From: Dave McClain

August 23,2013
To:Lauren English
BBB Complaint lD: 9xxxxxxx

Pre-ordered products are non-refundable as is clearly stated at the time of purchase. The reason for this is that pre-order funds are used in the build process which makes it impractical to reverse. It's also been observed that some small number of customers have placed orders as part of a Bitcoin price hedging strategy which involves multiple requests to cancel and then re-instate their orders as market conditions change. This has created an enormous customer service burden which is resolved lry enforcing the all sales final policy.

Some customers have asked why we've given order cancellation refunds to others, but they can't get one. The answer is that we had opted to process order cancellation requests during our long product development phase as a courtesy to those who endured the stress of the unknown. However, once full production began, a notice was sent out advising that orders would be shipped as produced according to the order queue and that if anyone was unwilling to endure the wait, they had a final opportunity to cancel. Customers were required to positively confirm their desire to remain in the order queue and accept the order terms. Pre-Order terms for new orders were updated on the website on April 1, 2013. The terms state, "l accept the terms of the sale and understand that all sales are final and there is a backlog of orders and production & delivery of my order rnay take 2 months or longer."

We operate under the US Federal Trade Commission's (FTC) business guide for mail or telephone ordered merchandise. The relevant guideline suggests that if no delivery terms are stated or agreed lo, then 30 days should be assumed. ln our case, we've gone to great length to ensure there is no ambiguity. Customers are/were notified of the back order situation, the inability to cancel their order and the multi month rarait to be expected.

Here is the relevant FTC guideline text:
"when you advertise merchandise, you must have a reasonable basis for staiing or implying that you can ship within a certain time. lf you
make no shipment statement, you must have a reasonable basis for believing that you can ship within 30 days."

We are are working to fulfill our current order backlog as soon as possible. Our current estimate is by September 30 we should have most of our order backlog fulfilled. Your orders should ship in advance of that date.

With appreciation,

Paul Scholes
Butterfly Labs, lnc.

 Yes, and have received formal responses via post.

 Effectively, yes.

 He's also ACTUALLY said that we're all "monumental assholes", on top of the implication we are all complete idiots, so it's hard to take him as someone who has a healthy rooting in reality.

 If you'd like to attempt a non-traditional refund of your order, you can try to "Pull a Xian" by publicly noting your order number on these forums, and then telling Josh et al to "Eat a bag of dicks" or some other insult, and see if they force a refund on you like they did me.

 Be warned, If you do this, you may have a chance of having your order forced refunded, allowing yourself to sue them for a breach of contract, but then they will threaten a counter-suit for defamation.

 Your best bet is to formally complain to the FTC and the Kansas AG to resolve your dispute and add your voice to the chorus. Every complaint strengthens the case against Butterfly Labs.

... And welcome to my ignore list. There is absolutely no place for this sort of intolerance on these forums.

 Not definitively, no. Captain Hindsight says "You should probably have kept the BTC in retrospect" however.

 Are you completely incapable of having discourse without resorting to insults when a counterpoint does not fit your narrative ?

 There is no need for that final snipe.

 Evolve, Josh.

 Gotta be honest, while I agree that you were perhaps getting a little bit too heated, FWIW I'm disappointed you took the bait and got manipulated into this.

 I can't help to feel you are being played like a violin.

 Either way, look forward to your report.

 I might suggest refining this a bit further as "Custom Hardware Development and Announcements" and "Custom Hardware Meta and Community"; I feel "Vendor Customer Discussion" is too narrow to be genuinely useful.

 What is it with certain Bitcoin ASIC manufacturer figureheads, that they have absolutely no sense of irony ?

 BitSyncom should just move to Kansas at this rate and merge with another certain disreputable endeavor...

 You are probably right. Not going to argue the point.

 Either way, I'm having fun

 It's only going to get cheaper from here. I love this new pricing.

 Can't wait for Gen 2 stuff to start becoming available.

 If I didn't have 400GH/s coming to be in October, I'd be all over this stuff.

FWIW, I've not been able to run a version of CGMiner higher than 3.3.1 for longer than 48 hours driving Erupter USB's on Windows 7 64 bit or Windows 8 64 bit. 3.4.0 just died on me across two rigs.

Any version that uses the new USB drivers eventually crashes on me with mwsock.dll causing the error under Windows

Have there been other reports of this perchance ?

 I can't think of any reasons why this proposal wouldn't work. No sarcasm. It would immediately solve many of the problems in this sub.

EDIT: I might suggest refining this a bit further as "Custom Hardware Development and Announcements" and "Custom Hardware Meta and Community"; I feel "Vendor Customer Discussion" is too narrow to be genuinely useful.

 Don't blame many of us for not being susceptible to your attempts at Jedi-Mind-Trickery.

 The force runs pretty strong here.

 * speechless *

 No, Josh. Your documented history of "mistakes" and contempt for these forums is the root of the problem.

 We are white blood cells responding to your infection of our host.

 This is why many people have you on ignore.

 Because the administration of these forums don't have a conscience and are whores for the money.