Bitcoin Forum

I think it is time someone finally broke the Silence on Bitmain's dickish behavior to consumers.

I have several batches of L3+, S9s and soon to be coming in D3, apart from this, I have many other machines including Avalons and Ebit E9+

Several months ago, I bought some L3+ for the August batch, late august batch, september batch and late september batch.

The first batches came out absolutely fine! the miners were brand new, and everything ran very peachy.

However, my late August batch just came in. And I immediately noticed very peculiar things about it.

1st: The tapes were OLD, like yellowly old.
2nd: The miners appear to have some wear and tear to them, however, there were not dust on them but it appeared they were cleaned off.
3rd and most importantly: I checked the firmware, and there was something really off!

The first few batches that came, came with firmware 1.0.1.3 which was the latest one at the time (and still is I believe)
http://i67.tinypic.com/zj8b42.jpg

However, the NEWER September batch came with firmware 1.0.1.1
http://i67.tinypic.com/jj19xt.jpg

Not only this. The older August batch were all really good, they are still going strong.

However, the new September batch now has 3 machines with broken Hashboards and 1 that restarts itself every 5 minutes or so.

So I have to conclude that Bitmain either

1. Ships out very shitty ass products that breaks after 3 days of use

or the more likely

2. They purposefully ship out their old miners after cleaning because they oversold the miners or are turning over their old miners for new ones.


This would all be ok IF they told us that they sold used miners. But nope, I paid new miner money for old, broken miners.

I will keep you all updated on the RMA process after golden week!

After 3 days of mining !

http://i65.tinypic.com/3463o86.jpg

It's a shame they sell old equipment branded as new. Is there another alternative supplier or do you recommend to buy miners rather from ebay if available?

There are a number of competitors, but sadly, Bitmain miners will always have the better numbers (efficiency, speed etc).

However, It may actually not be the most profitable if you are a small farm. Your chances of getting a bad batch, or bad machine is pretty much almost 100% in the long run. That plus the long wait time is something to think about.


Competitors:

Baikal
Innosilicon
Pinidea
Canaan Creative
BW.com
whatsminer
Ebang


anyone else got more lemon miners share in this thread!

It's a known fact Bitmain uses miners before shipping and to my knowledge they don't do anything about it even if you do happen to tell them about it. For Bitcoin, Ebit, Avalon and Bitfury miners if you can get your hands on them are better and probably not used. It's a shame that this, combined with expensive servicing if a miner breaks that makes Bitmain terrible to buy from. Not to mention it's them behind the recent and upcoming forks, which is more political.

It's not just that, but they mine for extended periods of time. It's known Canaan/Avalon test their miners and their own rigs on Kano and that is fine; their quality is good and the miners they sell aren't like some Antminers (and they don't mine for long periods of time with em :)). Bitmain also has terribly slow support and many times they reject perfectly good claims.

Only Bitmain considers running a machine for several months to be "standard testing" and not just, you know, using it. Been like that since the S5 days. I don't think they shipped out a single S5 that wasn't choked with dust.

Maybe they've updated their website ...

... but last time I looked I didn't see any references indicating what you are buying is "new".

We just rightfully assume it's new.

M

If I were them, I'd not even consider selling any of them, until after about 6 months of running, or when the next model is almost done, so you can flood the market with your used batch to finance ramping up production for the next version that'll take over the mining for another 6-12 months. For a project their size (production capacity) there's plenty of investors/funds willing to move large amounts of money to bankroll the operation.

If I were them I'd run them for about 1 day and then ship them to the next paying customer on the list. But most people consider raw profits over not being a self-serving ass. But that mindset tends to wreck economies in the long run. Course I also don't take money from investors/funds either, so I'm allowed to make my own decisions without others trying to buy the right to supercede me.

I can see that your moral compass is weighing you down man ;)

I got an automated reply from "Barbara" we'll see how it goes

Oh, to clarify, it would be far from ethical, and I wouldn't call the company a production company, but a mining company that produces it's own equipment, then sells the used into the market once the in house produced new product is as good as done.

Why are you even mining Bitcoin? if you are not reverse engineering them to manufacture your own miners you are not earning any profit, you are just giving them more money, they will use that money to build miners to use for their own operations. Bitcoin is not for home miners any more.
Don't be stupid to think you are earning any thing, you are paying $1200 and how long would it take for you to earn back that money?

This makes me angry, why would they do that? That's like cheating the customers and I would not buy from them!

I am having the exact same issue as the original poster. I ordered 6 miners and the very next day I have 7 hash boards bad between 3 miners. The miners with the issue have 1.0.1.3 firmware the older firmware working fine.

Welcome to the club lol!

I was offering a hypothetical ;) From a business perspective it makes sense to use first before selling, but as long as you've got superior material (in energy efficiency) it would be crazy not to let it run for a while before shipping. Then again, Bitmain should be honest about what they're doing before shipping. As was mentioned somewhere before, they don't explicitly state the hardware is new, but that is what you would reasonably expect :)

Ive been to bitmains hardware testing facility and watched them test miners. It is not a full on datacenter, and they do not run them very long. Also, at the end of the s7 production run they did advertise the last few batches as being used and they were offered at a discount because of this.

classic Chinese hw business, selling stuff used for new

ppl dont buy from bitmain or any other company like that fuck the asics go get some gpu and mine gpu coins more centralized!! bitmain controlls the btc hashrate and this is a shame... 3rd but not least do you realy think someone sells you devices you get millioner with no no they wont they will use it self !!! sry4badenglish :)

Yeah but this is the BTC board, where people go to talk about mining BTC because they want to mine BTC. GPU coins and the people who want to mine them instead are talked about somewhere else.

They can't mine themselves.

 BTC  or any cryptocoin needs multiple miners.

So  they have a balancing act of mining  some coins for their self  and selling some gear for us.

The issue is they are really really really fucking slow to repair the gear when gear breaks.

In my opinion  the worst issue is hashnest.

They rent you a miner.

the s-7 or the s-9

No one audits them.

So if they  rent you an s-7  and charge you  45%  of your coins earned for maintenance
No on checks to see if they are using an s-7

they could be using an s-9   which should be 20% of your coins for maintenance


so if the s-7s they rent   make 10 million usd a year  they charge  4.5 million

this would mean  they spend 2 million on power if they are using s-9's    a score of 2.5 million.

No enforcement on this  no way to know if they do it.

this = big money

22 cents a th daily
I have the top 40 selling offers listed below
there are many other sellers

https://i.imgur.com/EOOhFZ4.png

https://i.imgur.com/xdux1Zs.png

https://i.imgur.com/MWaU24c.png

https://i.imgur.com/shE29op.png

    
 PROOF: Bitmain is selling old hardware as NEW miners!

LMAO who needed Proof it's all ways been that way ....

I hope when japan starts to take over next year that company is honest and sells new gear and not used shit .Sense it's a free world company we just might see some form of honestly again ..  i know some will say most in the free world are this or that, then go live in china I say lol then come back and say that, soon they will out law bitcoins or limit the use so bad in china no one will care or want to deal with china any more bitcoin wise, SO what if they do there lose the rest of the world won't care in fact in my State BTCS http://www.btcs.com/index.php  has opened the first public US block chain so a email i just got claimed ..things in my state are really starting to look good and not Because of the commander in chief ass hole in office either ..
bitmain  pissed me off to the point i told them fuck off and i haven't bought one thing from them sense and won't but that's me ...I could have a few times so  I put it into GPUS and Scrpt miners etc and I'm not pushing GPU's here, I know better ..I like mining and can't give it up...... mostly for fun and I learn a lot and i will admit it for the cash.


edit

PS: i remember a time when Bitmain may have seemed honest and told us they were selling used miner and sold them as used not any more they don't care .an. in there eyes why should they that got and keep getting what they want form us ...and we let them so who's fault is it really .. well any way GL i hope you some how get some thing back in return at some point .

I've been in schenzen some year  ago, there are whole buildings where they take the used stuff, clean it, change labels, and put them in new cartoons that always produce the original factories. I saw they sell original notebook cartons at $ 20 with manuals and everything new, ready for a used notebook

in china transforming used stuff to new is normal, selling fake stuff is normal, every job that make profit is normal for them

Block chain or blockchain is not a technology, nothing hot, nothing new, as old as hashing.
Blockchain is not green , is not eco, is the most expensive idea ever implemented in the public,
to make "idiots busy" - following an old Internet hoax - How to make idiot busy.

Selling refurbished hardware stuff is as old on the eBay as eBay self.

So you are free to buy or not to buy and negotiate terms, discuss details, exactly as buying new/used car.



That wasn't my point

O an that makes it ok to sell Used junk as new ? ....at least on Ebay you can do something about it in most cases you get your money back.. with bitmain GL.

an in this case this no negotiating terms.. you either buy it or you don't used or new bitmain doesn't care you get what they sell you, with no claim as to if it's new or used and bitmian used to or at least acted like they  cared til the antminer S5 came out an about then they started getting what they think is control , which is to rich for there own good.

You missed my whole point ...

The block chain or  blockchain or whatever , is a technology not a hardware technology but it is a technology and that technology is needed to trade bitcoins or any coin...or mine
I never once thought of it, as a way to get rich, sigh..

why am i even bothering to explain to a Newbie who is either a troll or in learning mode or made a account so he or she could try to make others look bad without letting on who he or she really is ...

I was only commenting about how bad bitmain got over the years because of greed mostly, an there time is coming and we may have some new and fresh players that care or are honest to some degree from the free world an the OP is right , most of us know how bad bitmain is, an it's all ways good to see others prove it .

I'll shut up now before this leads to something it shouldn't...

if the proof is legit then it is a worth of concern, I believe BITMAIN as a hallmark in the field when it comes to buy Miner. many miners company came and gone Butterfly is a example but they never sold an outdated hardware at the new price.
Thanks for alerting though.