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I own and run a miner farm consisting of S5,S4 antminers and SP.

I have experienced serious problems with S5.5 of them are problematic.They have bad boards and controllers.I have contacted with Ms.Sherry who is customer representative of Bitmain.She is very friendly and caring.However, they want me to send broken parts (boards and controllers) with UPS, and they say THEY ARE GOING TO DECIDE WHETHER IT IS DUE TO IMPROPER USE OR NOT.

Is it ethical? The manufacturer will decide if it is due to improper use and if it is her fault she is going to replace it.This is really immoral.How can someone can judge and give decision for himself.This must change.Bitmain must select someone for each country or territory to decide.Bitmain must pay to these guys but they must be independent.

Have you had such an experience?What are your customer experience with them?

bitmaintech sends gear quickly.-----------------I ordered direct around 20 times a total of about 30 pieces of gear  everyone on time or early.


bitmaintechs' gear works at better then 90%---------------of 30 s-1's s-3's and s-5's 1 bad s-1


bitmaintech is only so so replacing bad gear.--------------- they  where very bad at  replacing the broken s-1 I had it replaced by minersource instead.


I won't count the 240 plus u-1's and u-2's as I purchased from resellers.  about 3 or 4 of around 240 usb sticks were duds.

I  sent all my broken Antminer S5 parts to Bitmaintech (Serbia).

Read more   Bitmain tech support and warranty  (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=955755.msg11037425#msg11037425)

Bitmain can not decide improper use or manufacturer fault.She is the manufacturer.

You can not judge yourself and make decision.It is not ethical.That is what I say.

I do not say they do not deliver on time what I say is we need a third party to decide if a part is not working because of improper use or faulty manufacture.

Well your wrong, that is how everything works.  You bring your broken phone, computer, insert gadget here, into where you bought it from, they decide if they replace it for you.

Its not fair you didn't listen and overclocked your units which broke them and voided your warranty, and now your complaining about it.  Besides, they can't tell anything from the blades about how you ran them so just send them back and they will get replaced.

I am an aerospace engineer.I know what they are technically capable of and not.It is not about money, it is just not ethical.

Although my opinion varies on their sales and marketing.  Their warranty and repair of non warrantied equipment is top notch.  Albeit from their lack of replacement parts on hand which tends to be nill, my experience was Bitmain US in Denver. 

I'm not one to judge but could you give specifics of what issues you had?  I bought a few s1s back in January last year and I only had a problem with one of them having a dashboard that toasted out - they replaced it immediately and sent me shipping to return the failed piece.  I think they've been burned before.  That doesn't justify feeling like you're being taken advantage of here.  This probably wouldn't be a big deal but because you used bitcoin, there's no return recourse for you (you can't just issue a chargeback)

I don't see a question of ethics - as long as you feel confident about your return shipping quality, you should be fine, if that was really a worry or issue, then you should have acquired shipping insurance so that you would have been compensated for filing a claim had it BEEN damaged as a result of shipping. 

can you tell me how so >  warranty and repair of non warrantied equipment is top notch .  i just tried once again to buy two hash boards even offered to send in my boards for repair got a really rude reply back on that one,  I don't care if there new or used as long as they work i don't need a warranty either but they want more then what it costs for a used/second hand  S5  . mine is out of warranty, that's top notch ? .


Ive been treated way better in warranty by them. i may have it sold on ebay any way , i was just hoping to save to a few bucks and keep it, i planed to buy a used/second hand one if it sold sense they increased the warranty to 30 days .. and it makes better sense to buy it used/second hand S5 at least then i know it's ok . and Works , some times buying used is best just depends who you buy from .

This was just my experience with them.  Like I said  they fail when it comes to spare parts for miners.  You can't hope for them to repair everything after warranty is over.  This is just the way the industry is.

This is pretty standard by any manufacturer, when I used to repair electronics. Sony, Panasonic and many others required us to void warranties if the water sensor was ever tripped, keep in mind that if the camera or electronics is in cold A/C and you take it out on a hot humid day it may trip the sensor.  Other then that most got repaired under warranty.

Is it moral since its their money and their deciding?  Probably not, but they will not go out of their way not to honor their warranty cause if people complain in mass its ruins their reputation.  So in the case of 5 miners, I would expect them to be honest.

I will pass trough this experience and share my experience with you.

I don't know if it's moral or not.   But some people put the units under pretty horrible conditions.   I remember when SP20 showed one that had salt water damage I believe.   It is crazy but I have heard of some just down right bad conditions for miners.

Shipping it back is a normal procedure.  Most likely there are some good parts they can reuse.   A good example is S3 controller boards.  Most bricked boards they were able to make come back to life.   So shipping them back provided a source of a good amount of controller boards for future returns.  Ethical... i do not know but I think that was a business decision not ethics.

What did they decide on yours op?

How is this not ethical?? You could be running the S5s in a bad environment with not adequate cooling with boards hashing at 100C. You want bitmain to just keep sending you free boards because your farm is not setup right? They have the right to check the boards to see what is causing the issue, and its pretty easy to confirm that the boards were overheated etc.

cool but my point is I'm wiling to pay for out of warranty Service.  In the past in the US all places like MSI ASUS etc usually have a set fee for that kind of service and don't do this , I live in the US . I thought the  Us has a law to cover this or did, the law for out of warranty service says they  can only charge so much and not the price of a new or used one if they offer repair servcie or parts. sense they told me or gave me a price it falls under that law , even went as far as told me to send in the hash boards. but it's cool , I 'm letting it go. it was just how they handled it all hard nosed and for no reason . like knocking off a 100 to 120  bucks would hurt them or the shipping .  in the past when i bought stuff from them in the US from Denver they were very nice and treated me kindly like i mattered . I gave some really kind words to them for that .

This process is no different than Apple, Sony, or any of the big electronics manufacturers.  If you don't like the terms of their warranty, don't buy the product, or don't submit to warranty.  If you think it is immoral, you shouldn't have consented to buying their products with that understanding, but to expect them to have third party assessments conducted? Keep dreaming, it would be a complete waste of money.  And, if they didn't have an internal department that performed preliminary inspections on faulty hardware, they would just open themselves up to abuse and we as the consumer would end up paying more for the product.  I don't follow your reasoning in the slightest, and your education/experience is irrelevant to them in making this determination.

CK, I know you are on a rampage right now cleaning up hardware, but this is a very relevant hardware discussion in fairness, and I'm sure we are all interested to see how Bitmain's warranty department is doing.

OP didn't even say he overclocked those machines. Where did you get that from?

Sending back those devices will cost you a lot. I hope they replace them for you.

Why else would the OP be complaining?  If he had nothing to hide then it would be little issue to just send the units back, have them evaluated, and issued new components, as Bitmain does every day with other customers.

Maybe instead of complaining he should be grateful that they offer a warranty service and would take the time and money to pay and train employees to do this work.  It surely would be cheaper if they dropped the warranty program and didn't have to worry about faulty units that weren't claimed faulty after a day or two of receiving them.

I think he wants some guarantee. As sending those equipments from Turkey to Serbia costs at least 100$. When you send them if they tell you it's your own fault and they won't replace it, then he'll lose a lot of money from both equipments and shipping costs. Nobody wants to make international shipping for broken equipments.

I gave them high regards since they repaired my out of warranty S4 for only the cost of the part and initial shipping to them.  When it came to pay the bill I was offered choices which in turn were discounted even further on payment.  I didn't ask for it.  I believe they work weekends as well at Denver.  You can't compare Bitmain to a Sony or such company and shouldn't think their product follows the same suit.  You don't see the PS4 selling for 2k then drop to $400 in a few months.  These companies fall into a different demographic unfortunately.

People don't make a fuss about these things unless they know it's their own fault & hope to get free replacements for it.

My experience with Bitmain support is awfull, they loop you in an endless cycle of posing the same question in a different form, and having me repairing problems that they were responsible for. Having said that, I do think Bitmain is one of the best Hardware suppliers, from over the 20 miners I've bought from them, only one had issues. But support is simply non-existent to me :)

My problem is, I will send cargo money to China (60 USD for hasboard, 120 USD for complete S5), and it is up to them to decide whether it is due to bad manufacturing or improper use.

Besides the financial issue, I do not understand why there is not a third party , technical escrow service, who is paid by Bitmain but not binded them.

According to me, if Bitmain should not decide herself whether she manufactured badly or not.I see this not a financial problem but an ethical problem.However, if you agree with the warranty procedure of Bitmain, we are only protected with Bitmain's goodwill but not any written, tangible rules.

We own a mining farm with my partners.We own hundreds of miners.When you make an investment you want to limit your risks and hedge all the risks.Here, I see a risk.Obviously, the majority is fine with the regulation of Bitmain.

There are some problems with S5.It is due to firmware.When the internet is cut but power is on, the fans are not working (if you do not fix it to fixed value with the latest firmware update).There are also some controller problems, you can not access into the miner due to this problem.

There are also some problematic chips which do not work.If a chip does not work all hashboard does not work.

The badly manufactured miners are 5% of the total (for the 90 days period).When usage period increases, this percentage may increase (it increased for S4).

I recommend some solution:

1)A free third part service, financially supported by Bitmain but free administration.
2)An expert employed by Bitmain may come to large farms to perform checks if the farm owner pays the transportation and accomodation costs.
3)Bitmain may agree with local electronic services to make pre controls and service fee is invoiced to customers.

Regards,
Gablay



 

I can say with large lots of units, it takes more than a few days to weed out the bad ones. If they are just plain dead that *is* pretty easy to troubleshoot, isolate, and prepare for warranty repair. But most of my faulty units have been intermittent out of box, quickly deteriorating from that state to only one hashing board will be online. It takes alot of monitoring to find these in a large lot. In addition I reseated the faulty hashing boards to try to wake them up again, and was successful half of the time. But this step requires monitoring all over again to check the results of your work. It takes a good 24 hours or more of hashing to get a good reliable reading.

Basically all I am saying here, is it took me a whole month to weed out the bad hardware for warranty repair.

Your concerns are valid as a farm owner, but Bitmain has no reason to change their in-house quality control/technical assessment.  If you don't like the way they do it, you are free to buy elsewhere (but unfortunately, nothing else is available).  This is how free markets work, and at the end of the day if Bitmain adopted your suggested policies, all of their customers would end up paying more for miners (costs incurred are transferred to the customer). It may be a risk, but show me an industry/investment without its risks and I'll show you a liar :).  Besides, from a financial risk point of view, the idea that Bitmain may knowingly and wilfully refuse warranty without cause is among the lower of risks IMO.  The farm catching fire, hardware theft, power/internet interruption, crash in bitcoin price, these are the things I would spend my wakeless nights worrying about.

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