I would definitely file it as a USD transaction.

I also posted this thread on Reddit and it also took off.  There have been at least dozens (or more) of confirmed trade violation complaints filed against BFL this weekend.

I imagine Josh will be getting a call from the FTC this week and I think he knows it.  He's gone completely silent in this thread and I imagine he's going to be in a lot of trouble.

If I were him I would move my operation out of the US to somewhere that doesn't have consumer protection laws against his widescale illegal activity regarding sales transactions and refunds.  As someone pointed out he may have to find somewhere like Somalia to operate like this without men in black showing up at his doorstep because you can't do business like this in virtually any western country.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1pat5e/how_to_file_a_ftc_complaint_against_bfls_illegal/

I have posted a topic on how to file a FTC complaint against BFL on their illegal behavior regarding late shipments and refusing refunds.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=319522.msg3419162#msg3419162

This takes less than 10 minutes and I encourage EVERYONE who has had problems with BFL to fill it out.  The more complaints filed the faster they will investigate them and put a stop to this nonsense.  If my above posts did not show that this is illegal behavior by BFL then follow my guide on the FTC web site and you will see that it indeed is a federal trade violation and they can get in massive trouble for this.  It's illegal and that's why you don't see other businesses behaving this way.

Yes precisely.  BFL is selling hardware, not bitcoins.  Bitcoins are a grey area still, but selling actual physical products is not a grey area at all.  There is basic contract law governing sales in the United States.  You do not need a "paper" contract to be entitled to these protections.

When you walk into a store and buy something you don't need both parties to sign a paper contract to be protected under consumer protection laws.  They are automatic when a sale is made and BFL is violating many of these laws by not delivering products on time and refusing refunds when they do so.

You might be on to something 





Surely noobs also ask themselves: "Why do so many people take the piss out of Josh/Inaba/BFL ..."

Is that why you stopped accepting PayPal and credit cards after you guys got your asses handed to you in all your disputes and chargebacks?  Because nobody had a legitimate case against you?  It would seem that every professional financial company disagrees with you which is why you have to do business in BTC only now.

It's definitely a lot easier than you have made it look as KNC brought a 28nm ASIC miner to market in a little over 4 months.

Yes you are right, you are living proof of the risks people face when making pre-orders as the VAST majority of your customers experienced insane delays and extremely negative ROI if they managed to receive their product. We can now say "be careful you don't get BFL'ed when pre-ordering" and pretty much everybody will know exactly what that means.

Yes actually it is the vendors vault when they sell more pre-orders than they could possibly ever ship in their advertised time-frame such as BFL has done. Both Bitsyncom and KNC (and most others really) sold limited numbers in their batches unlike BFL who pretty much took money from anybody willing to get in their line with no idea that your advertised shipping times were complete lies which would slip time and time and time and time and time again.

Check again. A few weeks ago I purchased 3 Avalon mini's that shipped in less than 72 hours after I ordered them. They are due to ship their gen2 hardware OFF THE SHELF any time now...

Josh everybody knows you're smart enough to understand that in "this industry", volume means nothing and hashrate means everything. It's like comparing the number of 300MH block eruptors with the number of 500GH Jupiters that have shipped. By repeating this over and over it is only revealing the deception you are constantly hiding behind.

The fact is BFL has been a disaster. Sure not a COMPLETE disaster like bASIC but still a disaster. While waiting for my 60GH Feb BFL pre-order to arrive:
- I've pre-ordered Avalon batch #2 units in Feb which arrived in JUNE for a total of 190GH
- I've pre-ordered raw Avalon chips from Zephir in April which arrived in July, had them sent to Germany where Burnin used a custom board to ship me functioning BitBurner miners in August all from scratch!
- I pre-ordered from a BRAND NEW company KNC back in June which shipped a 525GH miner to me THREE WEEKS AGO!
- I've ordered 3 Avalon Mini's on Oct 15th which shipped within 72 hours which had three times the hashrate for less than my BFL pre-order cost which has still not shipped

What has BFL been doing during these 8+ months since others have produced miners FROM SCRATCH in much less time? It's 100% obvious that BFL sold MANY MANY MANY more orders than they could possible ever ship and all of the lies that have been spewed by you during this past year amount to fraud in my opinion.

/school

1000 units? Evidence?

Tape out / design for Monarch Chip? Evidence?

Refunds? People are waiting given they have a legal right you should be providing REFUNDS.

Unreliable. Do not buy from BFL.


Seriously I wonder at what point in time does the AG in KS determine what BFL is doing is fraud?

Here is the real rating that I liked.....I think the site is appropriately named
                             "SCAM ADVISOR"

My computer started beeping and flashing the words "WARNING WILL ROBINSON" when I entered butterfly labs....(well sort off lolz)

Notice that the company is incorperated in COSTA RICA ...oh sonny we can see the escape plan

http://www.scamadviser.com/check-website/butterflylabs.com

Thanks for the acknowledgement.



Don't say that.

Say instead: Don't order from (read: give money to) BFL, under any circumstance, not now, not ever.

---

Latest development:

---

Butterfly Labs Inc. have claimed that Sonny Vleisides role is that of "VP of Product Development".

I believe that claim to be false or at best misleading. Likely false in everything but name.

I believe Sonny Vleisides is still the acting day-to-day general manager, the head of operations, the decision man, the chief executive.

By any measure other than by title.

See, this trick of appointing "the cleaning lady", or, as the case may be, some person in another country,
to positions of responsibility perhaps in exchange for some disproportionate compensation,
for signing a couple of documents every once in a while, happens to be another red flag.
It's the kind of thing scammers tend to do, and honest people tend to don't.

---

This email, from Paypal, if accurate, seems to show that that claim is, indeed, false.

I.e. it shows that the claim that Sonny Vleisides is acting VP of Product Development, is materially false.

Which, you know, one could suspect, what with him having no relevant background in electrical engineering or computer science.

As opposed to "a colorful background in offshore libertarianism", to borrow the words of his accomplice Josh Zerlan aka. Inaba aka. BFL_Josh.

Which turns out to mean, in plain english, you tell people lies to get them to send you money, you defraud people with false promises of great wealth and riches.

I congratulate the perpetrators, and extend my condolences to the victims of this... artful operation.

Sonny Vleisides has pulled it off again.

I hope this thread saved someone.

---

PS:

To the people who paid about a million dollars (at todays valuation) for an ASIC minirig on the night of June 23 2012:

Please try to find out what happened to your money. What fraction was converted into cash. How much of it was retained in BTC.

Do it before they "run out of cash reserves" and shut down / file for bankruptcy / run for the hills, with your money.

Where is it today? How much can be recovered?

You've been swindled, you've been abused, you've been lied to repeatedly.

That just ain't right.

It's time to wake up, get angry and go to court.

They still have 45 days of shipping on each product line,
only moving 3 days per line per day.

Might clear April in 3 more weeks, so the "2 weeks or so" will end up being 5 weeks.

That's pretty good for the Monkey crew considering 2 weeks usually equals 5 months.

What is absolutely staggering to me is we are talking about them clearing April 2013 orders!!! Not getting caught up, when they make this milestone then they will be 6 MONTHS BEHIND STILL!!

Sadly those with order numbers of 40,50,60,000

When the package comes just throw it away, it will be Feb 2014 and you won't mine a single coin.

So sad.

From a gentlemen on the BFL Forums:


There are some VERY poor design choices on that board:

While a switch to what appears to be a 5-phase regulator per chip is a very good design choice, the choice to use a non-synchronous regulator (you can spot one of these by the need to use a diode(s) in the power path) is very poor.

1/ Synchronous regulators are more efficient than non-synchronous regulators, particularly at low voltages.
2/ Non-synchronous regulators require a diode powerful enough to handle the full current of the output. (That's a BIG diode!)
3/ BFL engineers appear to think they can use lots of smaller diodes in parallel instead of one big diode - that's a big no-no! Google 'diodes in parallel' if you care to know why!

I can't remember the last time I saw a motherboard which had anything other than a multi-phase synchronous regulator for the CPU - and they don't have to deliver as much power as the Monarch does!


#end quote#

So it is very likely we are going down the same path, attach the chips, plug it in, it burns up,
start again. See you in March.

Dejavu all over again.

Contact someone @ phishing@commercebank.com.

Ask them about how to report (what you suspect is fraud) at commerce bank.



1) Tell them you paid for an item 1 (or more) months ago and you have not received the item you paid for.

2) Tell them you paid with a wire transfer (for those who paid with a wire transfer only) and that BFL has not sent you the miner you paid for within a [very] reasonable period of time.

3) Add notes about your transaction ID, dates, amounts sent, purpose for contacting them about your wire transfer. Let them know you have already contacted BFL and they have refused offering a refund for their poor business practice.

4) Let them know about the PayPal merchant account situation and that it was one of the Payment Processors that shut them down for ....well I don't know the official reason...

5) Let them know of the sheer number of complaints at the Kansas AG (Attorney General), the Local Police Department and District Attorney has on file.

Report back and let the community know if they give you an email or phone number which is not listed.

[Crazy Speculation]

MOTHERFUCKERS!

It was bullshit that was ssssooooo well crafted. That even my BS detector couldn't understand the scope of the scam.

Holy shit, BFL figured out a way to have [newer] customers pay for the refunds.

========================
The Scam Defined (IMO):

They (BFL) don't even have to touch their own bank to set this up. It is genius, true scam genius.

They open up "a marketplace" for old pay date holders and newer pay date holders to get together and send money to each other. (thereby keeping BFL out of the refund loop). Later pay date holders source $$$ and send the refund money to early pay date holders.

The newer customers under the illusion that they still want [nearly obsolete] hardware earlier than their current pay date (April 2013 for example) will go into the marketplace and therefore will seek an "Early Pay Date" in the market place (lets say October 2012). They will opt to send money (the disguised customer-to-customer refund process) to the buyer with an earlier pay date (october 2012). Thereby moving themselves up in the queue.

The original buyer with the *Early pay date* then steps out of line and drops out of BFL as a customer. (they got their refund from another customer...not BFL)

Then the buyer with the later pay date (April 2013) is then going to sells his/her *Later pay date* (April 2013) on the very same market place to someone with an even later pay date (lets say another pay date holder for July 2013).


======================


In effect, BFL has found an ingenious way to keep the apparent ponzi going without putting their own bank accounts as the source of the funds.

Newer Customers now refund older customers in their bid to get an early spot in this ongoing ponzi-like structure!

Madoff would be damn proud!

It's even bleaker for BFL now. That comparison is the Bitfury 1st batch pricing. The next batch pricing for Oct delivery is only $20/GH

Hi to Bitcoin forum.

This note is for the people out there who want to get a refund from Butterfly Labs.

I just wanted to say that I ordered 2 products from Butterfly Labs last month (August 5, 2013). I had no prior knowledge of their business. I changed my mind about my two orders once I learned more about their backlog of orders and business model.

Two days ago BFL gave me a refund through paypal and my credit card. It was pretty straightforward and extremely simple. It took one phone call, one email to BFL to confirm that they would not give me a refund, a copy and paste of their reply into my paypal dispute, and a waiting period of about 4 days. BFL has been saying all last month that they aren't giving refunds, ....but I got mine.

If you used a credit card and paypal for your orders, and you still want a refund, hopefully you can get the same smooth experience.

Sincerely,
Temuujin

Hey, fuck face! The overwhelming response is #1.

Also, tell Sonny or Jeff, that customers are complaining: http://www.000webhost.com/directory/reviews/webspawner.com