Yes, the 3rd report should have been here by now. This is what I got from Bitcoinica@pkfcr.co.nz on 10/10/13: You will receive the liquidators’ next 6 monthly report on the status of the liquidation in early December 2013. We do not correspond with the creditors during this time unless information is required from the creditors or a distribution is being processed. Bitcoinica has 201 creditors. Every time we correspond with creditors it adds costs to the liquidation, which will affect the distribution to creditors, should funds be available for a distribution to creditors. This is why liquidators have a 6 monthly reporting system in place for creditors. |
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'Coinye' is obviously a better (and more future proof) choice of name.
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HashFast had many opportunities to fix things, yet they decided to keep digging a deeper and deeper hole.
The lawsuit we saw today is likely just the start and I would not be surprised to see this company become insolvent as customers are forced to take the legal route now and try to salvage what they can before it is too late. I.e. it is not just Batch 1 customers that are f*cked but all batches.
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Hashfast will designate you as a Batch 1 Special Customer So... who wants to be a Batch 1 Special Customer? Sure sounds nice. You get all these perks like *free delivery* of your USD refund check. All you need to do is sign this innocent form. So hard.. to.. resist... If you wish to have these additional benefits, please complete the form, initial and execute it where indicated, and return it to us today. Today? Let's see.. it is 11:40PM PST here. Yes that sounds reasonable. No pressure. (Sorry for the trolling but the BS meter is off the chart.) |
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Another email from HF, and more BS: You need to request your refund before January 9th, and before we ship your Batch 1 order to you, otherwise we will assume that you have agreed to this shipment delay. A whole day.. so nice of you. Much better than the Jan 15 deadline. Your amount of refund will be the same as the USD amount shown below and in your order confirmation. Our products were purchased based on the purchase price stated in USD. We accepted payment in Bitcoin and other currencies as a convenience to our customers. For the great majority of our Batch 1 customers, we never received Bitcoin, but instead received USD from our payment processor, BitPay, and used the money to pay our suppliers and costs. Most early customers received a preferable exchange rate that reduced our revenue by 8%-10%. We also have customers that have paid in Bitcoin when the exchange rate was far higher than it is today, so our approach to providing refunds in USD is not a policy designed only to benefit us. Thank you for the convenience of only providing 1 option to pay: BTC Oh, you spent all our money but don't have a product? No problem! What happens if you miss the January 28 ship date?
You will be able to cancel your order again and receive a refund if we miss our January 28th ship date. Please note that we may under certain circumstances accept your cancelation and refund request between January 10th and January 28th. TL;DR - As long as the BTC price keeps going up we can keep delaying forever. Also the email contains 2 slightly different variants of the same address... Hashfast Technologies LLC
100 Bush St., Suite 650
San Francisco, CA 94104 HashFast Technologies
100 Bush St
Suite 650
San Francisco, CA 94103 |
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Obviously, this is important for people trying to send in order cancellation and refund notices. I fedexed my cancellation to the San Jose address...is that the one people think is most likely to be received?
Get this though...I called the support telephone number listed on their site and asked the farmed-out support guy for their corporate mailing address. He told me that he couldn't give me their mailing address...that he would take down my email address and pass a note on to them. Are you fucking kidding me? And it isn't listed on their web page...is that even legal (not that any of the other shit they have done is legal)? Wow...what a bunch of total assholes...before I just wanted my money back...now I'm looking forward to this lawsuit and to inflicting as much damage to them as possible.
I think the San Jose address is their former temporary working space @ nextspace coworking (Aug - Sept) Nexstpace San Jose
97 South Second St
San Jose, CA 95113
United States After San Jose they moved to another nextspace coworking location in San Francisco (Oct - Nov): Nextspace Potrero Hill
365 Vermont Street
San Francisco, CA 94103
United States Now they should be in their new office space on Bush & Market. (Dec - now): HashFast Technologies LLC (“HashFast”)
100 Bush Street, Suite 650
San Francisco, CA 94104
United States So the last one should be your best bet. As someone mentioned earlier - If you want to be sure; mail them all. |
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What I found interesting in this case is the heavy references to the term "In stock" on the website. I guess terminology matters. |
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That wasn't either of the two addresses I had for them. The two I had were: HashFast Technologies LLC
97 Second Street #175
San Jose, CA 95113
United States and HashFast Technologies LLC (“HashFast”)
100 Bush Street, Suite 650
San Francisco, California 94104, United States Oh thanks for that. I thought they moved out of their San Jose office, as well as their temp Nextspace office so I figured the San Francisco one I got at http://www.bizapedia.com/ca/HASHFAST-TECHNOLOGIES-LLC.html was correct. (also mentioned earlier here) The address on my invoice lists yet another address: HashFast, 1060 Gilman, San Francisco, CA 94124 So they are all over the place. It would really help if HashFast would put their current address on their website. I will try 100 Bush Street and report back. |
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And so it begins. In other news: It appears my refund request by certified mail has bounced. "undeliverable"   In addition, my refund request to refunds@hashfast.com was closed without response:  |
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I'm still here but I've got nothing to add since even I don't have hardware.
Join the club. With no hardware nor communication from HF this thread is turning into an echo chamber filled with disgruntled customers (me included) Would be great to get an update from the few folks with engineering samples (LukeJr & IceDrill) as to how the hardware performs. As mentioned before, HF appears to be playing the silent game for now. (likely until the refund deadline has expired) |
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They have hired a new guy to man the phones... Eugene. wont pass the call, claims "He is the manager on duty" but does not have access to the system to look up an order.
They have an outsourced call center. Good luck actually getting a hold of someone at HF. You can call John directly (his phone number is publicly available): John Skrodenis
HashFast Technologies
(415) 484-5789
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Just read the article. This quote from deCastro is BS: “We accepted payment in Bitcoin and other currencies as a convenience to our customers." A convenience? I had no choice but to pay in BTC. Many customers were not happy that HF did not accept USD payments. Only until after their webshop solution failed did they start taking direct BTC and (apparently) direct USD payments. Payments to be made in BTC with the help of BitPay
Only BTC for payment. how about credit card?
in fact, you can blame me for advising them not to take cc's.
...
they want committed customers who really understand what they're doing and are willing to wait until the end of December at the latest before they request a refund.
Now since the only payment option is in BTC Will I get the same ammount of BTC back should you fail to deliver by December 31st?
Or are you going to pull BFL and give refunds at exchange equivalent to USD/BTC indexed to the current fiat price per unit?
Maybe I am too paranoid but I get a feeling this is another company that will take preorders hedging on BTC to rise by the deadline and gladly refund any customer while constantly pumping empty promises and fake news.
Orders are taken in BTC, in the unlikely event we get to refunds they will be given in BTC. I feel like a broken record here. |
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In writing? forgetting to ask for "full BTC refund" in writing. the TOS clearly states full refund via payment 2. PURCHASE AND PAYMENT.
(a) Guaranteed Baby Jet Delivery Dates. All of the 550 Baby Jet units from
Hashfast's first production batch are guaranteed for delivery by December 31,
2013. If Buyer ordered one or more units of such Baby Jets, and Hashfast does not
deliver such units by that date, then Buyer may cancel the undelivered portion of
the order at Buyer's request and Hashfast will refund the payment for the units
that Buyer purchased but did not receive and cancelled. This cancellation and
refund is Buyer's sole and exclusive remedy for Hashfast failing to deliver by the
December 31, 2013 guaranteed delivery date, and Buyer must cancel the order by
January 15, 2014 to avail itself of this remedy.
Well, mate, good luck putting that equality sign between these two things in the court. I'm not saying it can't be done, but don't you think it would be a whole lot easier if you would have ""full BTC amount" instead of "payment"? This is not a problem as the ToS clearly defines 'the payment' as: Payments are due in the amounts, in the currency, and at the time stated in the order or confirmation sent by Hashfast, or if not so stated: (a) paid in Bitcoin https://hashfast.com/checkout/terms-of-sale/So I your payment was a certain amount of BTC. A full refund of the payment is the return of same amount of BTC. |
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I proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that Abram James Kottmeier (or whatever name he uses during house calls) and John Skrodenis have been partners (probably in more than one sense of the word) in previous ventures, namely the gay sex industry.
With all due respect, ninjarobot & gmaxwell, PG's work might prove very useful for anyone going further than just bending over. It does belong here, in my opinion, and does merit some thanks. Proving that Kottmeier & Skrodenis are very close is a very interesting fact. Proving that HF is actually open to taking a couple more "pre-orders" despite what their website states is very useful. Cheers PG, keep up the good work. I agree, some of this is certainly useful. I think we should be careful going on witch hunts though. But from Phins work it is clear that HF typically says one thing and does another: * Shipping in October! > Err.. we meant December * Shipping in December! > Err.. we meant January * Full BTC Refunds! > Err.. we meant USD refunds * Imminent Dramatic Price Increase, Buy Now! > Errr.. we meant we are not taking orders > Err... Sure we will take your order! * etc. It also shows the background of their Marketing team. John has been deep in the affiliate marketing for the porn industry. Really 'affiliate marketing' is just another term for spam and black hat SEO. Just take a look at http://www.xfire.com/blog/ziduru13/5164643 ("Posted on November 4, 2013; by John Skrodenis"). Spamming free blogging services with fake accounts and 'fake' youtube videos to drive traffic and create commissions. Scroll down to see the linkspam (anchors to optimize for Google search results) to other fake accounts on other blog services. Look at the username patterns: ziduru13 jaxisy36 sybyre42 toregoza46 widydy27 ciduta98 wugyny27 fediju94 cocafe58 vehane88 All fake accounts with link spam to affiliate porn sites. The worst kind of garbage out there. This appears to be the business ethic and expertise John brings to the table and also explains the business with the fake Twitter and bitcointalk accounts during the launch of the HashFast sales: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=262052.msg2830811#msg2830811The fact that John is now bringing in his buddies is not a good sign. at all. HashFast really needs to clean ship here. They appear to have a good engineering team, but their sales and marketing is the worst I've seen. Deceptive and dishonest. It might work for the porn business but not in the ASIC mining business. So fix it HF. EDIT: It could be that the content from that spam page was scraped by a bot and John has nothing to do with it. In that case my apologies. |
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Have they shipped yet?
No. Just ask Tico: This company is a true hustler. HF is more interested in being worshiped and taken care than catering to customer needs. HF took a dump on customers, and some said no. HF kept saying that they wanted customers to succeed, but didn't take good care of us (if you know what I mean). HF screwed their customers a few times and lost it. The rest of the time was just meaningless blog updates and waste of my time. There is a reason why HF asks for the money up front. Be aware. I know I'll never trust this company again. If you're an ex-BFL customer and like to be taken for a ride, you may be up for a treat, though... ;) |
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So Phin figured out that the Sales manager at HF is gay and uses several aliases. Not sure how this is relevant. In marketing and support it is actually quite common to use an alias. For example, employees at call centers in India all operate under different names. Not sure why one would need multiple aliases at the same time though...
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Does anyone live in San Francisco, California?
I do, and I would be happy to meet up with the HashFast team in person again to voice customer concerns. I visited their office before on October 30, but I doubt they would invite me over at this point. My support tickets and refund requests have been ignored since early November. Even if they do I would surely have to sign an NDA so they might as well communicate to us directly. I have no doubt they are aware of our concerns. Also I'd like to avoid being used as a tool again. Last time John gave me verbal confirmation that full BTC refunds would be given in the amount paid and that I was allowed to post that on bitcointalk ( which I did). Turns out it was misinformation and made me look like a fool. Communicating through intermediaries who are not employees just gives them plausible deniability. |
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It doesn't matter what your ToS said at the time of purchase, no one is going to be refunded 50-60 BTC. It's absurd to even wish that could happen. You're going to get $5600 (or whatever you paid in USD) back and that's it.
Where were you when they were claiming thats exactly what they'd do? I don't recall any posts from you on it then. I suppose you are not actually a HF customer and instead bought from their competition without these "absurd" claims, at 1/5th the price? Why do you think it absurd? If they'd collected the coins and sat on them— after all, they say their fabrication was paid for by investors not by spending preorder money— then they could easily return them. Or do you mean its absurd in that they're now sitting on millions of dollars of other people's coins which they obligated themselves to return but can plausibly escape doing so without consequence because of the cost of a legal fight and the possibility of them spending themselves into bankruptcy first, and so it would be "absurd" to honor their agreement? Is that what you mean? I doubt they were holding customer BTC. Given the swings that BTC has they would be crazy to play that game. They converted the BTC to USD to pay bills and for R&D. Do you think their employees work for free? According to Cypherdoc who was acting as a 'paid sponsor' and 'advisory board' member with HF: I am pleased to announce that I have been selected as a paid sponsor for HashFast Technologies LLC. I have also been asked to join their Board of Advisors. no, it uses BitPay which will convert your USD to BTC.
from what i understand, your BTC's are going to be guaranteed as well
Yes - what cypherdoc says is true - we endorse this.
they want only those committed to leaving their BTC with HashFast until the end of the year. if they fail to deliver, they have said they will give full refunds in BTC. once you see details of their Miner Protection Plan and refund details all your fears will melt away.
i've been told up, down, left and right that this is what they will promise. i've even seen it written out in internal docs. but whether or not they'll have the money to do a refund if the end of year rolls around is the risk you take. This is what was being promised during the first week of sales. Go read yourself here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=270363.0None of Cypherdoc's claims were refuted (nor confirmed) by 'official' HF respresentatives though. But he was being paid by HF and a board member. So at least it set the tone & expectations HF wanted to set to drum up sales. The ToS and Order Confirmation are pretty clear on this however; The original payment will be fully refunded in the currency and amount it was paid in. |
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Section J of the TOS:
"(j) REFUNDS. Any refunds due to Buyer will be made in United States Dollars, and for the purposes of calculating refunds, amounts paid in Bitcoin or other virtual currencies will be deemed paid in United States Dollars at the exchange rate given by Hashfast to its customers on the order date. Refunds for partial order cancelations or returns will be adjusted for any discounts previously given to Buyer for volume purchases."
Was this always there?
Of course not. The TOS for the first week of ordering or so were very different than they are now. Unfortunately, no one seems to remember exactly what they were :-/. I saved a copy on day 1 (August 8 ) and emailed it to myself so it is time stamped by gmail. I've also uploaded it to pastebin in September here: http://pastebin.com/EfS9vmRfThis is the ToS I agreed to and will hold HF to. Since they frequently changed the ToS and often without notifying customers or changing the revision number and date it is up to each customer to figure out exactly what they agreed to at the date they made the sale. |
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IANAL, But all you need to know about refunds is right there in the ToS and Order Confirmation. These two documents are the binding contract you and HF agreed to at the time of the sale. The ToS defines the payment as: Payments are due in the amounts, in the currency, and at the time stated in the order or confirmation sent by Hashfast, or if not so stated: (a) paid in Bitcoin The Order Confirmation quantifies and confirms the payment. In my case: HashFast Technologies has received your order and payment in BTC for 1 Baby Jets. TOTAL BTC 59.7987 The Order Confirmation also clearly states your right to a refund of the payment in case the customer requests a refund before Jan 15 after failure to deliver by the guaranteed delivery date: HashFast will issue a full refund the payment for the units that Buyer purchased but did not receive and cancelled.
So the payment is the payment and that is what is due unless you sign into a new agreement with HF by using the 'refund form'. In other news I received the following letter today:  |
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