hello guys, four months after I bought the miner from Bitmain, 4x S5, I have burned 2 cards, fortunately still had the guarantee, and we resolved, I am now five months that I use the miner, then the warranty expired, and a blade has burned, I asked for help to bitmain saying that I wanted to buy a new blade, they said they have no more spare parts because S5 is out of production ,.
I do not understand what kind of support you? in 5 months you were burned 3 pcb, now do not even spare parts, no longer respond to email me, if you burn more blades so I can stop undermining bitcoin, because there are no spare parts? so I paid $ 2,200 including shipping to Italy 4x antminer S5, I have not made even half of the investment, I burned the miner, and I can not replace lame.ho asked a cupon to buy s7 least to compensate the crap that makes bitmain. I think that the products bitmain are scarce, if you burn in a few months.
After the warranty you are pretty much on your own as far as cost. Most of time they have part's for a while for example S3 controllers they had these LONG after S3 production. But some parts yes they do run out and do not make any more.
Is it the same machine burning these cards? If so did you buy direct from bitmain?
Also what is environment like they are in? It was summer through this it sounds like what temps was ambient in where you ran them?
Just curious on those questions. But one thing I can tell you is Bitmain will not give coupons for compensation of miners outside of warranty or even downtime during RMA's. If you are trying to get coupons for that I can suggest stop as it will only cause you more anger, and you will not get it.
I am not going to generalize and say all businesses in china do some or all of these things. That sounds racist.Maybe I should consider clarifying when I discuss China pools.
However, there are cultural differences everywhere. I spent about two months working in china in my mid twenties. Flew in to Hong Kong, spent about a week. Each day I would receive a message from the front desk saying they would let me know the next day what time they would pick me up.. Then after a week these two guys show up and take me to a train, and we all ride together to the city in China. Forgive me I cannot remember the spelling, but I'll never forget how it was pronounced. My best phonetic spelling would be Guanchow or Gwanchow. From Hong Kong to Guwanchow was like going from Vegas and New York rolled together to a Cantonese version of leave it to beaver. The two guys with me were bodyguards because they thought I might get robbed just for average Western clothing and because I was foreign, and American. I later found out it was also so they could keep an eye on what I was doing.
The company I worked with in Gwuanchow is a business in what I learned and began to understand is the traditional business arrangement in the sector of work I do, in China. There is certainly a company structure with employees, managers, etc, but there is also a partner many times, the Chinese Government.
This company took advantage of the workforce in so many sickening ways. I seriously do not want to get in a long description, but one of the lightest moments is lunchtime for anyone who wasn't management. They built a fire with whatever they could find and cooked a whole chicken, or two, maybe three depending on how many people were there. The whole thing, and ate every bite.
Again, I am not saying these things to suggest all of china is this way, and neither is BITMAIN to my knowledge.
It seemed to me the workers were taught to not give a shit. If they were hurt, they went home without pay. Where most companies I worked with in the west who experienced a significant loss of money due to delays begin to get upset fast. Were I was working they acted like it is completely normal and nothing to become upset about.
There were my two bodyguards who could speak english well enough and they were great guys, just like you would meet in your area at home. When they made business decisions there was never a hurried situation. Everything could wait. I as the contractor could wait, even though our contract has specific penalties for end user responsibilities incomplete at our arrival, they weren't excited in the least, and told me not to worry about it; everything would be taken care of.
I recognize some of this in the actions I have seen with BITMAIN.
Even though the S5+ is a 90 day warranty I was told within the first few weeks, three weeks I think it was and I was still begging for anyone to talk with me about my S5+ fan failure. I must qualify here that Colorado did answer me, but couldn't help me with the warranty fan situation although they did offer to sell me a couple of fans. Finally I received a phone call from a name most of you who have been around a minute know and he suggested I pick one up locally. I'm sure he meant order one as I am unable to buy that fan locally.
When I asked this simple question to him, do you think it is right to provide a warranty and not uphold it? Sure it is a fan, but it is a fan for my S5+, it is a decent fan, and I should be sent one under the product warranty. I think they all know the right thing, but the culture is different. He agreed with me, that covering the fan was the right thing to do, but he could have just as easily sent me back to sending emails to the factory,
info@bitmaintech.com. This is where I was told I had to process my warranty claim.
My guy from California was correct obviously by agreeing that the fan should be covered and info@bitmaintech offered to sell me fans, but my guy in california did send me a fan. He did the right thing. Maybe I wasn't supposed to repeat such, but I'd think it would be better for people to hear the truth that the BITMAIN employee did make the right choice in dealing with the situation.
A few posts popped up regarding other people with S5+ fan failures and about this time the first (and almost only) S7s showed up at some had fan failures at arrival and some are having failures. As the home miners we are doing great testing and reporting of what we find.
The first action is the default for the culture. When prompted, questioned with more realistic ideals, well, plainly what is right. Once that is brought to an individual's attention they know the right thing to do, but the culture, the environment, the previous experiences with leadership and authority figures have taught that telling someone to pickup a fan locally is acceptable. In such it teaches the warranty is flexible if it costs the company a bit of money. Do not think for a second I am saying this is the China way, there are plenty of companies in any country, or any number of individuals at any company who may feel one way or the other, but again, leadership, social experiences, the examples which have been set, well, it is justified as not only OK, but the right choice. It is up to all of us to help define what the real "right" choice is. We must teach that it is not acceptable.
Bitmain may issue something for the delays to appease some of us S7 early purchases, or hopefully all of batch 1. It would be to appease us, don't fool yourself into thinking it is done (if it happens) to appease us. It is not an admission of making an incorrect choice for those making the decisions. They knew and know the miners have an issue. It is listed in a manner on the website relative to the pricing and batches 2 and 3. Again, what leadership feels are morally and financially sound decisions.
I had a situation this past February with a single batch 1 S4. The PSU died 3 times (or was it 4? I lost count) I could put it on a 200BB and it would run flawless. The third time they made me send the complete unit. By this time I'd already lost an obscene amount of hashing time, and I was considering just leaving it on the 2000bb, but the guys in Colorado told me they could figure out what was wrong. I shipped it in, they installed yet another batch 2 PSU, and upgraded the firmware to the Jan9th version. At that time I'd never overclocked it anyway. I was thrilled if it ran for a week. The power supply failed again about a week later, and I decided the issue regarding me being unable to sell it easily without a factory PSU didn't matter, the fact that I had to run it on the 2000bb didn't matter, as long as it ran, and it has since. It has never given me one hiccup and knock on wood I did overclock it after the warranty expired. I rolled it back to October firmware so I could freakin adjust the voltage, and had some great fun with her. I put a 2880 on the girl and put her in my bedroom and decided if it was her time then it was. I proceeded to run all sorts of tests with over and underclocking. I would run her full tilt at 2400ish which is where she ran stable so she wasn't the best unit, but there was never anything else wrong, and I proved that to myself. It was those cheap PSUs. Bad choice, and bad design.
But, before I ended at my happy place with my lady S4, I was told in the very beginning of my S4 ordeal my warranty was not valid. To my knowledge at that point bitmain had resellers and Bitmain themselves sell on Amazon via the Bitmain account. They honored warranty with sales from that account. The lady S4 shipped from their factory and I actually paid a decent amount over what I should. This was December last year when I bought her and she arrived just after new years. I paid $1,000.00 which was after several amazon discounts which totalled around $200.00 so I officially paid $1,200.00 when these were selling for about $1000.00 or less on the bitmain website. You see, I was an utter noob then, I just knew I had mining in my blood. All of a sudden that Amazon account was a reseller and all of a sudden no reseller gets bitmain factory warranty. It didn't matter it had shipped directly from bitmain, or that the amazon account was bitmain, it was not an order placed through the bitmain website and therefore came from a reseller.
Again, initial reaction, but I did end up getting the first warranty power supplies and the trip for her to Colorado was covered by warranty, because the person I worked with on setting it up finally saw what was the right choice. It wasn't the first choice, but even though I never had a PSU installed which worked for more than a week or so and I would never be offered any type of compensation for the weeks of missed mining time, hours spent troubleshooting, putting more money in a server power supply and making cables to fit the lugs on the hash boards. I felt like I had at least received a standard kind of warranty I imagined, but I was done trying to get it fixed anymore.
Now we face paying for something many or even most of us may not receive. We feel cheated before we have even received them. Maybe we will get a 4.6 miner rather than 4.8 and I don't know about you guys but at the prices we paid, the amount of time from paying to shipment, the ming time lost, alongside the potential loss upon receipt hashing at 4.6 unit may very well be what we have to make lemonade with. Don't forget that any 4.8 units will have a better resale rate.
We'd all been waiting all summer for some fresh miner models, and this fit our bill so their sales exploded. No one else to buy from.
Again, I did not write about these things to bash bitmain. I wrote this to try to help some people see more clearly what seems to happen. I hope everyone receives what they pay for, and while I wasn't always respectful and polite, you should be, but you should also be firm, informed, and have every little thing documented. If you have an electrical issue and aren't good with a meter get someone who is to help check the mains, check the current, check what your cables are delivering, but all the while talk to Bitmain first and cover your ass while you are under warranty.
Never think you shouldn't receive option 2 if you are morally sound. If you aren't trying to take advantage of anyone there is not a reason you shouldn't receive the proper support, so ask for it, and talk openly and ask whoever you are working with from Bitmain what they think, if needed ask a second time and sincerely explain your situation. You may not be treated the way you think is fair, but then again, you might be, or, at least somewhat fair, or mostly fair, which is a helluva lot better than not fair at all.
Next time miners are up, you can think about if you have been treated the way you would treat your customer and be honest with yourself.
