committed funds months ago based on those promises, and they have a right to expect those promises to be honored. The typical BFLites will dismissively say "well anyone that accepted their release date doesn't know BFL", but that doesn't wash.

Yes BFL deserves a scammer tag. Repeatedly lying when money has changed hands is scamming, period. Even if they do eventually ship, BFL customers will have been cheated of their money from the time they ordered to the time they receive products, during which time the products they bought will have dropped in value substantially due to greatly increased competition.

Every single person that has actually asked for a refund has received it.

And for the millionth time, the "end of January delivery" quote is if you ordered now. Way to copy and paste only what you felt like instead of the actual quote and context. Get a job in politics.

Inaba would run against him and likely outspend and out lie him. Political fail.

The fact that people have gotten refunds when requested...a good thing, but it still doesn't explain the multiple conflicting policies on this subject. This stuff is a fixture with BFL. They can't seem to ever get on the same page.

I think they either don't know how to update thier webpage or just don't WANT to  :P

Wow  :o squeept dosen't have a BFL "moniker" & knows as much about BFL as I  :o  :D

Anyone who has been waiting more than 30 days after they sent their payment is entitled to a refund under US law. So, they sure as hell better be honoring refund requests.

They never lied.  They said that they expect shipments to be made late October, but no guaranteed shipments until January 1st.  Then they changed it to expecting shipments early November, then early December.  Always, these were NOT guaranteed ship dates.  The only guaranteed date is January 1st.

Doubt they'll make that either. They said this won't be like their botched FPGA paper launch, but it's exactly the same. They run the same playbook again and again. It's painfully obvious why they've been so secretive and why their delays are always just a couple more weeks...just a couple more weeks. Rinse...repeat.

We'll be talking about this exact same thing in January. 

From the information I've seen, the 30 days time limit only applies where no specific delivery timeline was specified. Since BFL did state an expected delivery time of October, as soon as they missed that deadline they were required to contact everyone who'd ordered from them and tell them that their order wouldn't arrive on time and they'd get a full refund. (Actually, legally I think they're meant to automatically refund anyone who hasn't explicitly consented to the delay 30 days after the original delivery deadline, but that's probably not workable.) Note that the FTC guidance I read explicitly stated it was the earliest delivery estimate that mattered, so if you quote an estimate of October and then add a bit elsewhere in the small print that you won't refund before January, the fine print's not going to save you.

No sweat...the October shipping schedule was "fuzzy" and the 5th week of November shipping schedule was "hairy" so you should just fall back to the early late January shipping schedule with regard to legal action against this ethical, but extremely unlucky company.

Definately should get a scammer tag. Josh should also get a Douche tag :P

BFL and Pirate, bitcointalk admins let pirates ponzi play out completely. 
Shills abound, several of pirates fools/shills overlap with BFL's investors/shills heavily so it comes as no surprise.

No scammers tags are only for little fish on bitcointalk, big fish are welcome to bribe and buy their way out of any situation they can, if they cant THEN they get the scammers tag.

Their delivery timeline is, and always has been, somewhere between late October and January 1st.

Yeah I got it. The October delivery thing was just to draw the pre-orders away from competitors.

It's December 5, 2012 and BFL is hoping to receive respun chips next week. Does anyone seriously believe this company is going to ship out anything but more BS by January 1, 2013?

Let's look at their actual statements, not your opinions:


They gave every impression that they'd really really be shipping in October. October came and went. November came and went. December is going to come and go, and you'll keep making excuses for them. Get ready for the yearly BFL Chinese New Year excuse for more delays.

They certainly were planning to ship out in October.  So?  Unforeseen delays happened.  What do you expect them to do?

I expect them to not play word games with my hard earned money and therefore labor. Anybody reading this is going to believe this means they're shipping in October, but that's NOT what it means. It's like an official statement from Bill Clinton. Examine Josh's statements more closely and you will find this is a recurring theme. The man says NOTHING without a whole bunch of weasel clauses.

Every company has the representative(s) it deserves -> BFL must really be a shitty company.

I expect them to tell the truth.

They were not "highly experienced", they're working on their first ASIC and finding out ASIC design isn't as easy as FPGA routing.
They were not "a market leader in microprocessor design", they are FPGA programmers.
They had no real hope of "shipments for October", they just wanted you to think that so you wouldn't buy from someone else.
They were not "installing high-speed equipment", they were simply bidding on ebay for such hardware.
They don't have "venture capital funding", they just have $19 million stolen from customers in a mail fraud scheme and a lot of customer pre-order funds.

I'm scheduling to retire with $10 million in the bank next week. Do you believe that?

YES! Moreover I have a ONCE IN A LIFETIME investment opportunity for you my friend! :P

December is a bust, and probably January as well. Although I'm wondering what they will release that will keep people from pulling massive amounts of refunds. I bet they release some form of evidence of a working prototype around Christmas, a video most likely.

1) Highly experienced in their industry in general is what I would take that to mean.  I would assume they mean that they have engineers onboard who have designed ASICs for other projects before.  Obviously, they hadn't designed an ASIC for Bitcoin mining before.  No one had.
2) They've probably developed ASICs before, which are most certainly microprocessors.
3) You have no proof of them lying about this.
4) Ok, I agree, a lie, or at the very least, a half-truth.  They should have clarified this by stating "procuring and installing high-speed equipment".  However, I still put this statement in a much different pool than I would put them in if they said the same thing and they weren't actually buying any equipment to install.
5) You have no proof of them lying about this.

And no, I wouldn't believe you, because you haven't given me good reason to believe you.  However, if you began to post verifiable indicators of your vast store of wealth, such as photos of you driving your Ferrari and pictures of your Bitcoin miners inside your mansion, I might believe you.

See how you have to bend over backwards to believe their claims. They're the one making claims that no one can verify.


How did you know I just bought a Ferrari? I'm installing it in my garage right now.

https://i.imgur.com/dIlxd.jpg

creativex has another opportunity for me, so things are looking very bright for my retirement.

Sure thing buddy! Just lemme get these clock buffers installed. Things will be right as rain!

How many MHash does that thing provide?

Right.  They have chosen not to allow some of their claims to be verified.  That is NOT the same as lying.  Again, I believe them because they have given me no reason not to believe them.  If they had a history of lying, then I wouldn't believe them.  Thus far, they have had a history of bad estimates and poor wording, but no broken promises or outright lies.  Because of their history, I expect their estimates to be off and I request clarification on anything important that isn't cut-and-dry, but I don't expect them to lie.

When you post a picture of you driving it (as well as some image verifying that the driver is actually you, perhaps by holding up a sign of your bitcointalk username), then I might start believing you.  ;)

How many times do they need to break a promise before it is considered to be lying? Hundreds of customers over many months were promised products "in 6-8 weeks", and none of them got it when promised. They have a clear history of distorting and stretching the truth. To me that indicates a strong likelyhood that anything not verifiable is likely a lie from them.


Think they still might make that "late November" date? Since they don't specify the year, I guess they mean 2013 so they're not lying, right?

It has now been more than a month. Who is the test lab? What was the result?

<Face Palm>, I didn't realize this until just now.

But in the response, the statement of two weeks is actually posed as a question rather than a statement....

http://www.antifeministtech.info/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/godzilla_facepalm.jpg

Lets hope for the best.

Visit the following thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=128840.msg1381541#msg1381541

This is called cherry picking, and it usually means they are hiding shitloads.

I can agree to that possibility.  It still doesn't equate to lying, and I still give them the benefit of the doubt.

When does that benefit get retracted? These folks are dishonest. BFL reps are still peddling the prospect of late December shipping to customers, that's just flat out lying given what we know about the state of their assembly process.

It's interesting that when I purchased my fpga equipment from them I was expecting 6 - 8 weeks and got them in under a month.

Well,I understand how hard it is to make something noone else has ever made before.

So,I'm not giving up on BFL......or anyone else for that matter,bASIC,Avalon,etc....  ;)

These devices will come when they come  :P

come on guys, why wouldnt you trust a cunt convicted con man like Sonny ?
Anyone one that gouges senior citizens out of 22 Million USD then has the balls to say they made a bad investment after serving his sentence is obviously trustworthy.
And if your not going to trust a company chaired by a ex con who only stepped aside as CEO when his past was revealed then why not trust the man child Inaba, he is just waiting to type up an agnsty 3.5 pages of teeth gnashing & insults.

BFL lost the good will required for the benefit of the doubt a long time ago, see asshat inaba's post history for justification.
You are dealing with a convicted felon, an immature ego maniac and a company that has record for dishonestly only matched by Pirate's Ponzi.

another gem from inaba

That quote is well written. Sounds like it comes from experience.