Bitcoin Forum

Why did you close the previous thread and start a new one?

The trolling got really out of hand on the previous thread, so I had to start a new one that was self-moderated. That does not mean that this thread will be used to silence criticism. We are a very, very new company, and even though we're part of a larger group of companies that provides a lot of our infrastructure we've made mistakes and will definitely make mistakes in future. Therefore, we welcome constructive criticism - if we've messed up let us know and we will do what we can to fix it. We also empathise with customers that have chosen our cheapest shipping option (surface mail) and their delivery is taking extraordinarily long, we are keeping on eye on these and where the destination postal service confirms it has gotten lost our insurance does authorise a replacement or refund.

This thread is really meant to allow for potential customers to get answers to their questions, and for existing customers to talk about ways we can improve our frames and new features they'd like to see. If you are frustrated with a delivery that is taking forever, please feel free to PM me and moan. I'll even call you and you can rant on the phone;)

My order seems to be stuck in Cape Town/Johannesburg/Africa...what gives?

Typically, with most postal services, packages get scanned as they exit an area and occasionally when they arrive in certain areas (inbound customs, for example). If it has been scanned and it says something like "Departure from outward office of exchange" or "Insert item into bag out" it means it's physically been put on a boat/plane (depending on the shipping method you have chosen) and has left the country. It isn't stuck, it's gone, and hasn't been scanned in at the next trackable point in its route.

My surface mail parcel hasn't arrived after 5 weeks, where is it?

After around 5 weeks of actual transit time it is in your best interest to call your local post office and ask them if they can track it. Not all surface mail parcels are scanned in and available to track online. Furthermore, in some countries the parcels get a local tracking number and then track on that number, so only the post office will be able to see that it has arrived and will be able to provide you with that in-country tracking number. Typically at around the 8 week transit-time mark it's time to consider that something has gone wrong, and we file a claim with our insurance, who will talk to the local and destination postal services and evaluate whether to hold off for a bit or pay out the claim. Once the claim has been settled we will be in a position to refund or replace, dependent on your preference.

What hardware do you ship with your rigs?

Nobody has actually asked this yet...but just to make it abundantly clear here's what it says in our Terms and Conditions (https://openrigs.com/information/information&information_id=5): Many of the images featured on the OpenRigs website show computer hardware mounted inside the OpenRigs product. This does not imply that said hardware is included in a purchase. Unless otherwise stated, all OpenRigs products consist solely of the aluminium and plastic connectors, as well as any other mounting and connector pieces that are part of the product. Hardware such as motherboards, GPUs, PSUs, and other electronic components are not included unless expressly stated as being included on the product page.

Why is the PSU mounted on the side and not underneath the GPUs?

We spent a lot of time testing various configurations, including rear-mounted offset PSUs, vertical motherboard mounting, and so on. We ended up with the following requirements: PSUs need to be easily accessible, all configurations need to support dual PSUs, and regardless of whether a single PSU or dual PSUs are mounted there should be no airflow deadzones or unusual hotspots. The design we ended up with met all those criteria.

Are the GPUs securely supported?

Our design goal with the OpenRigs GPU mining frame wasn't to create an equivalent of a standard ATX case with the same level of physical support. That would be bad for airflow, which is why no miner worth his salt will pack 4 GPUs into a normal ATX case. We wanted to create skeletal, open frames that promote good airflow, and reduce the need to have water-cooling blocks or tons of fans. From a GPU perspective, this means using risers to lift the GPUs off the motherboard. They thus lose the physical support of the motherboard, and have to be held in the air. In order to promote simplicity and elegance, we opted for a form factor that supports the GPUs using the backplate only. The bottom of the backplate is held in place by our own custom-designed GPU clips on to a cross-bar, and the top of the backplate bolts on to a solid aluminium bar. We have run tests where we've plugged and unplugged DVI cables 500 times (without touching the top of the GPU for added support), and the card neither flexed nor took any strain. We are confident in the design, and we are certain there is no need for added physical support for the GPUs.

How long will shipping take to my country?

The delivery and returns policy (https://openrigs.com/information/information&information_id=6) linked at the bottom of the site gives detail on the production process. A lot of the shipping speed depends entirely on what method you choose - the more expensive the shipping method, the faster it is. Typically speaking, an EMS delivery (our recommended delivery method) from the time of shipping (after fabrication and customs pre-clearance) takes 2-3 weeks.

How much is shipping to my country?

To see your shipping options and their cost, add the items you need to your shopping cart. You can then view your cart by using the Shopping Cart link (https://openrigs.com/checkout/cart) at the top of the page (also accessible when hovering over the cart icon) and using the Shipping Estimator.

Can I mount two motherboards on an 8 GPU rig?

No, it's not designed for that, and that sort of configuration doesn't promote easy access to hardware and doesn't fit in with our design ethos. You will also find it difficult to mount the PSU on the opposite side of the rig, and if it is mounted only on the one side the ATX power cable won't reach the second motherboard. Finally, you may find that the second motherboard simply doesn't fit in the space near the PSU, as the PSU physically rests on top of the motherboard support bar. You are, of course, welcome to do whatever you want with it once you receive it, but we'd prefer customers opt for a horizontal row of Arianna grid frames than trying to re-purpose something.

What is the difference between the Vitalia, Giorgina, and Arianna?

The Vitalia is a standalone, self-contained unit. It is useful when you have a single rig, or when you have individual rigs you want to keep in separate places. The Giorgina is similar, but stacks vertically. Up to about 3 units is structurally sound. Most customers stack two Giorginas on top of each other, and then put a Vitalia at the top to keep it neat. The Arianna is a grid that stacks both horizontally (in a row) and vertically (same-length rows on top of each other).

What do the various add-ons mean?

Pre-Drilled Bolt Holes: your frame will always come with holes for GPU mounting, and with brass risers for motherboard mounting. This option is for pre-drilled holes to allow you to bolt the aluminium extrusions to the plastic connectors. The holes are ONLY in the plastic connectors, but it is simple to drill holes in the aluminium and through the pre-drilled holes in the plastic if you require. It is not required for structural integrity, and many customers think the bolts detract from the clean lines of the frame. This option, and the nut and bolt set, is recommended for customers who frequently move their rigs around. It is also a suggested option if you think you may use this in the future, as the aluminium will retain its clean look until you decide to add bolts where required.

Nut and Bolt Set: this is a set of 30mm or 40mm nuts and bolts that will allow you to bolt the frame together if you go for the option above. You are also welcome to drill your own bolt holes at your leisure, and use the nut and bolt set to lock it together.

Full Thumbscrew Set: whilst all the frames come with motherboard risers and GPU mounting holes, they don't come with any screws. This option includes a full set of thumb screws for the GPUs and for the motherboard.

No Nut and Bolt Config (Arianna only): this removes the pre-drilled bolt holes and the nut and bolt set from the Arianna grid, as it is a standard option on the Arianna grid series.

What is the "Horizontal Type" option on the Arianna Grid?

Each row in a typical Arianna grid (consisting of 3x3 connected frames, housing 9 rigs in total) has a left end, a middle, and a right end. Since some customers start off with just a left and a right end connected together, and add the middle bit later on when they expand, the horizontal type let's customers pick and choose and build up their grids as necessary. Arianna grids can contain multiple "middle" pieces, although the 3x3 grid has certain advantages such as a consistent heat map, as well as the ability to connect all 9 rigs to a 10-port switch, with 1 free port to connect that switch to the rest of the LAN.

How do you get the risers to reach the cards in 6 and 8 GPU setups?

We recommend 30cm XL powered 1x->16x risers from Buy-A-Hash (http://buyahash.com/) to reach most of the cards. For cards that are further away, 1x->1x unpowered risers can be daisy chained, as long as the daisy chain is terminated by a 1x->16x powered riser. Unpowered risers can be purchased from Buy-A-Hash or on eBay.

How do you get the PSU connectors to reach the cards in 6 and 8 GPU setups?

To reach those cards furthest from the PSU, we recommend using your PSUs Molex adapters and connecting them to the Molex->PCI-e adapters that came with your graphics card. To stretch these further, you can daisy chain Molex extension cables (available quite cheaply on eBay). The Molex standard provides a tight fit, and there is little chance of power issues even if you stretch your connectors over the full 110cm of an 8 GPU frame.

Are there discounts on large purchases?

For purchases of 10 or more frames please contact us and we can see what we can do to reduce your order cost.

Your link in the opening post points to http://images.openrigs.com which is a faulty page.

I would really like to have one of the Standalone rigs but shipping cost of €200 for a rig of €50 is a bit silly. And I am not going to wait 4 to 6 weeks with the cheap option.

You should really look at having a distributor in Europe who is able to express ship to customers in Europe. (I can help you with this, PM me if interested)

I've changed that to images hosted on imgur, as BTCTalk's image proxy seems to choke on http://images.openrigs.com/image/forums/btctalk-vit-4.jpg (which obviously works).

Aramex is never going to scale well for single units, hence why it isn't our recommended shipping option. It exists for clients who have the money to spend on it, or for our corporate clients that already run larger scale installations of Arianna Grids or Giorgina Stacks and urgently need an extra unit or something like that.

EMS is a much more suitable option to Europe - on a stock 4 GPU Vitalia it comes in around €82, a far cry from €200, and we've had great success with EMS delivery timelines:

https://tools.usps.com/go/TrackConfirmAction!input.action?tRef=qt&tLc=1&tLabels=EE028408333ZA (under a week)
http://auspost.com.au/track/track.html?id=EE028407806ZA (just over a week)
http://www.parcelforce.com/track-trace?page_type=parcel-tracking-details&parcel_number=EE028407752ZA (under a week)
http://www.parcelforce.com/track-trace?page_type=parcel-tracking-details&parcel_number=EE025681525ZA (under a week)
https://www.epg.ae/esvc/services/track/index.xhtml?pageid=MAINMENU_TRACKNTRACE -> EE028407783ZA (under a week)
http://track.thailandpost.co.th/trackinternet/Result.aspx -> EE025681534ZA (under a week)

Nice job closing the old thread, trying to bury the hatchet. I still have unaddressed issues in that last thread. Thanks for addressing them.

For back reference - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=347756.620


There was a correlation between the air mail shipping method that I selected during checkout and my expected arrival time. You guys screwed that up and then didn’t notify customers, sticking them with surface mail. Now it has been almost 2 1/2 months since I ordered and 38 days that my shipment has been on a boat with unknown location. I'm sorry, but you don't get to make snide comments like that portraying the issue to be a fault in the customer's shipping selection, when that's not the case in all situations.


Still unacknowledged.

Sorry - it wasn't meant to leave issues unaddressed or bury the hatchet, hence the first answer in the FAQ above that makes the intentions of this new thread quite clear. I don't know how to make the purpose of this thread more clear than having it as the first point in the FAQ - suggestions are, of course, welcome.

I am in the process of dealing with several unresolved bits in that previous thread. Also, that comment about correlation obviously wasn't addressed to you, as it was addressing the correlation between the person who had his hardware and wanted the frame quickly, yet chose a really slow shipping method. Yours is obviously not the case, and that is why that comment was specifically addressed to the person I was replying to.

Ok so first things first - with regards to the customers, such as yourself, affected by the incorrect shipping method being displayed on the front-end. I was first alerted to that in this thread, and by that stage all of those orders had shipped. Respectfully, what would have been your suggestion on handling it, knowing that we are a boot-strapped startup running on quite thin margins, and belong to a group of companies that has a board of directors to answer to? We can't afford to re-manufacture everyone's order and ship them out. We can't notify customers as we actually don't even know how many orders, and which ones, are affected - we don't log the full text of outgoing mails, unfortunately. Additionally, whilst you may be a genuine, trustworthy individual, we've already had known scammers purchasing from us, we have to be cognisant of being taken advantage of. After all, we've already had at least 1 well known scammer order from us (see previous thread), so it's not like we can account for every customer's ethics.

That having been said, we are fully aware of the mess up. I hadn't addressed this in the previous thread, as I spent some time on the weekend rolling back the database on test to various points at the end of November to see the problem, and I hadn't quite finished my investigation. I think I'm at a point where I know enough to discuss it, though I would've liked to remove the troll-distraction today so I could've finished what I started. At any rate, technical discussion ahead (if you don't care about technical stuff skip ahead two paragraphs) - the root cause of the problem was our full page caching system. In order to make AJAX calls faster, certain pieces of AJAX-requested content (such as the JSON array of enabled shipping options) was cached by the FPC. At any rate, the shipping options were returned with their foreign key, and then subsequent calls can use the key and the session to request a shipping price. (Sidebar: we've since changed this so that there is no caching, and shipping calculations are all done on-demand with a JSON array returned...the reason it existed in the first place is that many of our web properties use a single shipping option, so there are never multiple subsequent calls - it's the nature of reusing a more general working architecture, sometimes you have stuff that is irrelevant to your current solution) Since the foreign key was cached, and we'd changed the underlying data sources (which isn't a db table, so no cascading referential integrity) the fk now pointed to the wrong pk. The reason we can't tell how long this change lived is because the cached JSON data is stored in /dev/shm and served via nginx's X-Accel-Redirect (basically nginx's equivalent of Apache's X-Sendfile), and cached JSON data is expected to be long-lived (so on a slow refresh cycle). Also, /dev/shm is excluded from duplicity, so it won't appear in a remote backup set.

However, there was a snippet I managed to find. Session-specific pages cached by our FPC aren't served off /dev/shm due to size constraints (only more generic pages such as the product and info pages). That cache location is excluded from hourlies but not excluded from dailies. The only session-specific page that is cached by the FPC that contains actual shipping info is the cart page (not the checkout, too dynamic) which gets destroyed every time a change is made to the cart in the session. Whilst not many use the shipping estimator (instead choosing to barrel ahead to checkout to see shipping options), there were a few so that I could see what an actual front-end user would see when using the shipping estimator.

What I found is that there were two options shown to the user: Airmail and EMS. No surface mail, no Aramex. Airmail (which had surface mail's fk) was first on the list and the cheaper of the two, EMS was noticeably more expensive (in reality, and now that it's fixed, at the weight we're shipping these two have a lot of parity). Also, there were no timelines listed. So, generally speaking, customers choosing airmail didn't opt for a specific timeline or delivery period. They saw two options and chose the cheaper of the two. Please understand that I'm not trying to make excuses for the error, but I do see a logical fallacy with users purporting that they chose airmail because it was "faster" when it was the cheapest option. What I had hoped to uncover is that surface mail existed at the same price or lower and they chose airmail, in which case it becomes easier to make a case, you understand? At the end of the day with something like this I also have to go back to the group directors (of which I am one, but far from the majority shareholder of the group) and discuss it with them, and they most assuredly will view things clinically and with a disconnect. It becomes especially complex as we have had some users (with orders on the same day as yours) in the US receive their surface mail shipment within 4 weeks of transit, and several EU customers receive it at the 5-6 week mark, so it's not like it's universal.

Yet, as you have pointed out, we did screw up. That is why on an individual level we are attempting to assist customers. We cannot do this on a blanket basis for the aforementioned reasons, but we can see what we can do to assist customers individually - and you've seen those efforts in the previous thread. So wobbzz, hit me up offline on ric@openrigs.com or via pm, and I will see what I can do help you and to establish with your local postal service if the parcel is, in fact, in the country but simply not tracking correctly.

Your reply to me:

Quote from: bobsag3 on February 16, 2014, 09:02:52 PM
Gotta love it... evidently mine was shipped (Order 752, that I made on black friday) at the end of january... and has sat in Cape Town since then. As someone who ships things around the world... not acceptable.

It's been touched on in this thread, but quite far back - once it says "insert item into bag out" it means it's left the country. If you track your shipment on UPU's global track and trace (http://globaltracktrace.ptc.post/gtt.web/) you'll see it says that "Departure from outward office of exchange" the day after it arrived in Cape Town, so it's on its way.

It has not said "insert item into bag out".

I have:

Local date/time   Activity   Location   Remarks
1/23/2014 2:48 PM   Arrival at outward office of exchange   CAPETOWN D   
1/24/2014 9:44 AM   Departure from outward office of exchange   CAPETOWN D

Thats it.

Okay, so, now we have to copy and paste ... continuing our conversation.
Just for the reference: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=347756.msg5192212#msg5192212



First, I don't see how opening a new thread will solve anything, but you have your reasons that you don't have to explain.

From your comment, I am expecting some response on my ticket today - nothing yet, and I guess your working day is over. I am confused with your explanation that 100s of tickets were marked as spam and ignored. I opened a ticket on your website, filling out the form at https://openrigs.com/information/contact and entering the captcha, so I don't get it how my ticket can be considered as spam???

Regarding the delivery expectations, let's use my order as example (#1333). When I placed the order on Jan-8, based on all info provided in old thread and on your website, my expectation was to have frame delivered within 9 weeks (worst case scenario, using regular mail). So, that would be by March 12th, correct? Now, as far as I know, based on the order status, my order is still in SAR, didn't leave country and I don't have any tracking number, nor ETA. March 12th is in about 3 weeks from now. It's not 4 or 6 weeks from now. So I suggest that you become more transparent regarding the delivery time and instead of talking about a few days for pre-clearance, be honest and inform future buyers that it may take even 3 weeks for pre-screening (customs check) alone.

Here's my order's timeline, as pulled from the website today:
08/01/2014 Awaiting Bitcoin confirmations   
10/01/2014 Processing and pre-fabrication   
16/01/2014 Fabrication  Aluminium has arrived (yay!), plastic is being moulded at the speed of soft thunder, and we're fabricating away!
29/01/2014 Shipped, pending customs check  Your parcel has gone off to customs, who will now do a little x-ray (or whatever they do there) and a paperwork check to make sure all is in order. Due to the backlog that accumulates at customs over the December/January holidays, this may take them a little while, but they will process it and pass it on to the post office for final delivery as quickly as they can. Once that's done we'll be given tracking numbers, which we'll send on to you:)

Ok I think there's some confusion here. You mentioned it was stuck in Cape Town, presumably based on the tracking link that was sent to you (which is domestic shipping). That link shows the "Insert item into bag out" (i.e. it left the country) on Jan 24th. The UPU site I sent is a global tracking site and shows that it left the country on Jan 24th ("Departure from outward office of exchange" in their parlance). As you mentioned you are someone who ships things around the world, I'm sure you can back me up that there are no updates when an item is moving between countries, and also that local tracking doesn't always reflect.

Take, for instance, this parcel that was sent to me from the US via USPS' "First Class" parcel service: https://tools.usps.com/go/TrackConfirmAction!input.action?tRef=qt&tLc=1&tLabels=LN012916338US - there's no local tracking for it (http://sms.postoffice.co.za/TrackingParcels/Parcel.aspx?id=LN012916338US), and yet I received it on Saturday (also, that doesn't even show up on UPU's site, not sure why USPS doesn't push their info to UPU's EDI?)

I think that if it's been 4-ish+ weeks since your parcel left the country ("Insert item into bag out" on SAPO tracking, "Departure from outward office of exchange" on UPU's site) your best bet is always to contact your local postal service and see if they can track it in country, so give it a few more days and then chat to them and see if they can give you more info:) Please let me know if you don't come right!

This is why you use a real international carrier like UPS. No, I dont loose my international packages between countries, its just not scanned while in transit. I have shipped things much larger and heavy than your cases bout about what you charged for normal shipping... and I get it there in 3-5 business days tops.

Ok I'll try tackle your questions one at a time.

First off, this new thread is self-moderated, the previous one wasn't, so there was literally nothing I could do to stop it from being littered with troll posts. In fact, I explain the reason for the new thread in the 2nd post on this thread (the FAQ) - it's the very first question. I'll cut-and-paste it for your reference:

"Why did you close the previous thread and start a new one?

The trolling got really out of hand on the previous thread, so I had to start a new one that was self-moderated. That does not mean that this thread will be used to silence criticism. We are a very, very new company, and even though we're part of a larger group of companies that provides a lot of our infrastructure we've made mistakes and will definitely make mistakes in future. Therefore, we welcome constructive criticism - if we've messed up let us know and we will do what we can to fix it. We also empathise with customers that have chosen our cheapest shipping option (surface mail) and their delivery is taking extraordinarily long, we are keeping on eye on these and where the destination postal service confirms it has gotten lost our insurance does authorise a replacement or refund.

This thread is really meant to allow for potential customers to get answers to their questions, and for existing customers to talk about ways we can improve our frames and new features they'd like to see. If you are frustrated with a delivery that is taking forever, please feel free to PM me and moan. I'll even call you and you can rant on the phone;)"

The support staff are still working on the backlog; just because we discovered around 100 OpenRigs tickets that weren't there before doesn't mean that tickets stop flowing and let us handle the backlog:) There are after-hours support staff who have been on deck for a few hours, their load quietens down in a bit and then they'll be able to flatten the remaining tickets. Using the web form isn't a magic bullet, unfortunately, as the web form just sends an email to info@openrigs.com it wasn't spared the SpamAsssassin false-positive. Remember, too, that the support system is group-wide across 27 web properties (of which OpenRigs is just 1), so when some bright spark (not me for a change!) added the SA rule it wacked a bunch of tickets (besides the OpenRigs ones).

Finally, in terms of any delay on the customs/post office side with finalising and despatching your order, as was brought out in the previous post there was an unexpected postal workers strike from Jan 27th to all the way through to Feb 12th (you can read the post office's press releases about it here: http://www.postoffice.co.za/group/pressreleases/index.html). We greased some palms, and some of our parcels had minimal impact, and some are still waiting to be processed. That's the extent of the info I have as I'm at home, but once your ticket is replied to there will undoubtedly be more specific info. Hope this all helps:)

100% - we use Aramex, who deliver in 3-5 business days. We do a ton of domestic business with them, so they've given us really decent rates. They are available as a shipping option on the website, and have been since the 20th December when we got our international rates package from them. Unfortunately only about 4% of our clients choose them as an option (mostly our enterprise clients).

Since you indicated you get it at roughly the same rate, I'd love to do a like-for-like comparison - why don't you get two prices from UPS to ship one of our boxes (135cm long x 20cm wide x 25cm high, so volumetric weight of 13.5kgs) to Plettenberg Bay, South Africa, 6600 with an actual mass of 5.3kgs for a single unit and just on 20kgs for 4 units (we use less packaging material when we pack more densely). That way we don't talk in hypotheticals, and if UPS offers significant cost-savings I will definitely present that to Aramex and ask them to become price competitive, since clearly they're ripping us off at like 7x the price.

Someone got rid of the old thread with 99.8 % negative posts, nicely done ...

it is now over 73 days since my order #850 was paid, and it does not seem that it will ever arrive.

Please do not buy here...

Nobody got rid of the old thread - I moved to a self-moderated thread for reasons explained in the FAQ (2nd post of this thread). And it was very far from 99.8% negative posts - here is a link if you'd like to check the posts: http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=347756

Your order is in transit and is tracking on dhl.de, typical transit times that we're seeing for surface mail to Germany is within 4-6 weeks, which is in line with what you agreed to during checkout (in our delivery and returns policy). We've since extended that estimate to 6-10 weeks of transit time to make sure there are no false expectations.

Ok so I jumped the gun and got a quote online from UPS to deliver to your address. Using their cheapest service, for a single unit it would cost R4 896.05 ($452.16) and for 4 units it would cost R5 907.83 ($545.59). I tried different pickup dates, it doesn't affect their online quote service.



Incidentally, EMS for the same shipment is $130.50 for the former and $416.53 for the latter, and Aramex is $284.17 for the former and for $568.35 for the latter.

So my order is still hanging since black friday. Order #747 which said it left on 1/10/2014. USPS has no additional information on the package and it seems like the boat was lost in the bermuda triangle. I have been trying to be patient, but at this point it has been almost 3 months. When do you consider the packages lost?

We can lodge the claim with our insurance, with whom we have specific logistics cover. Here's the process as I understand it: they will enquire with USPS, and if USPS say it's en-route (it's unlikely for an entire boat to go missing;) they just follow up every two weeks until it hits like 10 weeks (?? I'm guessing, I don't know the exact timeline, but since SAPO claims it can take up-to-3-months I'm guessing they won't capitulate early) and then they let us replace/refund.

Lovely gpu frame !

Watching...

These look pretty awesome! I have been considering building  GPU scrypt rig for some time if I decide to do it i'll be surely buying one of the open frame cases from you. From other peoples prices I've been seeing these seem reasonable and look well built. Or you can toss me one for free https://openrigs.com/vitalia-standalone-gpu-frame :P and i'll write a review and post the blog on bitcoinminerz.com with a backlink. :)

Are you Kidding ME?  You just sent #1029 out today??  What the hell is this BS!!  CN022190195ZA    http://globaltracktrace.ptc.post/gtt.web/

Heya - nope, according to the tracking data it was put on a boat today. The post office hold it for days or even weeks until a vessel bound for the destination port is secured (if you chose Surface Mail as the shipping option) - hence the ~6-10 week transit time estimate for surface mail.

This may help decode the SA postal office status messages: http://www.postoffice.co.za/questions/trackingcodes.html
 ::)

Well I messaged with my order number 722 which I had paid for the description of AirMail for shipping and I still have yet to see any tracking updates since bag out back at the beginning of January. This is a Black Friday order - CN028932165ZA tracking number.

Still waiting for fluffy's response to my PM with his solution.

since when does giving an accurate opinion on the status of my order constitute as trolling?   :-\



edit:  ah yes, when I make the move to start listing competitors that can deliver within a more expected time-frame.  Not necessarily the best move for everyone, but definitely an advantage for others who live in my region.  Thanks for not deleting the old thread and for linking it here, I appreciate that.

I ordered in December and until now I don't have a working tracking number, at least it doesn't work here http://www.postoffice.co.za/tools/trackandtrace.html .

Does somebody have another link?

Don't worry - you weren't the troll. As I mentioned - I understand frustrated users, we have also been frustrated by slow customs processes and postal strikes and the affect they've had on customers. I'm happy to engage with customers or even potential customers and see where and how we can improve, but the troll throws around wild accusations that I frankly don't have time to respond to. Having a self-moderated thread where I can just delete it and move on is a lot easier:)

There domestic tracking service was borked last night - I kept getting getting connection refused errors. Now I can connect, but it's giving me an "Error No. 4" when I try track parcels. The level of incompetence with our post office never ceases to amaze me:) Give it a few hours and it should be working again!

@KWH on prev. thread - read it yourself , thankyouverymuch.

Got my order delivered to workplace today. Will post a review and pictures in the coming days. Oh and thanks for the postcard :)

I ordered 12/23/2013 and I still have no product. I have a tracking number but it looks like its stuck somewhere in Africa? I was Order ID: #1126
Date Added: 23/12/2013

Surface mail transit times are 4 weeks minimum - if you track it on http://globaltracktrace.ptc.post/gtt.web/ you'll see when it was put on a boat leaving the country (the "Departure from outward office of exchange" bit).

It's a pleasure, looking forward to the pics:)

So only 4-5 months from order date..? I was expecting a small wait..but not a BFL type of wait. Oh well..live and learn..you would think with all of the delays in production you would have at least shipped a little faster.

I completely understand that the wait is lengthy. However, it is important to understand that you ordered during our holiday period, hence the big holiday notice during checkout and the holiday notice that is (still) at the top of the delivery and returns policy page. The delays you experienced are not typical, and are isolated to the backlog that accumulates whilst we are short-staffed during our holiday period.

I placed my order on December 5, 2013. You guys didn’t get around to shipping it until 1/08/2014 (a month!!)

Been more than a month that it is in “Bag Out” status and I have NO idea where it is. I opened several “tickets” and posted on BTC Talk and got nothing.

https://openrigs.com/index.php?route=account/order/info&order_id=885

http://sms.postoffice.co.za/tracking/parcel.aspx?id=CN028932072ZA  “bag out”

https://tools.usps.com/go/TrackConfirmAction.action?tRef=fullpage&tLc=1&tLabels=CN028932072ZA “Waiting for Origin Post”

http://globaltracktrace.ptc.post/gtt.web/ - “On Route” but nothing since 1/14

Edit: I sincerely wish I was fully aware and made to click like "20" times that placing an order on 12/5/2013 using the cheapest shipping method would result in a delivery by sometime in April of 2014 (I'm guessing). I would much prefer that this was NOT an option and be FORCED to use something that has full tracking from South Africa to United States. I order from China almost all the time various parts and accessories and I almost always get stuff within two weeks. This includes even heavy weight items (20 pounds in once case). They never use the slow boat options due to all the complaints.

If there is one take away from all the "trolling" and "flamebait" that openrigs should have is that their website should be updated to force consumers to only use options that are reasonable. Don't just take the money and then go "oops" three months later!!

Same boat as everyone else. Waiting about 2 months for 2 orders since mid December.

I'll try speak to each of the points you've raised, if I may:

December 5th to Jan 8th is 20 working days. That is well within the timelines that are in our delivery and returns policy, miraculous even considering that customs were overloaded when they processed your order. They have less load now (supposedly) and have unprocessed parcels for us that they've had for weeks;)

The duplicate tickets were closed without responding, but the main ticket you submitted was responded to as far as I can see? Please let me know if you did not receive that response.

We have considered removing the surface mail option, but there are genuine use-cases where customers want shipping *that* cheap and don't mind the wait. It's always hard to strike a balance between providing the options for convenience, and enforcing a route that would cause them the least frustration. I can guarantee that if we remove the surface mail parcel we'll have customers complaining about how they don't mind waiting and isn't there a cheaper option:) The vast majority of surface mail customers choose the option realising full well what it means (because it has the transit timelines displayed during the checkout and on the delivery and returns policy that they have to read and agree to complete checkout), and they receive their parcel within those transit times. And, too, there is the distinct possibility that a parcel goes missing - that happens even with couriers like UPS who leave parcels at the door and consider that delivered.

I do think that there are more vessels going from China to the US (and it's significantly closer to get from China to the west coast), so I would expect shipments from there to arrive faster.

We are also seeing a number of deliveries to the US that aren't tracking on USPS' website, you may want to phone your local branch and see if they can track it any further for you. Sometimes parcels get a local tracking number, so scanning on the international one doesn't work. That having been said, we're still within the expected transit time period for surface mail, so it is possible it hasn't arrived.

Please let me know directly once you've spoken to USPS, either via email (listed at the beginning of this topic) or via PM, and we can take it from there:)

Please do phone USPS and query it - I know it's only been 4 weeks of transit, but it's possible it's in country and just not tracking:)

Is this a scam?

Or are people not used to the delays with post from the 3rd world to the 1st world (to put it blunty)? And have unrealistic expectations (e.g. us/china delivery times?)?

Definitely not a scam, we've had north of 1600 orders (nearly 3000 individual units) since launch at the end of November. Many customers vent but never follow up publicly to say they've received their order, and we can't force people to do so. Still, we have had plenty of positive feedback (scattered amongst the trolling in the previous thread) as well as elsewhere (eg. https://forum.feathercoin.com/index.php?/topic/6014-openrigs-review-lulz/).

And yes, I don't think people are used to having to deal with a government department that takes weeks to do something simple, which only exacerbates a situation where people have unwittingly or begrudgingly chosen a slow shipping method and haven't read our delivery and returns policy. Over and above that, we have summer in the southern hemisphere in December, so our summer holidays are over December, so we had a holiday period where our fabrication slowed down drastically, and not everyone saw the holiday notice on the checkout page as they checked out. Finally, we have also made mistakes - tickets have slipped through the cracks, we had the incorrect shipping method description showing for an indeterminate amount of time early December, all of which can add up to a very frustrating experience for some customers.

We are working on bringing our timelines down, on pre-approval for outbound parcels, and on a smoother logistics chain, which should hopefully lead to a better experience for customers in future. I also think the negative feedback has a positive upside - customers that read this thread before ordering are more aware of the timelines, which is good news in light of the probability that they won't read our delivery and returns policy (despite having to tick a box during checkout to indicate they have read it and agree to it).

I'm in Australia, so I know all about the seasons :)

Do you use DHL/FEDEX for expedited so get around the government delays with the cheaper surface mail option?

We offer Aramex (similar international footprint to DHL and FedEx) as well as EMS, both of which are still subject to customs checks, but of a completely different nature. Aramex parcels are just open-box checks that take a day at the most before Aramex fetch the parcel and off it goes. EMS parcels are separated out by customs and generally processed first because the flimsy waybills tend to get damaged if they lie around too long. Surface mail parcels get further separated depending on the destination, and they won't even begin processing it till the post office confirms availability of a vessel bound for that destination, so it can sit there for weeks before being processed and given to the post office.

Currently our recommendation is EMS - transit times to Oz are like a week: http://auspost.com.au/track/track.html?id=EE028407806ZA - that would've been delivered in less time if the person had been available on the Wednesday;) EMS is also significantly cheaper than Aramex for orders under 50 units.

Well I have been in contact with Fluffy via PM. He has made an attempt to try to make the situation right although I still have yet to receive my rack.

I just wanted to post a public update because as everyone says you always complain in the post but never post updates to the complaint.

Currently Fluffy has said that he had a meeting with the Post Office in his country to discuss what I would assume is the location of the boat that we are waiting on. I haven't heard back from him yet but when I do I will definitely post another reply.

Just for anyone else my order number was 722 coming to Michigan in the USA. I still have yet to see any update
 
My tracking number is CN028932165ZA  and I still haven't seen a update since 1/14/14 This was a black friday order

Thanks for the update. I am a ways after you but have a tracking number =..I ordered on 12-23 and am also in Michigan so hopefully soon!

I already called USPS and they can't see anything. So let me ask you this...

WHERE IS MY ORDER?

MD

Ok well we are on the bottom end of the surface mail transit times we've grown to expect to the US, so I was just hoping we got lucky. To answer your question directly, you can see on the tracking information it has left South Africa and is en-route to you, so at this stage it is in-between here and you.

Sometimes those sea voyages are not as direct as they could be. For example, we shipped several pallets to a farm in California. The vessel went from here to Newark, and from there it got put on a different vessel to San Francisco (instead of overland, no idea why). There's a vessel every week to Newark, but from Newark to San Francisco there's only a vessel they can use every 14 days. The estimates given were 25 days to Newark, 15 days from Newark to San Francisco, but you've got this possible wait in the middle. Final trip time was 8 weeks including customs and final delivery.

By comparison, EMS to California is around a week to final delivery.

Our options are limited, short of sending a helicopter out to see to intercept the boat:-P We can file a claim with our insurance, but they will wait until USPS confirms that it hasn't hit the country and we're past all reasonable transit times (definitely past the 6-10 weeks we've put as the expected timeline on the site).

Fluffy,

USPS does not know where my order is. How about a response to that PM I sent last :)

Last known status: 10 JANUARY

Thanks.

Anyone actually receive an item and post a picture of it with valid proof of purchase?

In before self-mod delete.

You either can't read, won't read or are too lazy to read. Which is it?

Read the whole thread, can you point me to a customer who has received their order?  Thanks

Have you tried the first thread?

Yes - several people have taken the time to take photos of their received parcel, others have merely noted it's been received:

https://forum.feathercoin.com/index.php?/topic/6014-openrigs-review-lulz/

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=347756.msg5082140#msg5082140

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=347756.msg5149805#msg5149805

Sorry, must've missed it in the flurry of PMs - will reply now!

Ahh ok thank you for that, wasn't looking at the CLOSED thread or feathercoin forum.

Well, this thread is only 5 days old, so the previous thread would have to be a point of reference for something like that.

I think you are doing this shipping all wrong. You need to be doing bulk air cargo, not expedited shipping via courier services. Air cargo is a whole lot cheaper. E.g 100 units shipped to the US = USD30/unit, 50 units shipped to the UK = USD60. You need to retain someone in logistics for you to get this shipping issue right.  It is not difficult at all. Collect up your orders for each country even if it takes 1 month then dispatch them bulk air cargo. 1 month wait via air for 30 dollars I am sure everyone can live with vs 4 to 6 months via sea.

You can whittle it down even further, hire a bakkie haul the shit to CPT your self and dispatch it from the airport, instead of paying for a klonkie through the freight co you are using to pick it up in Plett and haul it down there. Ton of options to get the right prices.

Delve into Virgin Atlantic cargo, British air ways cargo, any main carriers air cargo services.

Here some calculators for you

http://www.intercargo.com/ (http://www.intercargo.com/)

http://worldfreightrates.com/en/ (http://worldfreightrates.com/en/)

You are paying this premium to simply hand it all off to some company claiming to be in the freight business because it is convenient that they pick it up at your facilities. With a bit of effort you can do everything yourselves and save a fortune and make it workable for your customers.

Good luck !

That's pretty much how we're doing the distribution going forward - bearing in mind that there's still a premium to pay for warehousing and logistics on the other end, but it's definitely going to be smoother ride for customers:)

Edit: misread - we're going to be going pre- not post- into parts of the world, so it makes things even faster and easier

Apollo,

I am in the Oakland County Area could you let me know when you receive your order? Would you mind PMing me your tracking number so I can check yours also just to see whos updates first lol 

Currently I am at 39 days since Bag Out status with no updates. I have come to the conclusion that the boat coming here is either going 7 knots or slower, or has taken a detour somewhere else.

josh,

I am in the same boat as you. Order 743. I have discussed this issue with fluffy in private. He told me he's trying to get more information but doesn't have any yet.

USPS does not know where my shipment is. I am order 743, ordered on black friday, with tracking number CN025030082ZA, delivering to the east coast. The package was "bagged out" on Jan 10th.

If we could just figure out the name of the boat we can track it on a site like this: https://www.marinetraffic.com/

Wobbz,

Thanks for giving your input. I also have been communicating privately with him and he has informed me that he is also trying to get more information on this.

Although I did start laughing when I saw on CNN about a freight ship loosing over 500 shipping containers lol... had to start chuckling and say out loud there goes my openrigs rack. I know that isn't the case but had to throw some humor in lol.

Anyways it is pretty sad because I am now looking at other companies that are producing racks like this to have one made that I might actually receive. It just seems very strange how long this is taking.. I completely understand and know that Surface Mail can literally take forever but we are honestly almost to that point of forever where even for surface mail this is becoming quite a long wait.

If I hear anything I will let you know. I am going to look around and see if there is a list of ships that left cape town dock headed for ultimately the USA around the time of our shipments in January.

EDIT:

Fluffy could you please explain to me why it is that Wobbz order which was after mine - Order 743 shipped 3-4 days before mine? That seems to be quite screwed up? Neither of us has received our order but why would a newer order go out before a older order?

Josh

Yes, these are real. A pic after initial build is below.

My thoughts on the order/delivery/build process:

1) Don't order the 4 GPU racks. I have limited space and cheap motherboards with only four slots ATM, but I figured there should be enough space based on the pictures to add 2 more cards down the road. Maybe, but it will be awfully tight with the PSU spacing. I'm thinking doubtful at this point. I should have kicked in the extra few dollars each to get 6 GPU racks. It is also very difficult to fit 2 PSU on a single rack due to the close proximity of the motherboard. I'm assuming this is not the case on a 6+. I'm seriously kicking myself about this. Stupid, stupid choice.

2) Check your motherboard sizes. The 3 ASRock boards I have all claim to be ATX. They are not standard ATX size (even though they are listed as such on newegg). I had to cut sheets of lexan and mount them to the racks, then mount the motherboards to the lexan. Not happy about having to do that, although it does look fine.

3) I paid for EMS. Ordered 12/30, customs 1/17, bag out 2/5, received 2/13. I knew it wasn't going to be quick, but at this point I'm just glad I didn't go with surface mail like I was planning on. I had no idea shipping was that slow via surface. The only inter-continental orders I've made have been from China, which as the knick-knack supplier to the world has products shipping constantly.

4) Waiting on more USB powered risers, but 30cm cables will only work for two or three cards per rack. I just ordered some 80cm units. I'll be buying 40cm cables to replace the 30cm cables I have, as they seem tight.

5) Take your time knocking these together. The instructions are good, but I made a few mistakes in my rush and it's annoying to find out after you start trying to mount hardware. Not hard to dismantle and correct, just frustrating.

6) I wish they had feet. The bottom of the legs are just open tubing. Would have been nice to have caps to put there.

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-7xCBEXd2pjY/UwrI8ZrnmgI/AAAAAAAAJKM/APA33zbEvu4/s640/IMG_20140223_212115.jpg

I still have to add the final 2 GPU, mount the 10" monitor and WiFi AP, velcro tie down cabling and KVM, and mount the power buttons. Yes it's pretty ugly ATM, but once I get everything on it finished, it should look great. Overall I'm pretty happy with my purchase. If I had to do it over again, the only thing I would change was the decision to buy the 4 GPU model instead of the 6.

I would actually lol if it was in one of those containers:) By the way - I posted earlier about the SA -> Newark -> San Francisco trip, not sure if the post office would use the same trip but it's possible that it's going via somewhere. It's also possible that the package has been lost, in which case we will definitely claim and replace/refund.

To answer your second question - we hand them to customs in order, but after the black hole that is customs we don't have any control over it. We often get stuff from them completely out of order, and EMS parcels are checked by a different team (at the JIMC) than everything else, so that introduces even more randomness.

Yeah - it's the same reason we don't support dual motherboards on the 8 GPU setup, it's just too tight, and you're going to struggle reaching components. We may at some stage introduce an "upgrade" kit for those that need to increase their GPUs, as it's just the horizontal bars and no connectors. Will see how it goes.

Thos Asrock motherboards are weirdly sized, I have no clue how they get away with claiming it's ATX. It's like the bastard step-child of ATX and mATX;) If there is enough demand we may introduce an option for the non-ATX Asrock boards, will have to see how it goes.

Feet! We have end-caps, but they're rounded, and I personally don't like them as feet for that reason. I can send you a pack of 4 and you can try them out, maybe they work for you and we'll include them as an option in future.

I ordered in october 2013 and still am waiting
Got a so called track and trace which only shows send from  Capetown South Africa
And now Almost being March 2014 still no progress and nothing received
On my question where the package is, i get an answer THAT I SHOULD CONTACT our postage which ofcourse says thats IMPOSSIBLE
starts to smell enormous Fishy on this side, and i fear it ends in i never get the few alu pipes and my money vaporated

With all due respect, I very much doubt you ordered in October, we only allowed orders for a small number of HFT guys that I personally know until November 27th when we opened it up to the general public. If you could give me your order number or tracking number perhaps we can shed some light on the matter:)

My initial order number was 633 i checked it, payed at 11 november 2013

In december i had received a so called update that the package was send.


In januari i asked where my package was and what the track and trace info is from december
The woman answering me send me that for whatever excuses they had to make a new.

Now so many months later,  I get an answer to ask my local postage to find the package.
Its impossible to ask a local postage operator to find a package especially one they never heard of or does not exist in their system
And you people really know that it is impossible, the only one who can really find a package is the one sending.

Hell I can walk to South Africa and back faster then this so called postage company and i start to believe even that is a fake.
I really am getting angry, pissed and very aggressive.

Your lucky its far away

Ah - I think I just figured out who you were (we only had two orders to the Netherlands on Bitcoin Black Friday weekend, and the one is confirmed as having been delivered).

I've looked through your ticket history, and I can't see anyone saying that we "had to make a new" anything? Your order was processed and shipped within our stipulated timelines:

28/11/2013 - order received, and went into processing and pre-fabrication
05/12/2013 - fabrication
19/12/2013 - handed to customs
30/12/2013 - tracking number received and order updated

That's much better than lately where customs have held on to parcels for 4 weeks (!!) before giving us tracking numbers.

You enquired directly with me (before the ticketing system was live) a number of times with regards to tracking your parcel - most recently on January 10th when I explained what the tracking statuses meant and when it had left the country. The support team's last communication with you was 35 days ago, where the only thing that was discussed was the actual transit method of surface mail.

So, logically speaking, there are one of 3 possibilities:

1. We have created an entire fake government department for the sole purpose of pretending to ship parcels. Somehow, miraculously, we are able to make these parcels track on sites like the Universal Postal Union's Global Track and Trace, or 17track.net, or one of any number of tracking sites.

2. We did send a parcel, but using the latest in GPS tracking and remote detonation we quietly destroyed the parcel when we were certain it left the country.

3. Your parcel has been lost en-route, which is a possibility we expressly talk about in our shipping notice - in which case we will claim from our insurance and refund you or replace the missing item.

Yeah, I just went with the ASRock boards since they were cheap and had gotten good reviews from others (were meant to be hobby rigs with my son). Popular in the milk crate solution, perhaps because of their smaller size? I'm assuming that I'm not the only one with these boards so I thought I'd warn people to be prepared. It's not a difficult work around, just unexpected.

As far as upgrading to 6 GPU, I'd definitely be interested to see what you come up with. I had planned on just drilling the extra holes myself, so if all you did was sell additional slider/screw sets I'd be good too. With all the USB cable powered riser coming out now, I don't think reaching components will be a problem anymore. Just a question of PSU management. An option to mount the PSU's vertically side-by-side rather than on top of each other should give enough clearance/space. As it is, I may have enough space now, would likely have the riser PCB of the 6th GPU resting on the top PSU though.

And yes, would love to test some feet. When you're stacking these 3 or 4 high on the floor there's no issue, but when stacking 1 or 2 high on a table/desk then it's nice to have something to protect the furniture!

Managed to find a set of 4 feet:

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

I'll send them to you and you can give them a spin - my biggest concern has been with the amount of weight that will be put on the curved edge, but maybe it'll work for you. You may want to file it down a bit so it doesn't leave an impression on your table.

I've re-updated your order so you receive your tracking number - if you haven't received it in the next few minutes please check your spam folder, as we've been having issues with our system emails being marked as spam:)


Warm Regards,

Donna
The OpenRigs Team

that is one of the emails posted at 09-01-2014

Its funny that our biggest and official postal provider has no clue about your tracking codes and said they can not see anything being send anywhere from the planet being forwarded to my address
Thats is all i know and can reply, even if it was send by ocean it would have arrived along time ago.
 

Standard procedure when someone hasn't received their tracking number but it has been sent - especially given Gmail's propensity to mark system emails as spam.

If you've spoken to PostNL and they can confirm it hasn't arrived in country then please PM me or email me directly (ric@openrigs.com) and we can open an insurance claim tomorrow to sort it out.

7 days ago I 've received response to my open ticket. In there you've sent the tracking number with the following note:

"NB: Please note that orders sent out via SAPO parcel services and EMS may take two or three days to reflect on the South African post office's tracking system - please be patient if their system indicates that the package cannot be found..."

Well, seven days later, the tracking system is not showing anything, and this is just another example how fluffy constantly underestimates lead time. I expect now another logical explanation why tacking is not active after "two or three days". Wouldn't be better (honest at least) to state that it may take two or three weeks?   ::)

It seems there is reoccurring theme here: the product may be good, but shipping logistics are ruining it.

100% - we are constantly and consistently being let down by crummy efforts on the side of the post office.

We are working on solutions to this, and expect to have a major change to our logistics chain within the next two or three weeks.

Your order should be tracking, though, I'll take a look tomorrow morning (it's 6:15pm here so everything's closed) and come back to you!

Very cool, thanks!

hahahahahaha, the Fluffy shadow regime!

This made me laugh.  Sorry for being such a douchenozzle this weekend.  You are a cool dude.

Don't stress about it - I just imagined you in a scene from The Wolf of Wall Street, making it rain Bitcoins, alcohol flowing everywhere, posting on the forums, I could totally see it happening:)

That's pretty much exactly how the night went... unfortunately with less strippers, though :(

Any update Fluffy?

my package taking so long to "deliver" that usps archived tracking information:

Tracking Number: CNxxxxxxxxxZA
pre-shipment
Requested label is archived.
Restore Archived Details ›

Yeah, lol that happened to mine too.

Maybe we will get a St. Patty's Day present and it will come with a six-pack of Killians Irish Red? ;D

Order # 726 - my tracking # is CN028931182ZA. Ordered 11/29, supposedly shipped pending customs on 12/19, bag out didn't occur until 1/21. No updates anywhere on any tracking, item still not received. Any ideas? This is really aggravating.

le sigh. My order is archived as well on USPS...

Yep, it definitely sucks, not only for us, but for OpenRigs as well.

Fluffy needs to go slap some sense into the post office there.  Doesn't the South African government want your business to succeed so they can have some tax dollars?  ;D

Yes - they've promised me it'll be tracking by CoB Friday:)

It won't track in-between countries, unfortunately - it would be great if it had more detailed tracking but it goes into a blackhole till it arrives at the destination country (and even then they often give it a local tracking number and it disappears off the grid). Surface mail transit times that we're seeing are typically 6-10 weeks - will add it to my list of "orders to complain about" when I have my weekly meeting with the post office and will feed back to you as I can!

lol - I've been doing that - every time I throw toys their stock response is "surface mail parcels can take up to 3 months and don't always track online in the destination country". Like, thanks, that helps me soooo much.

I'm currently pushing them to give me more detailed information for older surface mail parcels that customers have reported as undelivered (in the 6+ week bracket) - such as route, what vessel(s) it went on, etc. If I can get that then at least we can track it ourselves instead of having the black hole of non-information between shipping and delivery.

So thanks to fluffy pony and the crew here at open rigs. I have not received my item but they did go out if their way to send me extra parts I will need when it arrives. I was contacted by them and they noticed I ordered an item that needs parts that we're not normally included and they sent them to me. Thanks again!

I think by the time that these land the new generation of ASICs will be out. :)

Heh - we'll have to have cases ready for that, then;)

In all seriousness, though, we are working hard on getting this down to a significantly smoother experience for customers. Hopefully the next ride will be far less bumpy!

Fluffy,

What is currently being done for customers who ordered on Black Friday and have not received their orders?

We are now at -13 weeks for ordering and -7 weeks for shipping (counting a 10Jan shipment date).

Last I spoke with you was the 24th...

Thanks.

Hi. Can you reverse package and refund me? I don`t need it anymore.
all reasonable time has passed.

I find it incredibly amusing that almost all the people bitching about "ERMERGERD WHERES MER PACKAGE REFUND REFUND REFUND REFUND REFUND" do not indicate they used the shipping option that was reasonably fast (EMS or similar) and likely are using surface shipping. That's what you get with surface shipping. Deal with it.

Fluffy, keep up the good business.

Really? A two month wait? Can't say I've ever experienced this before. I'm glad you have tons of experience waiting months for shipments. Thanks for your contribution to this thread.

these guys are the real deal. Ordered 5 of their rigs for my garage got it about 11 days after i paid. Im waiting for mid march to cashout with coinbase my bitcoin miners then going to buy more cards and their rigs.
Keep it up openrigs.

Basically what we've discussed with our insurance is that where a shipment can be determined as missing we will replace it from stock in the US (which should happen in the next month or thereabouts) so as not to keep the person waiting - the trick will be to get that "missing" parcel determination. I opened a few claims for early orders that are undelivered (including yours), so now we wait for feedback from them.

You can PM me your order number and I can file a claim with our insurance, but if you chose surface mail they may insist on waiting until the 3 month maximum transit period has elapsed.

Thanks:) We don't have any EMS or Aramex parcels that have gone missing or been undelivered, as yet, by far the biggest issue is the length of time surface mail is taking.

Thanks for the positive feedback - that is exceptionally fast for us (if I'm being honest;) you must've chosen EMS or Aramex to get it that quickly:)

Our average lead time is often a little longer than that, but we are working to improve it, and it's always good to hear that it is getting better as time goes on.

It's tracking now, thanks!

It's a February miracle...the post office actually delivered on their promise!

They are back from their summer vacation?  :P

can I ask you where are you and what mail service did you choose? for me just production took more than a month.

hmm. why not just reverse it? I was not talking about insurance claim...

Heya - because it has shipped to you using the shipping method you selected and well within our stated timelines. The only time we can refund you is if that parcel goes missing, otherwise it doesn't make sense to dish out refunds when you're going to receive the order you received within the time period you agreed to during checkout? Hope that makes sense:)

Here's what you ordered:
https://i.imgur.com/YLia9QQ.png

And here's your order history:
https://i.imgur.com/CelAyLL.png

If it will help I can break down those timelines against the timelines you agreed to during checkout to confirm that we were within our published timelines on your order?

Fluffy I have not heard back from you in four days privately after my last pm expressing my gratitude for what byou did but still looking for information your suppose to be getting on what ship the package is on. We are going on 39+ days since bag out 42 days would be 6 weeks. I understand your busy but I expect timely responses And updates.

Order 722 good old black friday .
Thank you

Absolutely - you and wobbzz are in the same boat, and I'm waiting on additional feedback (ETAs specifically). Once I've received that I'll be in a better position to suggest some resolution, so I will definitely keep you guys in the loop at things progress on this side:)

sure let me know time-frames for fabrication/shipping-delivery at the time I submitted order.

Why you could not make a shipping reverse?

Because it's physically not possible for us to recall surface mail parcels once they've left the country.


Our timelines haven't changed, the only thing we've done is added a flowchart for people that don't like to read, and we've adjusted the surface mail transit time because of recommendations made in the previous thread (which is neither here nor there, as even the previous timeline indicated that it could take longer than indicated for surface mail parcels). You can see our timelines on our delivery and returns policy here: https://openrigs.com/information/information&information_id=6

Here's a breakdown of your order and our expected timelines (for the shipping method you selected during checkout)

Order Status	Date	Actual Timeline	Published Timeline	Optimistic Timeline	Pessimistic Timeline
The order status update	Date the status changed	Number of business days that passed for this status	What we publish as the expected typical timeline	The best we've recorded for this status	The worst we've recorded for this status
Payment received	2013/11/29	0 business day	"the next business day"	0 business days	3 business days (during the holiday period)
Processing and pre-fabrication	2013/11/29	4 business days	"a few business days"	1 business day	5 business days (during the holiday period)
Fabrication	2013/12/05	8 business days	"typically around 8 business days"	4 business days	15 business days (during the holiday period)
Handed to customs for pre-clearance	2013/12/19	9 business days	"a number of business days"	2 business days	23 business days (backlog from illegal strike action)
Shipped to customer	2014/01/06	7.7 weeks currently, undelivered	"6-10+ weeks"	5 weeks (EU), 7 weeks (US)	3 months (per the post office FAQ (http://www.postoffice.co.za/questions/postofficequestions.html)), after which we can successfully claim it as a lost parcel from insurance

I must agree the ground shipping is extraordinarily slow.

If the max shipping time allowed for it is 3 months, I think the shipping option should have a big fat warning in red letters, that
the option may take up to 3 months to deliver after production. I would've certainly gone with EMS if I knew the shipping
time difference was more than 2 weeks...

Other than that, I think my rigs are arriving soon(tm) and I'm really looking forward to setting up my rigs right.

Definitely - what we've done since is have EMS as our recommended shipping method (in big, bold letters) and put the shipping time frames on the shipping method selection box during checkout, so it's easier to see. We're also trying to get better rates to certain regions so that we can drop surface mail as a shipping option altogether.

Hmm. It is possible in other countries. even Russia.

Sweet, keep up the good work :)

We have asked the post office before - they said that once it has left the country, any return to sender action will cost at least what was paid to send it. If the destination country is a place like the US that stopped their economy service to cut costs, then the return would be by air, which is even more costly. In a situation where we have processed an order against our published timelines, we can only pursue something like that as a zero-sum exercise, which means the cost of the shipping and the return shipping would come out of the refund.

Yep. I'm trying not to implode about this situation.

Fluffy, Who do you submit insurance claims to? Can you direct us to documentation regarding their policy please?

From a U.S. perspective, the package is tracking as "USPS Priority Mail International".

Per the USPS Priority mail international FAQ, an insurance claim can be filed "no sooner than" 7 days. This means one could be filed right now. I understand what you've been told regarding boat shipping and what you've told us. However, if we can take advantage of this process through USPS, it does not logically make sense to wait.

https://www.usps.com/ship/file-international-claims.htm#

If your claim is filed through SAPO, then I'm a little concerned by their claim policy. http://www.postoffice.co.za/Insuranceact.pdf

It states "The insured must lodge a claim within 45 days after dispatching the insured letter/parcel."

Edit: I understand you have been in discussion with SAPO, but has a formal claim been submitted?

Additionally, what boat was our shipment placed on? This question should be resolved by now. We have more than doubled the original 21 day transit time originally quoted for intercontinental vessel transport.

It may be USPS Priority International (mine was as well), but as far as USPS is concerned, they have not received the package yet. You can't claim against USPS until it makes land and passes through customs.

(At least that's what I was told a few months back by my local office when asking.)

Neither, for three reasons:

1. Cover from the postal service is very limited, often not covering missing parts or damage, and only whole loss
2. They are expensive - at their rates it would be cheaper for us to self-insure, because practically speaking there is such a small number of international shipments that truly go missing
3. We have had issues with customs where we declare "No Commercial Value" but we insure it for several hundred Dollars...customs doesn't understand the disconnect. The customer even tried to explain that if you send a family heirloom to a family member you would insure it, but it wouldn't have a commercial value, and the US customs guy was just like "errrrr".

So our insurance company that does all of our normal insurance as well as our business continuity insurance is just covering it under an adjusted marine insurance policy, which is cheaper than the post office's. There aren't any lower or upper bounds on claims in terms of time, per se, but obviously they won't even consider a surface mail claim if it's within the post office's published timelines. At the very least they would discuss it with the post office who would kick back the 3 month timeline, and they wouldn't budge until then.

I have requested routing info several times from the post office to no avail. The closest I got was estimated routing info for a delivery to Fremont, CA, 94538. Basically, excluding customs processing on either side: there are weekly sailings to Newark, so the parcel may hang around for a week; then to Newark is approximately 25 days; then it sits in Newark for up to a month waiting for the monthly vessel to San Francisco, then it takes approximately 14 days from Newark to San Francisco. Customs is pre-cleared here, but let's add another 2 days on the receiving end for customs and another, say, 3 days for final delivery to Fremont? That means best case scenario assuming no waiting at any port is 6.5 weeks. Worst case scenario with full waiting times at both ports is 11.6 weeks. This is obviously not necessarily your route, but who knows - maybe all surface mail parcels are routed through San Francisco? Seems kinda redundant since Newark is in the US already, but clearly postal routing defies all normal logic.

Yours was EMS, though - surface mail would be processes as "First Class Mail International" by USPS (I think).

Surface mail shows up as priority mail international.

http://i57.tinypic.com/2qwhlxi.png

Ah I didn't realise that - that's good, it means it'll be processed faster in-country than First Class International:)

Thanks for the explanation. It would be very silly if the package sat in Newark for that long to get routed to California. I'm much closer to Newark. So in other words: don't expect any traction on insurance claims until early/mid April.

You really shouldn't even offer surface mail as an option.

I'm removing it next week as soon as we get updated EMS rates - some countries will be much cheaper than they are now:)

Good deal man. Only having dealt with international orders from Europe and China, I was expecting like 4-6 weeks at most.

A quarter of a year later...

 I'm not sure if I'll get it before I move out of this house in the next few weeks.

Fluffy I'm not quite sure I understand this insurance thing. I'm a businessman myself and deal with insurance coverage on a daily basis. Here in the usa you could in theory purchase a blanket coverage that would cover lost or damaged shipping. The thing is though is that any insurance company here that isn't collecting a per package fee and is just offering z blanket coverage would then have a deductible that would come out of your pocket before they even begin paying. For instance I have a very similar policy and my deductible is 250 per claim unless I pay them an insursance fee per item that I ship.  Is insurance really that much different?

Also I spoke with an agent at the post office there and he gave me contact information for someone at cape town port that he said would be able to tell me what vessel my package went on. I plan on calling them tomorrow because it really does seem we are getting the run around. I apologize for thinking so negatively but would you not do the ssme ?

Keep us posted! If you get results I might make a call myself.

Edit: Although we're likely on the same boat :)

Yes, but we'd be screwed on blanket cover due to the volatility of the business - that would only make sense much later on when we have several years of measurable sales under our belt and know what to expect on a month-to-month basis. So we pay per-shipment - we send a weekly dispatch and costing report and get billed based on that over and above our monthly premium. As I mentioned, though, what we pay them under their marine (cargo) insurance policy is cheaper per-shipment than the post office, as well as providing the other advantages highlighted.

You are absolutely welcome to wade through the blackhole that is the post office. In fact, I can give you the details for Capemail right now - you can phone any one of the following 5 numbers - +27 21 590 5712/3/5/6/7 and ask for the International Parcels department. Those are the people that dispatched the parcel and have the most direct access to backend systems. I have gone down that road a bunch of times with no success, which is why I'm trying to escalate things from a hub level, hoping that they will know the right people to talk to. Hopefully you'll have more luck than I did:)

In all honesty no disrespect fluffy but we all shouldn't have to fucking do this.

We are the customer and we are basically being forced to search high and low to find our own parcels.

I'm sorry I know you have made efforts and a good will gesture towards me but seriously come on. If your package goes missing by for instance amazon what do they do? They ship out a new one immediately and take care of their customer. I know you aren't amazon and you most definitely don't have the money to be amazon but that is the way you take care of your customers. Not force them to try and do research themselves. I had no idea my package would be shipped Surface mail or else I would of never ordered it.

An example of how I handle customer service with my company which is completely unrelated to bitcoin at all. One time my assistant/employee accidentally changed something in the backend on our shipping and it had caused the shipping to end up showing up as basically 1-2 dollars for every item no matter what service they chose for shipping and how many items or how heavy those items were. What I ended up with was about 150 orders that had picked Express overnight shipping. I received about 3 dollars per order for shipping on items that cost me around 95 dollars to ship them. Keep in mind I was making about 30 dollars in profit per item.

So we are looking at a total of about 14,000 in shipping charges of which I received about 450 for. I didn't decide to cancel all of the orders based off a mistake. I also didn't ship all of those orders using a cheaper method. I ate a $9,000 loss out of my own pocket because a mistake was made by my company. Just saying that I expected a bit more out of a company trying to be such a big dog.

I most definitely do appreciate all of your help finding our packages, and also the good will gestures you have made. Don't take my posts as being unappreciative of your help as that isn't my intention. My intention is to show you that no matter what you should stand by your customer and do the right thing, not put them through hell.

Josh

Hi Josh,

I think I need to separate things out here, as there are several points that are rolling together that I want to address separately:

- I'd like to make it clear that when someone CHOOSES surface mail, there is nothing we can do. We may have been optimistic with our surface mail timelines initially, but we kept them very open-ended precisely because of the length of time it takes. Whilst I sympathise with those clients that don't read the delivery and returns policy or gloss over the timelines, there is literally nothing I can do to speed the process up for them. There are a LOT of people complaining when they chose a shipping method that is extremely slow, and there has to be a line drawn in the sand somewhere, else everyone will be able to claim ignorance of the shipping timelines and bully their way to a refund.

- A small number of clients, including yourself and wobbzz, were affected by a bug that presented air mail (at surface mail pricing) and EMS as the two shipping options. You chose the cheaper and slower of the two, perhaps under the impression that delivery would be air mail timelines (around 4 weeks to the US). This was not discovered at shipping time, as shipping data is uncached and 3NF, and showed up on the backend as surface mail. There was no way we could have known till it was brought to our attention.

- As I've already mentioned, we have no idea how many customers are affected (restoring the cached pages have been of limited help in determining this, and at a guess it seems it only affected those that used the shipping estimator based on conversations I've had with those that ordered around the same time as you). We cannot blanket-reship parcels if we don't even know who is affected.

- We are not a going concern, we are a bootstrapped startup. That means we have no overdraft facility (the bank won't even consider it without 6+ months of cash-flow). We have extremely thin margins, and every cent of profit goes towards improving our fabrication systems, reducing our JIT fabrication tail, and on new product development. We simply would not have - and do not have - the cash necessary to re-fabricate and re-send parcels.

- Even if we did have the cash on hand, it would not be a matter of pocketing a shipping difference. As we only discovered the problem after the affected parcels had shipped, we would have to write off the full cost of the shipped parcels, and then have COH to re-fabricate and re-ship affected parcels. We'd then need to trust that customers won't just keep the parcel and will send it back to us, which is an unlikely hope at best.

- In line with all of the above I refunded both your and wobbzz shipping fee, given that you were affected by the mishap. As mentioned in private to both of you, I was and am waiting on feedback that will help me determine how long before your respective parcels arrive. Once I have more information, I will be in a better position to determine what to do to resolve it for the two of you. In other words: if your parcel is going to arrive in the next few days, then it is my hope that the refunded shipping has been adequate recompense. On the other hand, if it is still going to take another 4 weeks, I will make a plan to get a second delivery to you sooner, and arrange to get the other parcel collected when it arrives.

You absolutely do NOT have to call the post office and end up with the same run-around that I'm in, but if that is what it takes to demonstrate that I am doing everything possible to resolve two isolated situations (yours and wobbzz) then I truly invite you to do so.

You know, I almost feel bad for you sometimes, Fluffaroo, but then you say things like this.... [bold for emphasis]


You already acknowledged that the error was on YOUR END, so why would you act as if the customer made a mistake in the shipping option? 

If only a "small number of clients" were affected with the error on your end then why not just bite the bullet?

I may have given the wrong impression - the customer didn't make a mistake, I'm just providing background as to why we couldn't process it at shipping time as air mail. The guys that do the waybills don't care how much a customer paid - they care about what it says on our backend systems, so if it had said airmail on the backend they would have been agnostic to any cost implication and just processed it as such.

I think I've answered the second question at length in my previous post - let me know if I haven't and I'll try again:)

FYI, happy to report that my order is making progress.

EMS parcel left the South Africa on Feb-28, and it already arrived in Canada today (Mar-3). Now it's just waiting for customs and local postal delivery from Quebec to Ontario.

Fluff,

Thanks for responding.

In response to this -

- We are not a going concern, we are a bootstrapped startup. That means we have no overdraft facility (the bank won't even consider it without 6+ months of cash-flow). We have extremely thin margins, and every cent of profit goes towards improving our fabrication systems, reducing our JIT fabrication tail, and on new product development. We simply would not have - and do not have - the cash necessary to re-fabricate and re-send parcels.


Might I ask you why it is that I care how thin your profit margins are? When I'm sitting in the business I run and a customer brings a complaint to me about a certain product, I don't sit there and explain to the customer how I make such a crappy profit margin on that item. I fix the situation and don't give excuses. The customer doesn't care about all of the excuses you can come up with. The customer wants ANSWERS not excuses and that is the biggest thing I think you will learn from this experience. Don't tell me why it happened tell me how your going to fix my problem.

I completely understand that money is strapped tight but unfortunately fluffy if you can't financially back your products when issues like these happen than you shouldn't be in business. What if a customer for instance tried claiming that because the shipping presented to us showed as being 4-6 weeks on the website, and that we had assumed we would have those racks by that time they haven't been able to set up their mining rigs. In theory if someone really wanted to get creative they could try and make a claim against your company for hampering their ability to make money. I know this is far stretched but my point is that you clearly have very little additional funds to run your company. If a customer decided to be an ass and pull a stunt like this would it not basically bankrupt you in legal fees? Even if the claim is frivolous you would have to argue those claims and it would cost you thousands in attorney fees which you clearly don't have.  Why you would honestly admit that you have very little money in a open forum is beyond me because all that tells me is that if I EVER have a problem with your company on a future order I honestly have a VERY VERY slim chance of ever having it resolved. I never make my customers wait for me to receive the insurance claim on their parcels if they go missing. We all know that insurance claims sometimes take months, and this is completely unfair and unethical to ask a customer to wait that long. If you decided to reship the parcel and then the first one arrives and it isn't returned to your company, that is what I call the cost of doing business. I have shipped hundred dollar items before and then the package appears to go missing. I then receive a denied insurance request because somehow the item arrived still. I will email that customer ONCE asking them kindly with a prepaid shipping label to please return it. If the customer doesn't return the item I don't harass them I simply chalk that up to being part of doing business. You should of assumed that you would have small issues like this when shipping international and you should have allotted funds in case of a mistake like this.

I most definitely do appreciate you refunding my shipping costs. What I did explain to you privately was that I would actually prefer to receive my item over receiving a refund period. It isn't about how much I paid for shipping costs. It is about the fact that you falsely represented a delivery time frame to your customer who was expecting to have received their item by that time. In all honesty by the time this parcel gets here freaking AMD will probably have a new graphic card generation lol. I know its not your fault once the parcel is out of your hands but to blame not knowing who was affected as a reason for not fixing the situation is just pure ignorance. It's not mine or Wobbzzz fault that you don't have the funds to replace our orders at your own expense. I feel bad for you but from a business standpoint I really don't care how you fix it or what you do. All I care about is the fact that the items I have ordered will be on my door step by the end of March.

I would just like to end this by once again thanking you fluffy for your dedication and help in the matter. I think where you are wrong is by shifting the blame off of your company and yourself and onto any other excuse you can find. Please take responsibility for the mistake even if it wasn't your own. I really do thank you for the quick responses but someone must hold you accountable and unfortunately it seems that I have to be the one.

No offense, but for someone recently starting a similar product line based on fluffy's designs, this statement comes off as a little arrogant and self-serving. I understand your sentiment, but at this point it seems like publicly lecturing fluffy on his business practices is more about belittling the competition then obtaining satisfaction as a customer. You can couch this in all the "please" and "thank yous" you want, but this just makes you sound condescending.

Good luck with your business.

I'm not a business owner myself but Josh echoes a lot of the sentiments I have as a customer towards this situation. He put them together more eloquently then I would have been able to. As Josh said, I also appreciate the good faith gesture in the form of a shipping refund as equally as I appreciate fluffy's dedication to responding to our persistent reflection of this situation in a thread where he's trying to promote his product. However, what's most important to me is receiving the product that I paid for in a timely manner. I would prefer to not give the hardware store any more fiat for crate frame materials when I have two outstanding looking frames on the way that will fill my needs.


Fluffy, when are you expecting feedback for an expected delivery?

Click the link in damnsammit's sig. He clearly states that Josh is his business partner in the OP, and Josh is the first poster with this comment...

Heh, I didn't do my research. Post deleted :)

Josh,

I find your reply confusing. I have been as transparent as possible because the minute anyone running a Bitcoin-related business is cagey, everyone screams "mtgox!" and "bitcoinica!" and "scam!" So many customers just long for honesty and transparency - even if that means admitting that things are not 100% at the moment. Yet my transparency is met with replies such as yours which effectively encourages a lack of transparency? I must admit, that sort of attitude doesn't bode well for you given you that you have positioned yourself in direct competition to us.

Whilst I appreciate you telling me how to run my business, you are an external third-party, a direct competitor no less, unfamiliar with the dynamics of the company, of the group, or even of my personal ethics. You have never been in my situation, it is a logical impossibility, so you cannot tell me how you would react or how you would have dealt with matters. You can only speak hypothetically based on an external view and filled with competitor-bias.

I'd like to point out - again - that your situation was brought to my attention recently, a few weeks ago. I could not react in an unmeasured way and have some sort of knee-jerk reaction, as I needed to first establish 1) did this occur or is someone just trying to game the system or troll us (given that it was so very pubic and not handled privately), 2) assuming there was an error on our side, how many were affected by it, 3) of those affected, how many had already received their parcel or were close to receiving their parcel, 4) given all of this, for those that are affected and are seriously outside of the expected bounds, what restitution could be made? You misunderstand my statement that we could not afford to blanket re-fabricate and re-ship 500 orders with some sort of admission of being cash strapped and unable to solve your person problem - that is absolutely not the case. It should be clear from my statements that I was referencing the entirety of the problem and not two orders specifically, I apologise if that was somehow unclear.

Is this extremely measured approach the way we deal with every issue? No - on a case by case basis we try to please customers as best we can, including: re-sending a parcel where a person paid for an upgrade to faster shipping and it was not updated on our backend the day after the error was pointed out (http://www.reddit.com/r/litecoinmining/comments/1ygvmw/ordered_frame_from_openrigscom_in_december/cfr0v5d?context=4) or helping a customer realise that he had ordered parts of the Arianna grid without a sidepiece and immediately - at our expense - shipping the extra pieces to him so that they arrive before he receives the rest of his order (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=470944.msg5404663#msg5404663). We acknowledge where we have screwed up or even where we can foresee a customer is going to receive something unworkable, and we try to make it right, but it has to be within the bounds of what can reasonably be expected especially where the extent of a mistake is unknowable.

As Zoella has noted, this situation has gotten quite complicated as any of your responses are unavoidably laced with bias as a direct competitor. Rather than a continuous back-and-forth, maybe we should put this very public debate aside. I will be in a position to resolve your delivery once I have received the feedback I am expecting, and then this matter can be closed. If you have any further comments, questions, or thoughts, please feel free to address them in private with me, as that is more appropriate given the nature of the situation.

On your parcel in particular (different transit dates, so slightly different routes) I am expecting feedback on Wednesday morning, so I will be in a better position to know how to proceed with resolving yours then:)

The shipping method you chose during checkout was Surface Mail. Delivery and returns policy with timelines for the different shipping methods is here (https://openrigs.com/information/information&information_id=6). We're still within the expected transit time period for the shipping method you chose, but I will add it to the list to query later this week:)

CanadaPost attempted delivery of Fluffy's parcel to my home today; that's 5 days transit (including weekend) with EMS from South Africa to Canada.  ;D
Fluffy, do yourself a favor and remove surface mail option asap.

It's going off this week, I'm getting *special* rates that I'll be updating everything with, and then surface mail is gone:)

My order# is 885. Ordered on December 4, 2013, "shipped/bag out" on Jan 14th, 2014 -- funny that I ordered mine before af_newbie and it shipped after his did.

Also just like af_newbie -- I still don't have it.

Really disappointing that I have to wait "up to 10 weeks". But we're almost at March 18 (10th week) so...if it isn't here by then, I will be demanding a refund.

MD

Order 1061 here.  Item has been "Shipped, pending customs check" since January 14.  The whole thing is becoming a bit tedious.

It's got a tracking number on my backend - are you not seeing seeing the "Shipped to Customer" status with the tracking number? Email info@openrigs.com and someone will provide it manually for you:)

My opinion on fluffy's business practices are in no way influenced in the rigs I am starting to build with Sam. I am a paying customer of fluffys and I began the business because of fluffy and the unfortunate shipping times form South Africa. I actually first contacted fluffy and asked if he would be willing to sell to me in large quantities of 100-200 rigs at a time to carry and warehouse in the USA to sell for him and his company. He never responded at all to my requests. I honestly would never bash another company in their own thread to try and promote mine and in no way am I trying to do that. I do apologize if anyone sees it as that but I honestly just want my product and look forward to using it. I admire the rigs that fluffy has created and think they look absolutely wonderful not to mention his great website.

I do on the other hand plan to call out the problems I see and I do expect quality customer service. I work and run another business other than the rig business that you see and that is where I am pulling my opinions from.

Not trying to hurt or degrade Fluffy or promote myself. I will gladly post a review of the rig once I receive it in favor of Fluffy if I find that it is great quality like I expect it to be. I give credit where credit is due.

Out of respect for Fluffy though I will continue any further discussion with him privately via PM as to not construe that I am simply posting and complaining to make him look bad, or to try and promote the new business venture I am participating in.

i am really pissed off!!!
shipping status
and why the hell are some later orders shipped before my order?

For the shipping method you selected we're still within the published transit time on the delivery and returns policy you agreed to during checkout.

To answer your second question, we hand them to customs in the order we receive them, but customs splits them out based on where they're going (EMS parcels depart from JIMC, surface mail from Cape Town harbour via Capemail, and Aramex parcels are collected from customs after an OBC). Even after that they process it in no particular order - sometimes if there isn't a vessel available they'll keep parcels bound for that destination there before finalising the documentation and releasing them, which means surface mail parcels have it worst of everyone.

No harm, no foul! I get where you're coming from, and despite the unique situation we are in I won't hold back from providing the best service I can to you and Sam:)

I feel I've been scammed. My last post was deleted by fluffypony. Apparently if you wait over 45 days then paypal wont let you dispute the charge. Well it's been 3 months and I see no product. I am call my credit card company right now. Don't fall for this scam.

I don't think it's fair to call it a scam. You misunderstood the shipping times like a lot of other people.  I am order 767 and still waiting.  Although I'm losing faith I'll ever receive it because I'll be moving before the end of March. :-/

Holding thumbs for that, because if it gets RTS'd we pay return shipping on it...lol

It's delivered by USPS, so a simple change of address should cover it.

Well, my history of dealing with USPS and change of addresses give it about a 50/50 chance of ever making it to me... lol

The last time I changed addresses, not only did I not receive my mail, but I also received someone elses mail for almost a year!

Hi,

 I made my order in December last year and until now I still don't have valid tracking... (2 tracking numbers sent, one not working at all the other shows last scan in 2012).

Can I have a refund please, I don't think anything will arrive, ever. I have been more than patient. Order #1221.

Thank you.

Just checked your order history - the first one was captured incorrectly, the second one is the correct tracking number (hence the "Apologies, please disregard the previous tracking number as it was incorrect." message that accompanied it). I'll double-check that second number against the hard copy when I'm in the office just to make sure it is correct:)

PARCEL TRACKING RESULTS
Item Number: +++ was last scanned on: 2012/06/07 at 03:39
Location last scanned: CAPEMAIL (HUB)
Currently has status of: In transit
TRACKING
LINE    TYPE   DATE   TIME   BRANCH   COMMENTS
1   In transit   2012/06/07   03:39   CAPEMAIL (HUB)   
2   Item accepted by branch   2012/06/05   15:22   N1-STAD / CITY   

You shipped it 2 years ago?

Ah - did we forget to mention our pre-emptive shipping service during checkout? It uses a tiny gypsy woman with a bit of a beard, locked in a small caravan with a crystal ball, telling us who will order in a few years time. We're shipping 2017 orders now because the South African postal service is so bad that it might actually arrive by then:-P

Seriously, though, sounds like it's either a re-used number that hasn't been scanned OR it's the wrong number - myself or one of our support staff will come back to you within the next few hours.

You mean you didn't place your order from one of these?!

https://www.profilesinhistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/backtothefuture-delorean.jpg

FYI, this movie really messed me up as a kid since I was like 4 when I saw it and I associated with "Back" with "Future" so i was thoroughly confused with "Future" and "Past" until like 2nd grade.... lol (sorry to derail)



EDIT:  And this is why Fluffy could rape my mother and I would still like the guy...


EL OH EFFING EL

So the Ghost of Christmas Past must've been really confusing;)

I was going to say, "ouch, that sux", but then I realized I was not shocked at all. So perhaps I should just say, "ahh, the joys of USPS".

Doc: Right on the tick! Amazing, absolutely amazing. Too bad the post office isn't as efficient as the weather service.
http://fusion-industries2.tripod.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/3rightonthetick.jpg

Just saw the edit now...just to be sure, Dorothy Mantooth is a saint and I would never do that:-P

yes but no one has told me that my order will need nearly two months for producing and shipping!

100% - it shouldn't have taken that long. We gave it to customs on 2013/12/23, which was in line with our expected timelines, and they really should have gotten it out sooner. It's one of the reasons we're taking surface mail away as a shipping option; they process EMS parcels faster (possibly only when it gets up to JIMC? I have no idea), but the surface mail parcels they let hang around till they feel like doing something about it. I know that it doesn't help in retrospect, but we are trying to improve and get better:)

I am again waiting on something which is not happening either

You claimed to send me the postage return on paypal

This far i see nothing paid to my paypal from you and ofcourse still no package.

I'm away from my desk at the moment - but I'll take a looksie when I'm back, I could've sworn I did the partial refund earlier this week. Sorry about that!

Also - just checked the tracking on my phone, looks like it hit the Netherlands at 10:45am today, so I assume you'll receive it within the next couple of days:) You can contact PostNL to see if there is a customs process or if it'll just go straight through (it should go straight through).

Well if thats the case i can not see it (yet)
Every package from and to me should become visible in the online postnl program
This far i can not see anything yet.
But if it arrives i still think such a insane long wait is not very good
I do understand that you had startup problems, when i ordered but november till march is way overdue.
The fact that i kept my calm for so many months does not mean i am/was not concerned.

Absolutely - that's the main reason we're removing surface mail, so that future orders don't experience the 8 weeks of transit you have:)

Is that the captain of the ship?

I wish! It's just the Minister of Slow Shipments and Customs Delays in the glorious Republic of South Africa, and he's here to answer questions!

Can we mail him a letter? Surface mail of course...  ;D

very true.

Hahaha awesome video.

His preferred communication method is Hand Delivery By Giraffe

 ;D

Awesome - transit time of 9.14 weeks, which is within bounds and is what we've come to expect for surface mail to North America:)

How is it they can get a damn boat to Canada quicker than the US. sigh...

I know:( Canada has all the cool stuff...free healthcare, Canadian Mounties, boats that get there faster...we should move there!

canada does NOT have free health care, get that idea out of your head.

Yeah I know, was just kidding;) Here we pay the equivalent of aout $250/month for my wife and I, and that doesn't include dental or non-chronic medication or anything you'd actually use. Gah.

I think we do have free healthcare. As "free" as it can be, i.e. you don't have to pay to see a doctor, or to be treated at the hospital.

All we need is just some better weather... I am sick of this long winter  :(

I didn't misunderstand. I've been waiting over 10 weeks since it was shipped, which took a month from the time of order. I would say I've been pretty patient considering its been 3 months since I placed the order. I don't think anything is coming.

I must correct you there, I'm afraid - both CN028931505ZA and CN028931505ZA went into transit on 2014/01/21, so it's been just on 7 weeks by my calculation.

Edit: also, what do you mean "I don't think anything is coming"? I couldn't get all these parcels to track on all the global tracking sites except by some magical conspiracy...?

NOTE: Apparently this is normal for delivery to North America. Read the timelines on the site.

Order #685 here. Date Added: 29/11/2013.

So I ordered back in November 2013 for the black friday sale. 104 days later I'm still sitting here wondering where my GPU frames are. Thank god I didn't decide to wait to do my builds. Here are some details:

---------------

29/11/2013   Pending      

05/12/2013   Fabrication      Aluminium has arrived (yay!), plastic is being moulded at the speed of soft thunder, and we're fabricating away!

19/12/2013   Shipped, pending customs check      Off it goes! Customs will now do a little x-ray and a paperwork check to make sure all is in
order. Once that's done we'll be given tracking numbers, which we'll send on to you within the next couple of days at the most:)

17/01/2014   Shipped to customer

---------------

Track History
Date   Time   Location   Description   Retail Location   Signatory Name
2014/01/23   11:28   ZACPTD,South Africa   International item has left originating country and is en route to Canada      
2014/01/20   09:32   ZACPTD,South Africa   International item processed in originating country

---------------

I agree - surface mail has been a dog. We're seeing around 9.7 weeks to the US at present, sometimes more, sometimes less. It's honestly been the WORST shipping method on the face of the planet, to the point where it's removed and no longer even an option. Please let me know if you don't receive it in the coming weeks, and we'll sort you out with a replacement/refund ASAP:)

Edit: forgot to add that we have new EMS pricing that is significantly lower, and EMS transit times are 1 week instead of the ridonkulous 10+ weeks!

Thanks for your quick response. I do appreciate you being available on the forum even in the face of adversity. Will let you know.

Well, if EMS is significantly cheaper now and I paid additional to switch over to EMS back when the prices were high, shouldn't I logically get the difference refunded since you will be paying your carrier the lower rate you now advertise (and not the extremely high prices you initially charged)?

This would especially apply if the package still has not shipped. Also, my package has now been in customs for 31 days and counting.

Order 1441.

Definitely, any pending shipments that go out from this week are on our new rates. In your instance, though, that order has cleared customs, as far as I can see. I'll get one of the support staff to re-send the tracking details to you:)

Hey!!!!!! Im just catching up reading this thread..  Another member of the 100 day club here!! I too surrendered my funds 100 days ago and have no product! I ordered dec 2 and chose surface mail which was supposed to be "4 - 6 weeks". 

My item activity claims a status of "on route" and My activity summary reads
 
1/22/2014 11:12 AM   Arrival at outward office of exchange   CAPETOWN D   
1/22/2014 11:12 AM   Departure from outward office of exchange   CAPETOWN D   


If that means it left SA on the 22nd then we are at week 7 or one week outside the 4-6wk period!

Now if im really really lucky there is a 10 week waiting period and credit approval and a security deposit required to receive a full refund for the item i didnt receive?? Please entertain me and spell out the refund process. Im sure its not as simple as sending the funds back via they same payment method.
 



You realize there is nothing "awesome" about that .. In fact that's someone who followed through with his end of the agreement and sent you money and supported your small business only to get royally screwed and is now resorting to selling the unused item for less than 1/2 of what he paid.. You would think one would be apologetic or sympathetic at the minimum..



*********************************************
Like this:
"Im sorry your product took longer than expected to arrive. Hopefully you will give us an opportunity in the future to get it right."

We apologize for the inconvenience caused by the delay, tho it was not in our control we take full responsibility and are taking steps to ensure a better customer experience"
 
Even like this:
" Im really sorry! "

**********************************************


 Somehow i think it's me..

Maybe im looking at it the wrong way..

maybe in your next video which i found *.extremely entertaining..  you can add a test dummy representing a paying customer like af_newbie and just beat the living **** out of em and then with a mental patient ear to ear grin on your face you spit right in his face and look directly into the camera and say -->>    " you piece of ****, i got your money and i could give a **** less about your experience or whether you get the product you paid for in a timely manner or not! "   

 Now that would be awesome eh!  or am i not doing it right?..

 



 

That's not entirely correct. I sympathise with people like joshvette and wobbzzz who chose a slow shipping method in error - I have corrected that by re-shipping their parcels via EMS at our expense, and we will figure out what to do once the original parcels arrive. C'est la vie.

af_newbie's case is a different one. Not only did he willingly and knowingly choose a slow shipping method, but before his item left the country he opened a PayPal dispute. During the course of that dispute the transit timelines were reiterated over and over again. He even had the opportunity to upgrade to EMS at that point, which he did not take up. He closed the case of his own volition, accepting that it would arrive within the stipulated transit time, which at that stage was (and I'm quoting from what we told him in the comments of the case) - "Shipping via regular surface mail typically takes up to 6 weeks (longer if there are import delays at the destination country)". Sure, those were naive timelines, and that's why (per the recommendation on the previous thread) we adjusted the timelines to 6-10+ weeks, up to a maximum of 13 weeks.

So when he came on the thread spewing vitriol because he received it, it's really hard to be apologetic. I said "awesome" because it's the first Canadian surface mail shipment that has indicated they've received it, so it gives us a baseline. I won't engage on his other comments because they don't warrant engagement.

We can talk around this issue at length, but basically nobody (including us) expected the surface mail parcels to literally take 10 weeks to the US, especially when we're seeing like 5 weeks to the UK. Had we known it was going to be that bad, we would never have even put that up as an option, or we would have put some ridiculous transit timeline like 4 months just to make sure nobody chooses it. I definitely sympathise with those who are waiting, and I cannot apologise enough that the "or longer" bit in our surface mail estimates has ended up being "definitely frikkin longer, in fact way, way longer than you or I realise".

Respectfully, I do not think it will be productive or useful for me to apologise at length in every post, though. I think it will end up sounding less than genuine, because everyone wants a solution, they want action. An apology doesn't get their order to them faster. My focus at the moment is on seeing how we can ensure that this doesn't happen in future for anyone, by improving and streamlining our processes, and by making fundamental changes to our logistics model. Does this solve the problem for customers whose orders have already shipped? No, of course not, but we have no choice but to learn from the rocky past and move forward.

Hey!! Thanks for the genuine response man.. Sometimes thats all people want is someone to be straight up.

Sorry if i picked a bad example with af_newbie.. i didnt realize you guys had issues with him outside the normal wait time ranting like myself..



 

I got my frames, but was disappointed when I saw how the standoffs were drilled improperly. The holes on the bar with 2 standoffs were literally two whole inches off, zero chance of alignment. Not only that, the delay caused me to get another set of frames instead. I have use for these, so it's not the end of the world, and the frame itself isn't bad at all, well thought out. But even with EMS shipping it took 2 months to get here. On top of that, I need to redrill the standoff holes. If I had to grade the whole experience, I'd have to give it a 5...out of 10. Especially because I had to put in manual labor for something that should fit from the get-go.

Still waiting... I guess I am also a member of the "100 day club" since it still didn't hit the USPS system yet.

Fluffy - I seriously don't believe that I am going to get this shipment. I would like to get a refund at this point.

lol@ Manual Labor ..

 Did you lift the drill bit yourself or did someone else place it in the drill? If you had to pull the trigger yourself im right there with you man! Nobody should ever have to do that.. I once hung a picture on the wall, it was an experience i wont forget!


Seriously tho.. post pics! Order #, and where on the planet you are?
 





Wait you paid on dec 5th and it shipped on 1/8/2014 !!?

**** me!! I ordered on Dec 2nd and it shipped 1/22/14 !! Dam near 15 days later...



Guess i got a minimum wait of 15 more days.  #$(&^%$%^!!!!






 

Are those ship dates from OpenRigs or the tracking info?

I ordered Nov 30th, and OpenRigs shipped it on Dec 23rd, but the tracking info shows it went out on Jan 8th.  Might be a reason for the differences.

Either way, I think I we are still in "awesome" status, according to Fluffy.


Edit:  Just realized, I ordered on Black Friday and likely won't get it before Good Friday.  Wowzah.

1/22/2014 11:12 AM   Arrival at outward office of exchange   CAPETOWN D   
1/22/2014 11:12 AM   Departure from outward office of exchange   CAPETOWN D 



Im going off the above date from the tracking page (http://globaltracktrace.ptc.post/gtt.web/) .. " Departure from outward office of exchange" means it left the country eh?

If it doesnt then i dont know what the **** im waiting for! It will be 3 1/2 months in a few days!!!! If the other guy whos item shipped on the 8th doesnt have his surely im looking at another 15 days!!  That would make it 4 months after paying with no product!


Hey Fluffy can you verify "Departure from outward office of exchange   CAPETOWN D" means it left the country!

No need to get upset.  It might have said 4-6 weeks when we ordered, but they meant for it to say 6-10 weeks, and it was intended to imply that it could be 10+ weeks. 

Silly customers, should have done EMS if they wanted their product within half of a year from paying...  stupid entitled Americans :D

Thank you. I will keep an eye out for that. Can you tell me when it cleared customs? And can I still expect it within a week with EMS?

Sorry about that, that's completely bizarre - the holes are standard ATX holes, the only time we've ever had an issue like that is if the customer is using an eATX motherboard (which spills past the holes we've drilled), but even then the holes are in the right place for eATX, they just need an extra one. Just to clarify - are you saying that the bar with the two standoffs was misaligned form the bar with the 3 standoffs? You should definitely not have to re-drill any motherboard holes except if you want to move the motherboard from the standard mounting point, so either something is badly awry or the bar just needs to be flipped around to line up with the 3 standoff bar?

That's customs doing their thang! They completely disregard the order we give it to them, and process it in whichever order they choose.

It does - it matches the "Insert item into bag out" which is when it leaves. See here, for example: http://sms.postoffice.co.za/TrackingParcels/Parcel.aspx?id=CN025030079ZA - that's one that Royal Mail actually bothered to scan, so it was updated on the domestic tracking when it arrived.

FINALLY! Someone who understands!

:-P

In all seriousness, though, I really am sorry that I even had surface mail there as an option. Never again. Please don't move house just yet:-P

^^  Ok thanks for clarifying .. I got 2 weeks™ at the minimum it seems.  I might have to throw a party when it finally shows...

But i swear if i have to do any manual labor!!!

Then I will personally fly to the US and drill the holes for you:-P

Expect me there in 6-10+ weeks up to a maximum of 13 weeks. I'm coming by raft, you see...

Same here, I had to re-drill and move 2 stand-offs in order to mount regular ATX motherboard.

Thanks - can you or endlessred pm me pics, please? Then I have ammunition to go make heads roll:)

No prob, will do it over the weekend.

I like how my frame shipped over a year ago:   http://sms.postoffice.co.za/TrackingParcels/Parcel.aspx?id=CN022189379ZA

You read the note on the order history page, right?

Al jokes aside I hope you are not hinting at a possible 13 week wait because somewhere between 8-9 week mark i will be asking for a full and prompt refund!

I think that is "generous" in every sense of the word for a product that was supposed to take 4-6 weeks to arrive!

That's what we have cargo insurance for;)

Cool, by the way... A couple contractor i work with are headed to SA for business..  

What does an openrigs frame weigh? Can they fit it into a carry on if its broken down into pieces by a couple people?



Edit: They owe me some favors and i was thinking about making em haul another one over...lol

About 4-5kgs, dependent on the model and options, not sure what max carry on is, but they can always check it as baggage? We can fit 4-6 units in a box, and they can check an entire box in as luggage, I think to the US it's a max of 2 pieces of checked in luggage so it is doable.

Thats good to know... I think i read max carry on was 5-12kg but dont quote me on that...  I didnt realize you could fit so many in a box so it looks like the luggage option might be worth considering. I think they are leaving for SA the first or second week of april so ill see about makin this happen sooner then later.

Ok cool let me know. The boxes are a little unwieldy, and won't fit in some cars that easily, so we'll have to get it to them towards the end of their trip to minimise them having to haul it around.

Are you planning on supporting ASIC Scrypt Miners, like the heatsink fan miners from- Gridseeds/LightningAsics?

Yes - I'm waiting on a group buy for GridSeeds I'm involved in to finish and then arrive so I can make sure the stack works, but preliminary design is already done:)

Sweet! I just posted my pictures after successfully setting up my gridseed miners.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=519093 (If you don't mind me sharing these pics for others to see)

If others who have these miners could mine Scrypt Coins and Bitcoins with it; and use the frames for these miners, this would be ideal.
As you can see from those pics, I am currently using my desk, which is highly NOT recommended!

This is why I believe we need your help with frames that support these types of miners.

Keep up the good work, and looking forward to an update!

Nice - how many can that PSU power? The only tricky thing will be providing a platform that can handle different types of PSUs people will use, given that it's non-standard.

1 PSU can attach to 5 Units. I am using 2 PSU giving me a total of 10 Gridseed Units.

As you can see in 1/7 pictures, each miner (unit) comes with 1 - White wire and 1 Red Wire.

Red = Positive (+) wires
White = Negative (-) wires

These two wires are the power cords that function the fan, and the USB that connects to the HUB.

This gives me the ability to connect 5 total units per PSU via (LightningASICS) LA3M package.
If you are ordering from Gridseeds, I hear the package may be limited in what you get all together.

https://i.imgur.com/VL4nLNR.jpg

Fluffy, it is Monday now and I still dont have a tracking number or any responses at all from you or anyone at openrigs. I was promised an immediate response on Wednesday by Donna and since then it has been complete silence.

Went and shouted at her and she just replied:)

Just to clarify to make sure I'm not being dumb - is that the typical PSU solution people are using or are there others?

Also can you give me dimensions on the PSU, and are there any screw holes to mount it?

fluffypony,

I messaged you guys a few times over the past week trying to get a response as to where my frame is that I ordered December 1st...

Still got NO response - whats going on ?!?

Also the tracking number i received says my item is in the wrong country...

Can someone sort this out ?

order #798

Sure - can you pm me your ticket and order number and I'll get it sorted for you?

Sent.

Hi, could you please answer my email sent last Friday regarding order #1221?

It was replied to a few minutes after you sent it - I'll PM you the link to the ticket so you can view the response:)

Oh - sorry, my bad.
Package waiting for me at customs, thanks!

Well my order of november 2013 arrived
sadly in a damaged or opened box
Its absolute certain that a side has been opened by customs or other subjects.
And it looks like some items either fell out or that i supposed to use 1 thumbscrew and 1 copper board spacer. to mount a mainboard and gpu's.
Inside the huge box i found some alu pipes floating freely.
I have no idea what suppose to be in the box, but would not surprise me if more is missing
The problem is that you get a choice to either receive the box or let it go back, without seeing the state its in.
Another nice disappointment

Ah that sucks - don't stress, the spare brass standoff and thumbscrew is just that, a spare included for those that have odd motherboard mounts and need to reposition their motherboard.

Once you've used the assembly guide you'll be able to ascertain what is missing, if anything, and we can courier replacements to you:)

Just wondering where my order is..

Order #1022 (December 12)

My last email received was January 14, saying it was sent to customs, but I never received a tracking email.

I also checked out as a guest so can't check the status on the site.  ;D

D'oh - we've added a guest tracking portal, but only more recent guest checkout orders got automagically informed about it;) In future if you need to you can use this link: http://openrigs.com/account/guest

I'll PM you your tracking details so you don't have to worry about fiddling with guest checkout logins:)

Hey Fluffy,

Just wanted to give some feedback on my order replacement. It was FINALLY accepted by NY customs today after sitting there for over a week. Perhaps I'll receive it by the end of the week?

Still no clue what happened to the original order.

Well that was fast. Have a lot to do this weekend, including building my frames  ;D

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

Giorgiana 6 GPU stackable... Nice concept, bad layout?

Frames are built. I'd rather be posting pictures of everything plugged in and running, however, I've run into some issues. There's absolutely no way I'm running 6 GPUs in this thing without buying even more cables or hacking the frame up.

1) Pre-drilled power supply screws are slightly too wide for my psu. So I can't mount them.
2) I don't like how the psu mounts are oriented to begin with. Your PCI-e cables essentially have to do a snake to get back around and to the top/back of the cards. My cables just aren't long enough.
3) PCI-e slot location in reference to the 6 GPU mount points: Wouldn't it make sense to center the slots to the mount points? I'm going to have to daisy chain more PCI-e risers than expected to reach the left-most mount points.
4) This could be partially resolved by closing the distance between the bottom of the cards and the motherboard. Do we really need all of that space?
5) My back left motherboard mounting post was about 1-2mm off center. Unable to screw that point down.

I'm exhausted from all of this. I actually bought some 1/2" angle aluminum tonight and am thinking about converting one of the frames into a gridseed rack.

To address each of your concerns:

1. That's by design so two PSUs can be mounted next to each other. As it says in the Component Placement section of the assembly guide: " If you have a single PSU only, you may find it convenient to connect it between the two PSU bars and screw the PSU into both support bars. This may require slightly shortening the short horizontal bars, using the same technique outlined above. If you have two PSUs, you may want to mount them next to each other, screwed into each of the PSU support bars, or on top of each other (again, this may require shortening the short horizontal bars). If you have three PSUs, you will want to mount two of them next to each other, and then screw the third into the corner PSU support bar."

2. We played around with centre-mounted PSUs, but ultimately it was more trouble than it was worth, as the PSU rests on the same crossbar as the motherboard. Additionally, it required extra connectors and created a sag-point in the middle of the back (where it is, structurally speaking, relatively weak) so it wasn't a good design for "stackability".

3. The whole point of having risers is to move the cards up and away from each other, so whilst we've tested designs with less space between cards we have found them to be sub-optimal compared to our current spacing. If we had to put the cards directly above the slots they would have no space between them, and you may as well just put them straight on the board.

4. Yes, we need all that space, as all of our existing designs convert between horizontal and vertical layouts just by changing a few connectors around (currently not detailed in the assembly guide, but see: https://i.imgur.com/pIOIsQv.jpg / https://i.imgur.com/3d1HpMj.jpg / https://i.imgur.com/k2xdW2g.jpg as a reference). If we lowered the distance that would not be possible, as we'd be decreasing the "width" of a vertically laid out frame and it would no longer be stable. Also, it seems that USB-driven risers are extremely popular, so many of our customers have risers with a vertical reach of 100cm, making this and the point above a non-issue.

5. Sorry about that - the reference boards we used to drill the holes were more weirdly laid out than expected; we've recently adjusted things to accommodate that. Depending on your use case you can either ignore that mounting point, or re-drill a hole for the standoff, or just let the board sit on the standoff without being screwed in.

Finally got the feet mounted!  Work perfectly, thanks! I would definitely make these an add-on or part of the hardware option pack.

Hey. What you consider to be a shipping date?

track # CN025030119ZA
is it a day that you claim package was tendered to a post office or any other? or a date when it first time showed up a in system??????
Let me know my shipping date and a date 90 days shipping time expires.

That's a good question - let me check with our insurers and come back to you, it's just about 3pm here so I should be able to catch them before the office closes:)

I was wondering this too as my order just hit the 90 day from customs drop off and jan 10th it was put on a boat.

I didn't hear back from them before CoB, but will undoubtedly hear back from them tomorrow and will update both of you:)

any news?

Ok. received your PM.....

not quite what I expected

"they said it's from the time it leaves the country (Jan 10th)"

sounds not fair.
in USA - for ex. it`s from tendered date. Any proofs like official post office rules text?

PM'd you like 5 hours ago:)

edited my previous post before your respond

The customs pre-clearance process is not part of the postal process, so the tendered date would at any rate be Jan 7th (so it's near as nothing as makes no odds). The other aspect, of course, is that our marine/cargo insurers are the ones that dictate policy in this regard, not the post office. If we used the post office's insurance it would be significantly more expensive and they don't cover damage, only loss, and only months after submitting the relevant paperwork to them, which would just add insult to injury, so to speak;)

Hi fluffypony,

Can you post in this thread what's the latest order received by the customer so far? Indicate the order date, shipping method and date received by the customer.
My order is #1286 , date of order : Jan 4, 2014, shipping method : surface mail, date to be received : May 2014 ???

Kindly give us an update of what you have delivered so far in the hands of your customer, so we can see if goods are really moving. Some members here can verify.

Thanks.

Well, I'm not a pony, nor am I fluffy, but I shall state the following:

I ordered on November 30th, 2013 and still have not received my order.

Order #767 still waiting...

I still believe that I am in "awesome" status though, as it has been stated that waiting several months is expected and awesome.

^^^ Anyone here with order earlier than #767 who hasn't received their rigs yet?

You're never going to let me live that comment down;)

Could've been worse, I could've said it's super.. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0PxF9-KUX4)

Customers aren't obligated to let us know when they receive their order, and tracking (especially for surface mail) isn't always updated. The most recent order I know of offhand that has been received is 1711 (Aramex, but local, so that doesn't help).

The most recent EMS international order that I know has been received is 1597 - ordered 2014/02/05, out of fabrication on 2014/02/17, final delivery 2014/03/07 (tracking (http://auspost.com.au/track/track.html?id=EE028407939ZA)). The most recent surface mail order that I know has been received is 1103 - ordered 2013/12/20 (in our holiday period), out of fabrication on 2014/01/14, final delivery 2014/03/13 (tracking (http://sporing.posten.no/sporing.html?q=CN022187815ZA&lang=en)). The most recent Aramex order that I know has been received is 1690 - ordered 2014/02/28, out of fabrication on 2014/03/13, final delivery on 2014/03/24.

^^^

Okay, at least I know there's around 180+ orders before me.

It's now almost April 1st. I don't think that my order will EVER arrive. Fluffy -- you IGNORED my previous post. Please IMMEDIATELY refund my order.

MD

Sorry - I didn't mean to ignore it, I was replying to a bunch of posts simultaneously:)

PM me your order number and I'll submit paperwork tomorrow, as long as it's outside of the transit period we can refund/replace asap.

Of course not... I love bustin' your balls because you are such a good sport about it :)

Probably not moving until May though, so the clock just got extended.  Maybe delivery within 180 days of purchase?  Too much to ask?

I think you're being a bit unrealistic now...if it's that quick how are we expected to beat BFL's record?

That will be pretty impressive if you can manage that.  Hopefully my order is the one that beats that long-standing record of delivery time estimation fail.

Two Weeks^(tm)!

At least we agree on one thing -- there is a severe disconnect in your understanding of how this process works. To wit -- you are a vendor and I am a customer.

At the time that I used your website, it was not entirely clear to me that I would get my shipment some four to five months later. That was absolutely not clear to me at all. It would be one thing if you put a "projected delivery date... March 15, 2014" on your website. But that is not what you said on your website. Your website said six to eight weeks. As you can see, we are now well past any reasonable time frame for delivery. That is why I am upset now.

Further, as a customer, I do not appreciate that you are putting the entire burden of a missing order on me. I have to notify you that this order is missing. I have to tolerate your mistreatment towards me. Your tone indicates that you have absolutely no respect for me, the customer, that provided you with my hard earned cash and now I'm completely out while you're effectively blaming me for having this problem.

Again, I am demanding a refund. If your fulfillment team blew it, that is NOT my fault.

MD

fluffypony,

I have sent numerous emails over the past couple weeks asking for an update on my order, #1234. I even reached out to you on litecointalk.org.


Ticket # QIP-NVFKQ-540 was assigned, and I never heard anything back even after a follow-up email. I ordered 1/1/2014.

Can you address this please?

Sorry about that - the ticket was assigned to me, I'll take a look at it and reply shortly:)

There is a responsibility on our part to make things as clear as we can, which I believe we did even at the point in time when you ordered. Specifically:

1. A reminder to read the delivery and returns policy when selecting a shipping method:

https://i.imgur.com/XUQnbB5.png

2. Timelines directly on each of the shipping methods when selecting them (this would not have been there when you ordered, which seems to conflict with your 6-8 week statement):

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

3. Making the customer tick a box to indicate they have read and agree with the delivery and returns policy before they can make payment:

https://i.imgur.com/VqdauU3.png

The delivery and returns policy has now got a pretty blue flowchart (https://openrigs.com/information/information&information_id=6) that it didn't have when you placed your order, precisely because people seemed to forego reading the first two paragraphs.

There is a marked difference between a website purposely misleading customers by keeping hidden charges in fine print tucked away in the middle of nowhere, and making a set of timelines as clear as possible. Due to the nature of our product it was not possible at that early stage to hold massive amounts of stock and just miraculously expect to know what customer demand would be like - it's still not possible now, really. This is an on-demand item, and is produced on-demand and in line with the timelines that we state openly and plainly.

Your order was processed within the timelines you agreed to (you can confirm this yourself by logging in and checking your order history against the timelines on the delivery and returns policy), if there is a particular stage in the process that spilled well past expectation feel free to point it out. I can save you the trouble by reiterating: we processed your order and it was shipped within the timelines you agreed to.

To be clear, there is no responsibility on you to do anything at this point, because your shipment is not missing. That assertion can only be made once we go past the maximum transit period, which we have not done as yet. It also is simply not possible for us to follow up on each and every package; not every country's postal service bothers to provide tracking information for international arrivals. For many parcels they simply give it a local tracking number and we are none-the-wiser. Our insurance has to reach out to the destination post office for confirmation of delivery for every claim (and we've had a handful of situations where people have tried to claim after receiving it).

In summation: the timelines were as clear as we could make them, and you indicated you had read and agreed with them. We processed and shipped it within the timelines you agreed to. We are currently within the transit timeline you agreed to. Had we genuinely erred on your order in some way we would definitely move to rectify it (see wobbzz and joshvette01's experience elsewhere in this thread), but in this instance we did not.

I sympathise with your frustration, I really do, but I have already indicated the action I will take to assist you given the circumstances and timelines. If you feel that it is insufficient then that is a point of disagreement and we have reached an impasse.

This has always been my problem with your "process".

Your site says 4-6 weeks, and then you act like the customers are dumbfucks for expecting the surface mail to reach them in 4-6 weeks.

Guess you meant 4-6 months and we should have known that, right?

Remember that in the old thread we had this discussion - it was initially quite vague and said 4-6 weeks "or longer" as surface mail was unpredictable. That "or longer" period was never specified, but the maximum transit time of 13 weeks was mentioned, and all of this was listed as being over-and-above the fabrication and customs processes. We have had a number of surface mail deliveries to the UK and Europe that met that initial timeline, but because of the discussion on the previous thread we adjusted the timeline to be more realistic and to match the official timeline on the post office FAQ (http://www.postoffice.co.za/questions/postofficequestions.html). We did that relatively early on, too, to try and manage expectations. There has never been any indication that it would magically appear at a customer's doorstep 4 weeks after they order if they choose surface mail.

It's easy to look at it in hindsight and say "we could've done this" and "we could've done that" - and I'm sure everyone that has commented previously would start a business perfectly and make absolutely no mistakes at all. But we went with what *we* expected based on prior international shipments, and we've admitted our naiveté in those optimistic timelines. Again, the question becomes: what do you do after the fact? We aren't blessed with millions in startup funding so we can just write things off and re-ship every parcel or refund every purchaser. We can't change the speed or course of a surface mail shipment that has already departed. We have completely killed off surface mail as a shipping option, to the detriment of our sales figures, and we are doing everything in our power to sort out those customers that have ordered and are waiting. When we are within the transit timelines (considering that the maximum for surface mail has always been up and has not changed) I do not think it is unreasonable for us to ask that a customer wait for that timeline to play out.

I think I said this before, the main reason for all the grievance here is that your shipping process includes some steps that are completely unknown to us, customers from western countries (like several weeks for customs clearance).

When we ship something, once the carrier receives the package they take care of everything and we have only one step in the whole process. And, what exactly is that customs clearance and screening, and who does that??? Even after all this time reading your posts (and, must say, receiving your shipment) I am still puzzled with the whole process.  :P

Here's the idea or goal or ... mission ... of any legitimate company, organization or enterprise -- to create a product or service that satisfies the needs of the customer. To that end, when you are designating the vendors, suppliers, fulfillment houses that will work with the company, then you -- as the customer liaison and product expert -- MUST carry the customer's best interest while performing those negotiations.

To that end, if you think that the customer will be completely satisfied with "never receiving the product" then you are not operating as a legitimate enterprise. You are now operating as a fraudulent enterprise and you can successfully compare yourself with companies such as Butterfly Labs and/or Enron.

Given that you have been notified many, many times of the problems with your vendors, I find it appalling that you would completely misunderstand my position as the customer and I have to consider that you are now openly defending yourself as an illegitimate enterprise. Consider my points:

 1) I paid you money
 2) I never got the product
 3) I notified you in these public forms MANY times that I never got the product and that I wanted my money back immediately.
 4) In a previous post, you indicated that you would be filing for insurance
 5) In this post you are indicating that "we are at an impasse".

And despite all my notifications and demands, you have completely failed to satisfy my reasonable requests. Either I have the product, or I have my money back.

Just so that we are completely clear -- I hired your company to fulfill a request that I had. I hired your company to provide me with a mining frame and to deliver it in a reasonable amount of time. I hired your company to represent my interests of delivering a product in the shortest amount of time possible such that I can utilize it.

Your company failed to deliver on those promises. Flowcharts, pretty pictures, mountains of words all accomplish absolutely nothing with my stated demand of either having the product or the money back.

Your mission now is to either refund my money immediately or to deliver the product immediately. Barring that, we will not be "at an impasse" -- no...my mission in life will be to notify everyone on all forums and websites to never do business with you. Furthermore, I have the ability to contact people in your own home town and to serve you with court papers.

I do not like being scammed and I really do not like being abused. Again -- you failed your mission of representing and satisfying the customer. AND to add insult to injury -- you BLAME the customer after you got their money. You should contact "RealSolid" as you are just like him. Maybe you two are brothers?

I tried to call you to have a chat, because I think this back-and-forth on the forum is leading to a lot of misunderstanding and is becoming very frustrating for both of us:) Let me know when you're available and I'll give you a call and we can chat.

13 weeks was not mentioned, i wouldnt have ordered one!  I ordered on 13/12/2013 and it took you two fkn months to ship it, CN022190195ZA  and i want a refund too.  dont worry, if it ever fucken arrives here, ill ship it back the slowest fucken way i can(fkn dog sled team if i have to)

You ordered during our holiday period - we had the holiday notice on checkout and on the delivery and returns policy from the 5th of December. It's still visible (archived) on the policy, but here's a cut and paste: "Please note that the fabrication team will be going on leave from December 20th to January 6th. However, not all of them will be away at the same time, so we will continue to process and fabricate orders, but at reduced capacity. Orders placed after the 11th of December may be affected by this, and could experience fabrication delays. We will continue to do our best to meet our customer's expectations and deliver as timeously as possible!"

Unfortunately we are not currently giving out refunds except in instances where delivery goes beyond the transit timeline, in which case it can be deemed lost and insurance can cover it.

Are you sure you aren't a Nigerian Prince?

I wish...Prince Bongaronga Wamemgi still owes me USD 250 Millions ($250,000,000 exactly) that I won in the Nokia Coca-Cola lottery. So annoying!

- that`s kind of a cool order number )

EDITED BY ZEDICUS!


4/2/14  Package Received  

-------------------------------------------



I let the situation get the best of me ion this post so i have deleted it! Hope everyone gets there frame!

As per our conversation, fluffypony will be refunding my money by April 1. I will report back to here either way that it goes.

MD

Good for you! Im glad your getting a refund, You deserve it!

Maybe its dumbfucks like me who go around doing shit like this that dont deserve it!!!!!     
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=347756.msg3945557#msg3945557



Let us know how it goes!

Hello Fluffy,

It has been over two weeks since my last communication on this forum. I've been waiting 120 days for order #685. As you've offered in your forum post above, I am kindly requesting a refund for my order. I would like to do this as quickly and painlessly as possible. Please let me know what information you require.

Kind regards,
Dynamike

Well I will be damned. 

Someone has a longer standing order than me...

Silly fool, you should have known that 4-6 weeks "or longer" meant that it could take up to 7 years...

Surprised they didn't just put it at 4-6 hours OR LONGER... after all, it means the same fucking thing, does it not?

I think it's time for me to put a stop to this. This is the last thing I'm going to write on the topic of surface mail, because at some point it is flogging a dead horse. We no longer offer surface mail as a shipping option, so it no longer presents a problem.

Zedicus, you once said that the reason you were "busting my balls" was because I give a shit. But it's getting increasingly more difficult to "give a shit" when I have been insulted, demeaned, called a scammer and a thief, told I "treat customers like shit", and finally likened to RealSolid and to running a company like Enron. It makes me feel like all the energy and effort I'm putting in trying to resolve things for existing customers is worthless - for every angry forum post there are another 10 angry customers contacting us through the support system.

I have tried to be serious and defend myself and my company. I have tried to be light-hearted and get some guy on Fiverr to record a funny video to make people smile despite their frustration. I have upgraded people's shipping methods at our expense where it was possible and feasible. It seems like no matter what I do it is simply not good enough.

I could have made a dash with everyone's money, I could have launched under a pseudonym, scammed away, and then disappeared. But I'm not going anywhere. That's not the sort of person I am, for better or worse. That does not mean that I will allow everyone to constantly spew vitriol and attack me or attack OpenRigs - there is a point where it has to stop. I want to make it extremely clear that at this stage we are seriously considering liquidating the company and shipping out the last couple of orders.

To that end, I'm going to be as brutal, as transparent, and as honest as possible. I don't want to debate this, I don't want to have each point picked apart, and I don't want to go back and forth on minutiae over and over and over again. You don't have to like what I'm saying, you don't have to agree, you don't have to even care about any of it. If there are going to be a bunch of unhelpful abusive replies I am going to delete them and lock the topic with this as the last post, so if there is something you want to rant about or a specific point you want to discuss I implore you to email me (ric@openrigs.com) or PM me or give me your number and I'll call you.

I would ask that you read this through in its entirety. I know that there are some things that I will say that you may disagree with, that may even anger you, and that is not my intention. I am just being honest and transparent, quite possibly as a prelude to shutting the entire company down.

What happened? Why is everyone so angry?

Let's recap. When we launched we had an option called "Surface Mail". Having sent surface mail parcels to my in-laws in Germany before, we figured that the "2-3 months" shipping timeline the post office gives (http://postoffice.co.za/questions/postofficequestions.html) was just to have a bit of a buffer, and that practically speaking it would arrive in the 4-6 weeks we expect. We made the decision to list the expected transit time for surface mail as "4-6 weeks or longer" and make a note that the maximum is 13 weeks.

We also had something new to deal with: the customs process. When sending a parcel in our personal capacity (or even as a business) you just get the courier to collect it or you take it to the post office, and off it goes. They normally need a commercial invoice and a customs declaration of some kind, but there's nothing else involved. Now when you have a business whose primary role is exporting, things change. You have to apply to be an exporter. Depending on what you're exporting and how long you've been in business, customs may dictate that you comply with various requirements. They can be particularly stringent given that this is a country rife with diamond and ivory smuggling. We further complicated matters with our desire for customers to pay little or no customs duties. Since the export and customs declaration is indelibly linked to your VAT declaration on a per-invoice basis (customs is part of SARS, who are the tax man) you can't just export with whatever invoice you want unless you want to swiftly end up in court. Our decision to attach invoices bearing No Commercial Value on the items has saved many customers a fortune in customs (and caused headaches for some!), but it has also made our lives complicated as we have been fully at the mercy of a customs process that can sometimes be extremely lengthy.

Ok, so what does that mean?

For customers that ordered and chose EMS or Aramex as a shipping option there should (generally speaking) be no issue. There are always going to be situations where we drop the ball, but we're normally pretty good at resolving those where we're made aware of them.

For customers that ordered and chose surface mail, it has been a little more complicated. We only realised that many of the shipments were going well past their 4-6 week transit period when we were well into February. Most customers had been quite reasonable and had waited a bit after that before saying anything. Added to that was the constant trolling in the previous thread by a single user under multiple accounts, and we ended up not being able to see the wood for the trees. When we realised that many surface mail shipments were going past the expected date, and based on a suggestion in the old forum thread, we changed the surface mail timelines from 4-6 weeks to 6-10 weeks. The maximum of 13 weeks stayed and was still listed.

We have subsequently removed surface mail as a shipping option given the nature of the issues experienced.

I don't believe you! When I ordered it said nothing about 13 weeks!

I understand that most people didn't see the 13 week maximum. If anyone's interested, I restored a copy of the database from the end of November 2013 (the contents of the delivery and returns policy are in the database) to confirm that: https://i.imgur.com/zxrrneA.png. It was the last line in the paragraph on shipping timelines, so whilst it wasn't exactly vague I can understand how it could have been missed. I'm also aware that we have had disconnects between what is in the database and what was cached by our front-end's long lived full page cache during updates, and in those instances we have come to an agreement with the buyer and reshipped their parcel to them via an express service.

So it says it on some policy document, that's so obscure! SCAM!

When you put a product up online there are a million decisions to make. Do you include shipping in the cost and then provide upgraded shipping options? How do you effectively convey information to customers without overloading them with fourty paragraphs of text during checkout? We have a lot of experience domestically where we import products on-demand and they are sold online. We specify timelines in our delivery and returns policy documents on those sites, and have historically not had any issues - the occasional customer that doesn't read it and enquires after ordering is pointed to that page and all is fine. Many of them do read the document before completing checkout, as it is linked to in multiple places. Maybe South Africans are more patient given the poor service delivery that is so common here, but either way based on our previous experience we did not feel it necessary to list the timelines anywhere other than on the delivery and returns policy page. Looking back on it that was not the best decision, but it was the best decision we could make with the information at the time.

Does this mean OpenRigs is a scam??

I'm obviously a little biased, but no. It is and has always been our mission to have an excellent product that customers are ecstatic with. We have made mistakes, and for those mistakes the blame rests solely on our shoulders. Where we have made mistakes we always do our best to rectify them.

Well you obviously made a mistake with the shipping timelines!

Yes, we absolutely did. We expected 4-6 weeks, and that was what we published as an expected timeline. However, we were always very clear on the maximum timeline.

All this sounds like justification, stop with the excuses!

I cannot apologise enough where customers have unwittingly or unknowingly ordered using a shipping method that can up to 13 weeks over and above the entire fabrication and customs process. I know that I would be extremely irate if I ordered something and didn't have it 4 months later, so I do sympathise with customers. The question is: what can we do about it?

Can't you just re-send my parcel using a fast shipping method? Or just refund me?

There are some customers where re-sending has been possible (e.g. where we shipped using the incorrect method), and when their surface mail shipment arrives we will find a way to get it back from them. However, it simply isn't possible for us to do this at scale -  we don't have the money to double-ship everyone's parcel. Refunding poses similar issues - we simply do not have the funds to refund customers where there item has already shipped.

Allow me to illustrate. Let's say you paid $150 for an OpenRigs product in December, $100 for the product and $50 for surface mail shipping. That shipping cost is a raw cost and we don't make "profit" on shipping, so we've spent the $50. The raw materials, labour, packaging, etc. for the product is, say, $85. So we have $15 left over as profit. But now, many months later, that profit has been spent covering the normal costs of business - exorbitant PayPal fees, covering our losses from instances where we've been scammed by customers (it happens, unfortunately), rent, salaries, etc. I haven't drawn a salary since the end of December, but I can't expect any of the staff to do the same.

Now you come along and you want a refund. Usually in a business there is cash flow that allows for it, but because of the negative feedback loop and because we have removed surface mail as a shipping option, there simply aren't sales to create sufficient new profit to cover a refund on even a single order. That does not mean we're going to make a run for the border, but it does mean that in order for us to refund or replace an order we are reliant on a successful claim from our cargo insurers.

That's not my problem! Just give me my money or I'll serve you with court papers!

Ok, let's put the 13 week surface mail thing aside for the moment. Knowing that we are not able to refund you unless we claim from our insurer, what do you think is the alternative? Legally speaking it's very simple: you could take us to court (small claims or otherwise), demanding your money back. Of course, this is fraught with problems, as by the time that even gets filed all of the surface mail parcels will have been delivered or replaced/refunded by our insurer, invalidating non-delivery claims. I'd also hazard a guess that the court would most likely find in our favour, given that the policy and timelines were linked to, available and were specifically opted in to during checkout. Even if you were to pursue it regardless and for whatever reason the court found in your favour, what then? We're a business that has barely been in operation for a few months, we have no notable assets.

In South African law when a person (a natural person or, as in this case, a juristic person) has more liabilities than they have assets they have the option of sequestration (natural person) or liquidation (juristic person). In the event of insolvent liquidation or compulsory liquidation, the appointed liquidator would be responsible for selling off the assets and apportioning payments to creditors based on the size of their claim. Factor in costs of liquidation and so on, and you'd be lucky to receive a couple of cents to the Dollar as a refund. I think I can confidently say that nobody wants to go through the time and effort for that.

Whatever, I'll destroy you on every forum and by talking to everyone I know!

Our audience is technically minded. If they want to purchase from us the first thing they're going to do is Google, and they're going to come across one of the many "OpenRigs is a scam!" threads started by the troll from the previous thread, or even one of the newer ones where people are asking if we're a scam. The damage has already been done, as this thread is evidence thereof. There is literally nothing you can do to worsen our reputation, it's already been destroyed to the point where shutting the business down is a very realistic option.

Well good, you deserved it, you treat customers like shit.

I am truly sorry if anyone has felt mistreated by me or anyone on the support team. I have never wanted anyone to feel abused or mistreated by us. It has been very hard to know where to draw the line between pandering and putting our foot down. We've had customers that have said "I read the 13 week shipping thing and I understood the whole process, but I thought my order would be faster". Other customers claim ignorance and put the blame solely on us - although, legally speaking, the principle of caveat emptor applies as long as we were not being malicious in hiding our terms (which arguably we weren't as we linked to them in multiple places during checkout). So when someone comes and complains about not having received their order, I have to take it at face value and try resolve it for them to the best of my ability, which sometimes means refusing a refund at that point in the order process.

Where an order was processed and shipped within the timelines we stipulate (as in mindragon's order) but has been in transit for an extended period of time I don't want to be a dick. I want to refund them or have their parcel arrive, nothing would make me happier! And, after all, in an ideal world we wouldn't even be in this situation, and I'm very cognisant of the things we have done to exacerbate the situation. But, again, what choice do we have? Even if we could refund someone out our own pocket it would merely open the door to everyone claiming ignorance and getting a refund. The 13 week period was not a joke, it was a fundamental part of the process, and we have to stand by it.

But you're refunding mindragon, why can't you refund me?

With regards to mindragon's order we have spoken to our cargo insurer and have agreed to evaluate the situation over the next few days. I have committed to mindragon telephonically that it would be resolved by April 1st. That is not an offer I can extend to everyone, it is specific to him and his order and subject to a discussion I had already had with our insurer. It does not mean everyone can jump on the bandwagon and demand a refund - if I file for refunds for everyone under the 13 week transit period our insurer is just going to wait until the 13 weeks are up on all of them, and no amount of ranting and complaining publicly or privately is going to change that or make money for refunds magically appear. Even in cases where they allow the refund on assumption that the shipment is missing, they can and do watch for the item to be delivered, after which they use an agent in that country to reclaim their funds. Insurance companies hate paying money.

If I had started OpenRigs I wouldn't have done it this way, and I would refund customers immediately

It's easy to be an armchair businessman and tell us what we should have and could have done. It's even easier for us to look back in hindsight and know what we could have done differently. But it is what it is - customers chose surface mail either not realising that there was a 13 week maximum transit, or reading the 4-6 week transit and taking that as specific; and we were not as clear as we could have been regarding transit timelines.

You're a dick, you don't apologise to customers!

Often times in amidst the need to constantly defend the company and myself, coupled with the desperation in trying to find a solution for customers, I forget to apologise. I get caught up in timelines and policies and explanations, because people are demanding that. But I am sorry. I am so very, very sorry that customers have not had an amazing experience with OpenRigs. I wish with all my heart that we could have had the benefit of knowledge right at the outset to know what a nightmare surface mail and customs would be. Over the last few weeks I've been particularly despondent, and I have often wished I didn't even start OpenRigs. I just wanted people to have a great looking, well designed, solid case for their mining equipment, and I wanted them to benefit from all the effort we put in to designing the frames for our own use. Creating something amazing is no fun unless you are able to share it with others.

I am truly sorry for anyone that has had a bad experience with us. It has never been, and is still not, my intention to scam anyone or operate a fraudulent business. I cannot express how much I want to change things, how much I want everyone who chose surface mail to have their shipments arrive. If I were a wealthy person in my personal capacity I would even put whatever amount needed in to reship or refund parcels that are still en-route. I am so, so sorry that I don't have the ability or the resources to do that. To be frank, the last few weeks in particular have been incredibly depressing, and I wake up 4 or 5 times a night to check to see if anyone has replied to a forum thread with more negativity. I have never before felt as dejected, exhausted, and completely powerless as I do right now.

Ok...ummmm...so now what?

I hope I've explained the current situation as best I can and given insight into what our current options are. If you chose surface mail and your order is en-route and left the country less than 13 weeks ago I would beg you to please hold on till the end of that period, after which we can claim and refund or replace your order.

I understand completely if you don't care about anything I've written above - and that is your prerogative. I don't want to liquidate OpenRigs, I don't want to shut it all down, and I don't want to screw over those customers whose parcels may genuinely have gone missing, but it may be our best and only option. We had been working hard at providing a completely new logistics chain for OpenRigs in the next few weeks, and on launching a number of new products, but at this juncture I'm not sure if that is the correct way forward.

Just to reiterate, I don't want to turn this into another back-and-forth where someone counters a point and then I have to explain it and then on and on we go ad infinitum. I know that there are some things I've said and some decisions that have been taken that not everyone will agree with, but ultimately it is us who have to make the decisions, not anyone else. If this is a business that has tried and failed mainly due to circumstances beyond our control, so be it, it will have been a hard lesson to learn. As mentioned at the outset, if you want to discuss any specifics, please feel free to contact me using the contact details listed above.

I need to get some time to build the rack but this far only busy with care of my lady being sick.
And lots of other tasks to complete. So far as i see the pictures in the thread it looks like something or someone had used considerable force
The tapped place for a "(thumb) screw which is not there" has been bent, and i see i am missing already the thumbscrews and/or brass standoffs

The whole top of the box was torn loose at 1 side, i need to check the list of parts to see if any of the pipes are missing.
But as i compared the pictures i think most of the pipes is present, so looks like someone needed some thumbscrews and standoffs for personal use.

Or the customs guys had the bright idea their might have been drugs in the thumbscrews :(
As i can see on the pictures those screws should be mounted on the pipes, coming weekend going to check what is missing.
 

That's so retarded of them, sorry about that. Let me know what's damaged when your lady is better and you have time, and we'll courier replacements to you.

Well, well, well, look what finally showed up. Looks like there might finally be some movement guys.

My black friday order finally came (east coast USA). The dates on the labels match up.

Fluffy, send me a PM and let me know what your plan is for getting this back to your distributor.  :)


http://i58.tinypic.com/2afwjt5.jpg

http://i57.tinypic.com/290xzyr.jpg

I take it the splashes of water are from it's journey across the sea? :-P

I'll PM you on Monday once I've checked to see what arrangements we can make to get it from you, thanks for letting me know:)

Haha yeah they said the boat capsized but this was the only package they could save. Sorry everyone. :)

Also wanted to provide an update on how I've repurposed/reconfigured my original 2x 6 GPU stackable frames to accommodate 50x gridseeds and a couple of GPUs. I'm thinking of ways to better optimize space on the bottom without having to buy more cables. I'm done buying cables. I'll likely switch over to some x11 coin for the summer with my remaining GPUs. Hope you don't mind my reconfigure fluffy. The original design just wasn't working for me and I needed a place to put these seeds  :P

http://i59.tinypic.com/2ag3k3k.jpg

Looks good - shout it you need some more bars for that top later of Gridseeds.

We've got a preliminary design for a Gridseeds rack, but it's tough without having them physically here - still waiting on some to arrive so I can confirm they'll fit. Might be too late for that market, but let's see.

I was surprised with how well the spacing worked out for the bottom layer of seeds in three rows. I used Three of the shortest bars and 2 T's for each side. The seeds fit in perfectly.

For the top level I actually have one solid bar left. I just didn't have enough shorter side pieces. I could make some with a few of the spare smaller bars I have left. I ultimately just ended up using some 1/2" angle aluminum from the hardware store that I already purchased.

Well...After all this, it appears that the Post Office is now attempting to deliver. I see that it was out for delivery on Saturday but no one showed up here at my house.

I'll keep everyone posted once it does actually arrive.

MD

Guys,

I also got my package.

this was my order


But since I'm closing up shop. I was wondering if anybody is interested in buying this from me? Any reasonable price?
Payment with Paypal is accepted. Delivery will be via DHL. so it won't take months to arrive ;)

PM me please

kind regards,

Max

I got my package on Friday as well. It still doesn't show up as being in the US on any of the tracking sites. I ordered black friday and it was on the boat Jan 10th. Thanks again!

Thanks for being patient:)

Mine came in while i was away too..  Order #821 has been received!   :)

I felt like i let the situation get the best of me in my last post and i have redacted my post & I have also offered fluffypony an apology via pm... outside of the shipping time the quality and construction was great! With the help of the manual, setup was also breeze.

The packaging was really good too, tho there was a hole in the box, nothing was missing!!.. Its rather important it all gets here in one piece so the extra effort with endless bubble wrap was great!  

 I think im selling my gpu farm so my enjoyment maybe limited but... I made a small mod last night but as mentioned i found the build and construction quality to be great. The one gripe i had fluffy offered to alleviate! Thanks! I appreciate the gesture alot fluffypony!

Here are some pics of my unboxing and prep ..




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

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

https://i.imgur.com/6fULZwf.jpg

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

https://i.imgur.com/1EtWpDK.jpg




Rainheart Rhino Black Openrigs Frame Ftw!!  ;)

4gpu arianna
how ironic that on the very day(after waiting 4 months for order 710 made on black friday)I bother to post on the 'is this a scam' thread, the rig arrives.
FFS you couldn't make it up.
id like to say I was particularly happy but I am not.
im not pissed off either..
kind of feeling nonchalant now.
this postage debacle has totally taken out any wind I might have had left in my sails.

oh well we live and learn.

the packaging was awesome.
there'll be no broken bits arriving anywhere I imagine..
BUT BUT but the rig feels unfinished to me ( can anyone say "de-burring"?! FFS are you kidding me with these chamfers mate!?).there are no instructions and the website also doesn't have any:
PISS POOR MATE!
I hear comments about this customer being offered this adjustment and the other being offered this motherboard plate or these extras but ive been offered fuck all.

I can categorically state i believe this company is NOT A SCAM.
but i can also say they made some BIIIIIIG fucking booboos regarding postage.

RIC- give those of us who waited so very very long for our kits the extras you have now implemented to the new designs.
this can only do your reputation good.
three months wait plus is a good starting point!

in a personal note to ric i think youre a decent bloke and the way you keep your cool in the face of such (understandable)belligerence is astounding to me(i have no patience).but Sophocles said the keenest sorrow is realizing we are the creators of our own sorrows.in other words more initial research (and frankly, releasing a more polished product) into things like delivery would have saved you a shit tonne of work now.


so to conclude.
happy with the parcel protection.. really well wrapped
not happy how long i waited.
not happy ive not been offered the upgrades (without having to ask) that are now standard in the newer kits.(as i say you need to look into this and make it happen for oldest customers as a matter of course).
not happy with the amount of time to reply to and the overall amount of missed/unanswered messages.
not happy with the finish of the rig.these early (beta) models were obviously rushed out and little stupid things i would never let pass QC got through.. for instance the sharp and dangerous chamfers left over every single end cut on every single piece.shocking.
not happy with the lack of instructions.and how ironic (and super fucking annoying) that on the one piece of paper (a cover letter from ric) actually in the box, the address for the website to find the instructions on is incorrect or not working.(SORT IT OUT!)
im sure i can put it together myself without instructions but that is not the point.
the point is after waiting four months for a product i had such very high expectations for, i am left completely underwhelmed by the experience as a whole, and by the lack of finish in the produce i waited so long for..
2p

Glad you got it:) I fully agree - surface mail has been a useless shipping method. We have customers that ordered a second time with EMS or Aramex and have received that parcel well before their surface mail one has arrived. Lesson learnt, we aren't offering it anymore.

We haven't been offering any extras, that I know of? There is a marked difference between the Variant A kit and our current Variant C, but that's mostly to fix a few small issues with the bar length separating the GPU bar from the GPU clips as well as the left-most motherboard brass standoff that appears to have been consistently off by a few mm on our initial kit. These can be done on an existing Variant A unit by just re-drilling that left most hole and by filing those two errant bars down by a couple of mm. There are no differences in the actual design:) Also, as it says on the instructions: "The "we dun' goofed" clause: if, during the course of assembly, you find that we have made a major mistake that you can't fix (or would prefer not to), please get hold of us and we will see what we can do to assist you or to send replacement parts!" Once you've put it together see if you have a Variant A or Variant B (I suspect/hope you have a Variant B), and if it's an A then let us know if there are any parts you need replaced.

In terms of the sharp chamfers - we initially cut with a single blade and purposely left a bit of burring as it gives the extrusion a bit of extra "grip" on to the connector. Whilst this is great, and makes it easy to slide on but keeps it solid, we took a decision two weeks ago to move to water-cooled dual-head saws that will cut cleanly. The edges will still be sharp (maybe even sharper) but will be a lot cleaner, so we have a new extrusion mould that will leave the wall a little thicker to give it some extra grip. The sharp edges are never exposed, though, so they shouldn't present a long-term hazard.

On to instructions...I thought I'd fixed the Arianna instructions yesterday, looks like the controller is still showing the maintenance message for that route. No clue why, busy fixing it now. In the meantime, the instructions for the Arianna and the Giorgina are working 100%, so you can use those as reference.

I love it - did you just spray it? We've got a powder coated option we're looking at, but the powder coat samples chip too easily. We're also looking at anodised black, although I prefer the matt look of the powder coating.

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STILL!
arianna.tested 13.39BST
sort it out ric..
want to get rig setup
cheers!
:)

Fixed! Sorry about that, it was something I did on the templating side a while back that seems to have hung around:)

New assembly instructions with some 3D rendered intermediary steps (that can't easily be photographed) are coming, as well as instructions to use your frame in vertical mode...did I mention that every OpenRigs frame can do vertical mode out the box without any additional equipment needed? Crummy photography ahead:

Well apparently mine tried to come in yesterday, so I am about to run up to the post office and get it.

This was my order:

Vitalia Standalone GPU Frame
  - GPUs: 4 GPUs    OR-STL-VIT    1    $60.00    $60.00    Return
   Sub-Total:    $60.00    
   International Insured Surface Mail
(customs/excise/tax may be applicable in the destination country):    $25.98    
   Total:    $85.98


I'll sell it to someone for $50, shipping included.

Don't even feel like opening it.  Let me know if you are interested.

It actually arrived a couple of days ago (finally).

Thanks fluffy for being responsive even though this was a crazy situation.

Regards,

MD

Thanks for the update:)