Thanks.

Seems like the same story. Just a note, a few months ago my wire was received same day at BFL, and they acknowledged that afternoon or evening. So, they have the potential to repond promptly. But that order was not at the start of the FPGA produt life, so it might not have been as busy at BFL. Being that this is the beginning of the asic hardware it makes some sense to have delays knowing their staffing must be low. Anyway, they communicated to me that it was being resolved...but no timeline was mentioned.

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First of all, your analysis is faulty, because I'm not thinking that I'm more special than anyone here. There isn't even good reasoning to warrant that claim of yours. If you think others aren't wondering with some concern about their sent funds, or products, then you are mistaken. Sharing our experiences here about our dealings with BFL can help us to know what is happening (afterall, customer service is still not ready to handle it). And I have waited patiently, up to a point. Perhaps, it was the point where BFL was late to meet their shipping terms by weeks already without even a notice. This simply heightened my concern. Of course, you or others may be more patient with that. Whcih is good, as it's less to think about. But perhaps the difference is that I have been burned before (more than once). Companies appearing just as nice as BFL. Except, those companies actually answered the phone when you called. Anyway, despite some decent feelings about them (derived from the forums), BFL is about as close to an unkown company as you can get. Who are they? So, why not become more alert than normally when they do meet order terms.

That said, I have 'calmed' down a bit, for now, after a question with a long term forum contributor.

Anyway, this was a survey at the start. And the survey asked if others experienced any delays in receipts, and importantly if they thought those delays were reasonable. If you have any real contributions to add, then please do. And if you really think someone should be more patient, then find a better way to say it than telling them to shut up. Afterall, nobody is asking you to read this thread.

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Are we to use your logic and assume you think you're special now?

Is the atmosphere at BFL calm, busy, hectic or out of control insane?

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My funds were wired last Thursday, and they were verfied as received on Friday. However, there is still no official response on the receipt of funds. This is not the way to manage customer communications when you have received very large sums of their money. BFL is apparently scrambling to resolve this issue, but not sure what the fix is suppose to be.

On a related note, I don't know how long others have waited, but I'm about to enter the 9th week of waiting for the fpga Singles since BFL received payment for them.

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My guess is that they won't add paypall until orders are taken in October. That is just a guess, but based on discussions in other parts of the forum. See my related comment above on paypal and dwolla in this thread.

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BFL,

I realize that customer service (CS) is a seperate operation than both manufacturing and shipping. But if BFL CS is not responding on a wire transfer that already included details after four days, then they clearly can not keep up with the orders. I understand that you guys do not want this to remain that way, and hopefully will resolve this apparent understaffing issue.

Currently the jobs posted on BFL website:

If the orders are so numerous that BFL can not keep up with the providing receipts in a timely fashion. And BFL already has a track record of being late with delivering products. How can we know this is not going to correlate with sc-hardware being proportionally slower in the manufacturing and shipping departments? ... In other words, How will you keep up in the more arduous task of manufacturing & shipping if order receipts can not be kept up by CS? Are these just 'growing pains'? If you guys are as late as November/December to deliver, will you be able to handle the run on BFL by a deluge of refunds requests, if you spent all the money on hardware? ... or is that risk absorbed by any VC investors?

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Yeah, in the forum (not BFL's website), I think I read that one of the reasons that they may not have accepted dwolla is because the time to ask for a chargeback is exceeed by the time October arrives. So, if they fail to deliver after October, you won't be able to charge them back effectively. That is just from the forums, I don't know anything about dwolla.

Strange. I have orders numbers that come a couple or several hundred after your number, but got the bank wire instructions last Thursday for all of them. However, I sent my bank wire that Thursday and have yet to receive a formal acknowledgement of bank wire receipt. When I purchased FPGA Singles, the wire acknowledgement came in that night I think. So, last night I sent in a request for formal acknowledgement of receipt, and a fast reply informed me that it was receeived, and that csutomer service would be the ones to do the formal receipt still. My bank wire had instructions with it that indicated my name and the exact the order numbers. It's easing to know they got it, but curious that the formal receipt is taking so long.

They must have received so many orders that they can't keep up and/or they have no smooth customer service process. It just occured to me. If they can't keep up with bank wires alone which are mouse clicks, assuming it is due to quantities of wires, imagine what it will be like fullfilling that amount of hardware orders that apparently still need to be built, tested and shipped.  I'm wondering about this October thing now. :-/

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Next time you visit the future, check out the headlines for Apple's stock share price and the years biggest percentage gainers.
It would be more profitable (no pun intended).

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Thanks for your feedback.  Why did you decide to cancel?

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Thank you for acknowledging this, and making it a point of concern for BFL as well. I hope you guys figure it out.

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That seems to make sense. I guess I am more intersted in the response time. My transfer was submitted 3 days ago, and should have been received the same day as the instructions (before COB). A couple months ago BFL responded to a prior bank transfer for the purchase of FPGA Singles on the same day of the transfer. BTW: Still waiting for those FPGA Singles. :/

As much as I hate to seem impatient about either the transfer (or orders), it's difficult to not get focused on response times considering the short time BFL has been around and the history of routinely making late shipments. This is probably not an isolated sentiment.

Thanks for the input.

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Quick survey:

1. Has anyone received an email notice from BFL with instructions on funding by bank wire?

2. Ifso: When was the email received?

3. Assuming the bank wire was sent:
     a. When was the bank wire sent?
     b. Did BFL email you a notice that the bank wire had been received?
     c. What do you consider as a reasonable response time?

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Thanks for the insight on that, and glad you got a refund. Reading that it took them so long is just another example of how they need to hire more customer support staff. How long did it take you to get the refund compared to how long they said it would take?

I not only get impatient, but angry with the lack of any reliable connection to customer support. For example, still waiting on the Singles I ordered, but when I email support questions, it is more than 75% of the time that the email is not answered. They never acknowledge that they are late or even make an attempt to apologize. Again, maybe it's largely related to staffing issues, but it still gets fustrating as time goes on and it feels like your are not respectfed. It's very possible that I will simply boycott anything to do with asic hardware until I can elvaluate somethign tangible from the open project initiative, and in the mean time just get a full refund on all of my BFL orders.

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It seems the most people that have developed any comfort with BFL are those that have actually received products, or those that have been to the actual office site. However, neither provides me much comfort. Those are almost meaningless, and a common mistake people make when developing a new customer/business relationship with an unkown startup.

I know first hand how visitng an office guaranatee's you nothing. Afterall, that is how a boiler room scam works to build confidence. Regarding receiving some product, that also means nothing. Even an investment ponzi scheme will send you cash to build more confidence to take more of your money. So, considering this and the amount of money people have dumped into orders, it is disturbing that customer support & communications is still so awfully weak to neutralise any aggitations people are having.

Has anyone reading this ever tried callling BFL and actually spoke with a live person? Or did they just get an answering maching? Has anyone ever left a message and received a return call after doing so? Has anyone here ever asked for a full refund and actually received one? My bet is that the answer will be 'no' to at least the first two questions, and 'probably not' to the last. The solution to restoring confidence is simple, hire enough people for proper customer support. I suppose it might be a weakness that some engineers think that they know how to successfully start a business. When/if the open asic initiative comes online, we'll see how successful they actually are. My hope is that they improve on all fronts (and soon).

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Yeah, it would be helpful to know. I wouldn't consider ordering any more BFL hardware until I knew what kind of hash rate was gong to hit the network, and how this would affect the difficulty level over the first few months. It seems BFL should let the customers know more, unless they don't want to make a negative impact on sales by providing information that shows a poor return on the network for late purchases. It should not be a company secret on how much they are selling, when a basic understanding of how the products will perform on the network is a fundamental consideration a potential customer must make.

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Yeah, that's something to consider. You could then buy 4 for the price of 3 at todays prices. So, in that scenario, there is effectively a 30% inrease in hash rate per dollar. But this might be balanced by the first month being most profitable. Furthermore, ordering now and get the hardware to mine before this hypothetical $6 to $8 increase. So, we need to consider the potential factor that you will have likely mined significant amount of coins before they become lower in supply (i.e. the 50 to 25 bitcoin discovery size). So, who knows.

And also consider that BFL will have to either charge less per hash rate once the difficultly goes too high. Afterall, when network hashing goes up 30x, who would want to buy at tody's prices? I suppose there will be some kind of market equilibrium...perhaps eventually. Miners won't invest if there is no reasonable time to ROI, and difficulty won't increase if miners don't invest.

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Any new details on this yet?

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