Bitcoin Forum

So I am a first batch KnC customer who just got my Mercury at the end of last week.  After some initial difficulties upgrading to the latest firmware etc. I got some help from Henrik from ORSoC in IRC, he ssh'd into my machine changed a bunch of settings and got it hashing at ~100gh/s.  Reason being that 1/4 of my chip is dead due to a hardware issue.  Glancing over the KnC forums I can see that I am far from alone having a defective chip and want to know how to go about getting it replaced.  Henrik from ORSoC mentioned that i will need to return my chip for replacement.

Obviously I have no interest in sending the chip back to Sweden before they can send me back another one, as even the 100 gh/s my miner can do is much better than the 0 I will get as soon as i send it out.  I wanted to post here to see if there is anyway we can try to get KnC Miner to do some sort of advanced RMA program.  They've no doubt proven themselves for their hardware, and ability to keep promises (at least significantly better than every company in the field with the exception of ASICMINER) and hardware issues aside I have had a fantastic customer experience with KnC.  I'd like to see if we can propose some sort of advanced RMA program, where a neutral forum member will hold escrowed BTC funds between KnC's customers and KnC, so that KnC can safely send out replacement chips to customers with defective units, without fear that the customer will run off with both chips. 

This is something I think would be greatly beneficial to all customers who have been affected by hardware defects, and still not place any undue costs on KnC for the advanced replacement of chips.  let me know if there is any support for this sort of program around here, I'm sure will enough support something like this could happen.

+1

tldr: Pay $200/a generic deposit on a credit card. Just have to auth it, dont even need to take it.

They send you new chip. You send back. They cancel auth.

If you don't send chip in, they take the payment.

I'm in favor of whatever mechanism that let me eventually ask for RMA without loosing any GH/s due to HW roundtrip.

+1 to this. I'm basically in the same boat as you.

I would say that replacing the generic deposit with a bitcoin deposit would be another way. There is zero risk for KNC. Perhaps put down a retainer of 4-5 BTC per module, and once the RMA module has been shipped back the BTC deposit should be refunded.

Either works, but the CC method exists as it doesn't require any movement of actual money. I'm sure some KNC customers don't have stacks of cash lying around, also removes the risk for both parties.

I had the this exact same problem.

I RMA's 3 Boards from my Jupiter, they did turn the RMA around the same day the boards arrived , I was down to 1 board for a Full 4 Days.

I did ask if they would ship first they said no, I did point out to them that the Boards would not work without a controller board, but they still said no.

I am going to put an Invoice together for the Loss in Hashing since 16th Oct and when My miner was running at the Advertised speed, I will also be billing them for my time in diagnosing the issue and my RMA postage (60 UK pounds).

I offered to run a repair depot for KNC in the United States, I know my offer made it to them but they have not replied. That was 2 weeks ago.

If they did this, I think people with Saturns and Mercurys would scam them to jump the queue and get extra modules unless Knc charged an exorbitant amount for failure to ship modules back.

That's where a repair depot would be helpful.

They would require a BTC deposit equal to the full cost of the module and they would be fully refunded once the module was returned.

This isn't going to happen either way

then just double up the required deposit so it does not serve any incentive not to return the RMA module  ;)

Yup. I just put $200 as any arbitrary figure.

Also actually receiving money = taxes and paperwork, even if the transactions are reversed.

I dont see why they DONT have this as an option. Almost any tech company I know offers advanced RMA at least for a fee, if not free.

Wow, it was like you guys were reading my mind after I just spent and insanely frustrating hour long conversation with Orsoc. I ended up calling them because the phone at KNC miner seems to have been left off the hook or something.

I received a Jupiter last week that hashed at 520GHs until I updated to 0.9.7 (based on the recommendations on their website) which then killed one of my boards. I asked if there was a way to Frankenstein the board and get it back alive, and if not insisted that they ship a board to me before they receive my defective board back.

I told him that I would provide a credit card as protection against fraud on my part, as well as screen shots showing the dead hashing board at 20C and the Fedex tracking number of the board on it's way back to Sweden. He hemmed and hawed a bit, but I played hard ball with him. The fellow finally came around and agreed that they weren't doing a proper burn in when I pointed out the fact that they ran a total of 8 accepted 512diff hashes on my Jupiter before sending it to me based on the pool stats. Shit, that's not even enough hashes to make sure that all four boards were operational when brought up to working temperatures. He admitted that the Orsoc facility wasn't equipped to run proper burn ins, but assured me that the vast majority of their customers were running at 100% speed. He then slipped in the fact that a 0.9.8 was being "released today......maybe tomorrow.... they are working very hard to fix the problems with 0.9.7". I was like "wait a second, if the vast majority of your customers are at 100% speed, what problem is 0.9.7 causing? Why do you need another update if everything is fine ?" Total silence.

He then told me to email customer service at KNC and that they would respond within 3-4 hours. I explained that I had emailed three times already, and that each time I received an automated response telling me to expect them to email back in 48 hours. I told him that it would take three to four emails back and forth, taking 8 days to arrange something that way.

I asked him why Andreas and Sam said in the first video that the miner would run in a closet in Dubai during the summer without air conditioning, and he played dumb, saying he had never seen the video and therefore couldn't comment. I asked him if he had heard the words "margins upon margins, upon margins." There was a long pause and he said yes, he had heard those words before. I said "Great, then you know exactly which video I'm talking about!".

I then asked what the compensation plan KNC was going to implement if October 15 miners weren't shipped until November, when the price drops signifigantly. He said they had no plans to do anything because the delay was affecting everyone equally, therefore there was no harm/no foul. I asked him why they were paying hosted miners for every lost day, and he said that they did that because those people were promised their miners would go online the same day they were manufactured. I asked why mail order customers who were guaranteed a October 15 delivery were being treated like second citizens, and that any October 15 miners shipped on November 1 or later needed to be refunded according to the November delivery prices.

The dude saw that I had him trapped in a corner and started telling me he was busy and needed to get off the phone. I kept him on the phone another 10 minutes asking him to explain how the under promise / over deliver mantra they have been repeating was being satisfied at this point.

At that time he saw that I was just gonna bust his balls over everything, and told me to update to the non-existent 0.9.8 bin and send screen shots of the bad hashing board at 20C and he would see if they could make a 'special exception' for me to get the dead board replaced before receiving the old one back.

I suggest everyone do the same thing. Buy a couple bucks worth of Skype time and call Orsoc directly and ask to speak directly to Andreas Kennemar or Same Cole, as KNC has gone into hibernation mode. They will get the hint very quickly. Don't take no for an answer, insist that that OVER DELIVER just like they said they would.

Just had to vent there. I am in Beijing China trying to talk my brother through setting up the miner for me back home in Santa Fe,  while dealing with a 10 hour time difference. "Hey bro, I'll call you at midnight Beijing time so it's morning for you, or I'll call you as soon as I wake up so I can catch you before you go to sleep." I then have to also deal with the central europe time difference so I can call Stockholm and catch them during business hours.

I just wanna scream, "Plug and Play, my ass!!!!!!!!!!!!"

+1, great review.)

That is exactly how Google Play Store does their business. I got a faulty Nexus 7, and they got me to put my credit card details for hold with the cc company. Then they send the replacement Nexus out to me. I have to send the faulty one back to them within 21 days. Or they will take the money for the price of a Nexus 7.

This work for Google, I am sure it will work for KnC

+1

But KNC are poor. They only had ~$30 million in October preorders and possible another $7-10 million for November delivery. They cant afford to risk 1 or 2 boards going missing and not getting paid for them! Stop with these unreasonable demands! In the next news update, Sam is going to post a picture of the holes in his socks so you understand how poor they are at KNC.

 ::)

I had one of the boards in my Jupiter break down and simply gave KnC a ring and it was RMAed via next-day air. Of course I had to cover the expedited costs.

This is what i wrote to support after they told me that they do not  have an advanced RMA program.


I know they aren't going to create such a program based off this one email sent by a Batch 1 Mercury customer, but if this gets around enough we may be able to get what we want.  They've already surprised the market once

I had to RMA a bad board in my Jupiter.  It took them forever to get a new board back to me.  They refused to mail a new one out until the old one was in their hands.  Tracking info proving it was on its way didn't help. 

So my Jupiter was only running at 3/4 of the speed for the previous two difficulties.  I spent $140 to get it shipped back to them ASAP.  They don't respond to any lost compensation requests.

Very VERY disappointed.