Butterflylabs Huge SCAM

[m3sSh3aD]

So you ordered pre-order hardware from a company with shitty history, non existent customer service and owners that are convicted felons and you are surprised you get scammed?

You're talking after the fact. It's obvious NOW.

Then you aren't trying to put the burden on the victims of the scam, right? The criminals are the ones 100% to blame, all the time.

And it was obvious to everyone who used there brains from December 2012, latest Feb 2013 for the slow people, that bfl and josh were scamming cockroaches. Which i say, and will stick to that If you ordered after this date, you need to start doing your research before you jump the gun and act like a fool! Its nothing personal, its just the truth.

People are falable, always but you can do something about it, like thinkingngor yourself instead of being a sheep!

I didn't order anything.

The fact that people are naive does not justify scams. Then they do not have to do research on scams, that's the job of the police, regulators, etc...

Furthermore, the rhetoric of blaming the victim is getting old, to say the least. People should be ashamed of insisting on this crap, libertarian or not, wild-wild West or not ...

Your statement suggests that I was saying scams are fine because people are stupid. The only stupid person is you thinking that anything of that sort. I have given my condolences to people in the past but that doesn't change the facts here. If you ordered after march, you really need to work on your research techniques and use some of those brain cells. People want to be spoke to nice all the time but that's what leads us into the world we have today! Security over freedom and getting sweet fa for it.... We were warned about this! Critical thinking/critical advice is paramount to being better at what you do. When people put people on pedestals (think education system, actors/artists, CEO etc etc) these people believe all the hype that comes with been 'given& such status. Life is fluid and expansive and we have so much to learn still, open your mind, take advice, weather good or bad on the chin and learn from it. Stop being persumtuious and experience life and what it can offer!

In conclusion, criticism, mild to harsh is essential for learning and progression! Simples

Oh yes, josh is one of the scummiest people ever to grace this planet. He is the lowest of low life cockroaches! He personally as a mind that gives no thought of anything but himself! Bring back the guillitene..... Oh yes, department of homeland security just brought 50,000 didn't they.... For the FEMA camps! Scum like josh will probably dodge it and it will be the good people that suffer, as history as shown time and time again

Do you have trouble understanding stuff or do you tend to rush to conclusions?

No, I'm not saying you mean that "scamming is ok because people are stupid". What you and the other poster are implying is that people are to blame for being scammed by a company. Am I wrong? No, I don't think so.

I'm not even going to try to counter-argue the rest of your U.S. centric tirade. Just to say that consumer protection rules work differently elsewhere...

Nonits not, governments over step everywhere in the world and there all the same, they govern the people instead of people governing them... That's the same no matter where you go which leads to this bullshit world of make believe we live in!

Fact is, everyone's stupid as were all human and no one is special! No one! When people realise this maybe we might just get along! Haha... Yes right, beggining of the end is now

[scambutterflylabs]

Except... none of it ever happened.  Cool story, though, bro!

Josh, be careful where you tread. I've warned you once before about spouting off to the wrong people. I am not PuertoLibre or some other BFL troll. I've spent tens of thousands of dollars with your company and have a solid BitcoinTalk reputation. I have resold and mined both your FPGA and ASIC lines, and have made quite a bit of coin doing so. On top of this, I have over $100,000 on the sidelines right now that I am waiting to put back into mining equipment once the difficulty becomes more predictable and your company is in consideration if you are able to actually deliver your 28nm products with a reasonable price, hashrate, and power consumption.

So watch your fucking "facts" when you attempt to call either me or my friend a liar. The fact of the matter is that I coached 1 family member and 4 friends into buying machines of different sizes from your company and on September 19th sent them an email saying to cancel their orders because we were crossing the point of no return on investment. The family member received their miners early enough to sell them for a good profit. Of the friends, one had no problems at all cancelling, one had a problem where after several weeks of harassing Paypal finally had the reversal approved, only to have the account Paypal was drawing on as empty, and the other two have not been able to get a refund, although they haven't been particularly aggressive with paypal either. As such, two of my friends had some amount of dollars sewn up with your company in an interest free loan for some time, and two of them are going to take a large loss, one of them at a time in his life where he really needs a win.

And I hold you responsible due to the complete and utter fabrications called timelines you've delivered to us in the past 17 months. In your quest to dominate the market, you have sucker punched people who are now literally homeless, causing fights between their spouse and them, and adding astounding stress to their lives. And so, I understand that you can easily sit there and type complete lies that ruin people, and as such you think it must be easy for everyone else to just lie.

But I'll tell you now, Josh, I'm no liar. My friend who had this bounced paypal issue is no liar. So, I would get your "cool story" straight before you respond to me again.

[scambutterflylabs]

Could this be why BFL isn't delivering product to customers?

Gotta stockpile up a lot of chips to make enough equipment to sell mining server time as a commodity.

What is there to stockpile?  Mining by the GH will take just as long to deliver as the Monarch.

PRE-ORDER ... Did everyone miss the button?  You won't be getting that gh/s today.

[darkmule]

The word "pre-order" ought to be outlawed.  Order before you order?  Doesn't even make sense. 

Perhaps the button should be labeled with some word like "Gamble That This Item Ever Exists Like a Moron."

[scambutterflylabs]

He is right though, why would anyone who has problems come here and bitch and moan instead of going to the proper place?

How many thousands of complaints does one have to read and delete or ignore before people get fed up and report it to the FTC or the AG in Kansas.

Remarkably you want to ignore the plight of 100s who have had to fight tooth and nail to get refunds and still 100s more who are still expecting BFL to refund them according to FTC regulations.

Why do you continually ignore the plight of 100s of people?

Obviously you are being "paid" in some manner to defend BFL as no one can be that obtuse or sociopathic when it comes to the financial pain of hundreds who have every right to expect refunds. At this point it there is little evidence to support that BFL is a reputable supplier of ASIC mining equipment. They refused to provide refunds. Their own website is purposefully using double speak and unclear really on when these next units will ship. Coupled with a ALL SALES ARE FINAL stipulation should warn off everyone from anything BFL. There are plenty of other competitors that will ship, that have shipped and who have rightly and honestly given refunds.
 
Sad... just sad. You and Inaba are not going to fool anyone here with this diatribe. BFL will get a 28nm out to the market behind at least 3 or 4 other fabricators given their own timeline.

DO NOT BUY BFL PRODUCTS. SIMPLE SOLUTIONS FOR US ALL. Especially when it won't make a dime.

[Kelekin]

I have to say, this is seriously the only industry where I have found this type of pre-ordering acceptable.  Where else can you pre-order something without a guarantee or the ability to get your money back?  Any company that requires the money of the pre-orders to fund their products has terrible business practices, and the lack of transparency is unbelievable with these ASIC mining companies.  I'm pretty new to the mining game even though I've been reading these forums endlessly the past couple months, but it scares me how willing people are to entrust their money to people with no way of getting their money back.  We're supposed to be promoting the currency as something that can work like any other currency - and things like this create the opposite effect and come across as sheer money laundering. 

[Wed]

Finally i got my jalapeno :-)

[scambutterflylabs]

I am taking BFL to court this week in Pennsylvania, also suing for treble damages since they knowingly violated the law and the FTC guidelines in not honoring refunds when requested after delays as well as the Pennsylvania Consumer Protection Law If anyone has any horror stories or if anyone would like to make any statements for me in court that would be awesome, i'll update this thread once everything is processed.  Has anyone else taken ButterflyLabs to court?  If not im very surprised, seems like an easy win to me.

UPDATE:
Civil complaint filed and accepted in my home state in Pennsylvania, also the Pennsylvania Attorney General is investigating, I'd be interested in accepting any Affidavit's or if anyone would like to be a witness PM me.  Being a witness would be better since affidavit's may not be admissible because they could be classified as hearsay.  So if you live close, let me know.  Also any advice or support would be appreciated.  Any small win here is a good thing, if I can get a Judgement against them others may take it as an example for their own cases.

Good job man, the second BF Labs stopped issuing FULL refunds when they were lawfully requested they crossed a line they will likely regret.  We need more people like you to stand up to them.  This wanna be libertarian crowd here seems intent to just let the BFL's and TH's of the world do whatever the fuck they want whenever the fuck they want without consequence.  There is also a number of people here who will say all kinds of crazy things when it comes to the law surrounding this stuff.  All I will say is BF Labs is selling a retail product on the internet and retail sales/sales contracts, consumer protection, mail order (internet selling) have been around for many many years and the laws surrounding them are old and well tested.  The libertarian crowd here seems to thing some wild things about these laws and for some reason seem to think that the business model used by ASIC manufactures to date is normal.  IT IS NOT, the real world doesn't operate like this for a reason (a very good reason) and it's called the law...  It won't be much longer before one or more of these companies find this out, with more Joe six packs jumping on the BTC train everyday, these antics will be long gone and we will all have found memories of the jokes we call manufacture's today.

Hey guys, Please check out this web form and if you have a few minutes, please fill it out with your experiences with Butterfly Labs Inc, it will be forwarded to the Pennsylvania Attorney General as well as admitted as evidence in my case: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1ZRH841TzAhv8Bu7pcEW8id3UMAsO5iDvxUgw0LqZA0k/viewform

I'll be providing updates as the case moves forward.
Thank you

[scambutterflylabs]

Re:  YES, you can get a REFUND from BFL

After 8 weeks of no response from BFL to Amex and my refusing shipments of 11 singles I am happy to say that the chargeback process is complete and I am finally rid of BFL after 8 long months. Good riddance!

[scambutterflylabs]

Re:  YES, you can get a REFUND from BFL

I have also finally got my refund of $500.

This was after 4 months of waiting. I know not a huge amount, but still.

[Mondy]

This thread should be stickied!

[Probably]

For a $300 investment in april, lets pretend you can simply buy a jalapeno right now and get it tomorrow ... you gain .006 bitcoins a day with a 6.5-7gh/s jalapeno.

Converting that to bitcoins now if you paid cash then, that's .5 bitcoins needed to "break even."

That's 83 days IF there are 0 difficulty increases or changes in the rate assuming yours plows along at 6.5-7Gh/s and has a decent hardware error rate (2-3%). Obviously that is pure fantasy, free electricity may be attainable for you so I won't factor that in but without drastic difficulty changes zero profit for 6 months with a breakeven of maybe 140ish days?
http://www.bitcoinx.com/profit/


The build quality on it has been discussed, you will have to "maintain" it. there is pretty much zero chance that the stock supply, fan, and internals will last as long as you need to mine with it to break even I'm gathering.

On the flipside, you could spend that $300 right now on .5 coins and not be in a hole for 6 months.


The reality is the simple math behind BFL is that the extent to which difficulty and valuation would change, the preorder concept gives them "timing preference" and wait when they clearly had product in hand was grossly underestimated by people who didn't think things through all the way. We're seeing this with other services that appear to decide when buy orders "count" and when sell orders "should go through"...


if at pricepoint $60 in april = 5 coins for 1 jalapeno, think of all of the mining done with these devices in the interim, all of the orders that came first. Yes, it is not accurate to claim hashing power correlation to price point, there are other factors. but you can find graphs that will point out it its nature and make those decisions on your own.


One way of thinking of it is your miner already exists in the total hash power for some time, making whoever feels like making it some cash. if they're getting rid of it it is because its no longer a good investment to actually use it.


That was the enigma behind an "asic company." Why sell something that generates profit? Answer: you can do both, use and sell.

If there was ever a scenario where these devices really made money without some sort of greater slow play long con going on, you simply wouldn't sell them. There has to be a healthy mount of "sharing the devices with the masses" or else the sentiment about bitcoin is again the ponzi "early adopter" trickle down on the new fish to buy the old fish's shit as essential food, to "keep up." if it felt like nobody but a few with the investment to produce the hardware existed, that wouldn't fly. take the shady pre-order "foot the bill for us to use this first" route or even angel venture / investment to hoard the devices...

[DeboraMeeks]

Contacting police should be a last resort. Contacting your credit card provider should be the first.
Although BFL continue to anger 99% of their own customers, it's amazing how little they've learnt by their mistakes. Treat people (customers) right and they wont get sued. Arent refunds a part of consumer law in the US?

[thehashman]

The build quality on it has been discussed, you will have to "maintain" it. there is pretty much zero chance that the stock supply, fan, and internals will last as long as you need to mine with it to break even I'm gathering.

I can second that, one of my stock PSUs has already burned out after only 3 weeks mining 

[HolyTemplar]

Could this be why BFL isn't delivering product to customers?

http://i40.tinypic.com/b6o8yh.png

Gotta stockpile up a lot of chips to make enough equipment to sell mining server time as a commodity.

What is there to stockpile?  Mining by the GH will take just as long to deliver as the Monarch.

PRE-ORDER ... Did everyone miss the button?  You won't be getting that gh/s today.

This reminds me of when I 'Pre-Ordered' my BFL 7GH/s Jalapeno back in May, and have only just received the package this morning from America.

Almost 7 months wait time! I wouldn't trust BFL to deliver on time with any product or service from what I have experienced, and read on the official BFL forums.

[manuel]

I can confirm a friend got ripped off on one of their machines having to wait more than 9 months for it...

[fractal02]

My Jalap ROI'ed 3 times and i'm on the go for the 4x times.

Better than any investment banking out there.

Have you see the price for BFL miner on the marketplace thread ? Huh...Price have dramatically increased...

[echrak]

I ordered my miner in May, and it only just arrived a few days ago.

Good thing it wasn't time sensitive or anything.  (Note: Sarcasm)

Their customer service is crap, too.  I called them with a question and was treated to an automated system of messages that told me to remain on the line if my question hadn't been answered.  Waiting on the line connected me to a voicemail, which, being full, would immediately drop my call.  I emailed them my question instead, and mentioned the phone troubles as well, but they were useless and dismissive.

I recommend not dealing with them at all if you have any choice in the matter.

[alexout]

Are BFL delivering now? is everything in stock now or same empty promises BS they have been spewing the last 12 months?

[HolyTemplar]

Are BFL delivering now? is everything in stock now or same empty promises BS they have been spewing the last 12 months?

Apparently they have caught up with all orders (according to https://forums.butterflylabs.com/blogs/bfl_jody/).

However, if you order one now, you'll want to be careful and make sure you'll make a return on your investment.