Should BFL get a scammer tag?

[creativex]

Inaba would run against him and likely outspend and out lie him. Political fail.

The fact that people have gotten refunds when requested...a good thing, but it still doesn't explain the multiple conflicting policies on this subject. This stuff is a fixture with BFL. They can't seem to ever get on the same page.

[Unacceptable]

I think they either don't know how to update thier webpage or just don't WANT to  

Wow  squeept dosen't have a BFL "moniker" & knows as much about BFL as I   

[Maged]

Anyone who has been waiting more than 30 days after they sent their payment is entitled to a refund under US law. So, they sure as hell better be honoring refund requests.

[SgtSpike]

Pretty sure they're doing refunds despite the shady notification that pre-order funds are non-refundable. I've also seen posts from BFL reps suggesting a conditional refund policy. Something like, "we'll honor refunds if we don't ship by 1/31/2013" or some such.

All that said, I think they've been completely dishonest about this entire thing. They NEVER should have opened their pre-orders so early in the year, and they definitely never should have promised a date they couldn't deliver. People committed funds months ago based on those promises, and they have a right to expect those promises to be honored. The typical BFLites will dismissively say "well anyone that accepted their release date doesn't know BFL", but that doesn't wash.

Yes BFL deserves a scammer tag. Repeatedly lying when money has changed hands is scamming, period. Even if they do eventually ship, BFL customers will have been cheated of their money from the time they ordered to the time they receive products, during which time the products they bought will have dropped in value substantially due to greatly increased competition.

They never lied.  They said that they expect shipments to be made late October, but no guaranteed shipments until January 1st.  Then they changed it to expecting shipments early November, then early December.  Always, these were NOT guaranteed ship dates.  The only guaranteed date is January 1st.

[creativex]

Doubt they'll make that either. They said this won't be like their botched FPGA paper launch, but it's exactly the same. They run the same playbook again and again. It's painfully obvious why they've been so secretive and why their delays are always just a couple more weeks...just a couple more weeks. Rinse...repeat.

[AndrewBUD]

Doubt they'll make that either. They said this won't be like their botched FPGA paper launch, but it's exactly the same. They run the same playbook again and again. It's painfully obvious why they've been so secretive and why their delays are always just a couple more weeks...just a couple more weeks. Rinse...repeat.

We'll be talking about this exact same thing in January. 

[makomk]

Anyone who has been waiting more than 30 days after they sent their payment is entitled to a refund under US law. So, they sure as hell better be honoring refund requests.

From the information I've seen, the 30 days time limit only applies where no specific delivery timeline was specified. Since BFL did state an expected delivery time of October, as soon as they missed that deadline they were required to contact everyone who'd ordered from them and tell them that their order wouldn't arrive on time and they'd get a full refund. (Actually, legally I think they're meant to automatically refund anyone who hasn't explicitly consented to the delay 30 days after the original delivery deadline, but that's probably not workable.) Note that the FTC guidance I read explicitly stated it was the earliest delivery estimate that mattered, so if you quote an estimate of October and then add a bit elsewhere in the small print that you won't refund before January, the fine print's not going to save you.

[creativex]

No sweat...the October shipping schedule was "fuzzy" and the 5th week of November shipping schedule was "hairy" so you should just fall back to the early late January shipping schedule with regard to legal action against this ethical, but extremely unlucky company.

[Zeek_W]

Definately should get a scammer tag. Josh should also get a Douche tag

[mem]

Come on guys... if this was ANYONE else except for BFL they would have had scammer tags already!  The community has given them hundreds of thousands of their dollars, waited month upon month, and has not seen a word of honest discourse from them about the state of their products.

If you're waiting on something, why not tell us?  Why not tell us what it is?  Why not at least provide process details for your ASIC like Avalon?  Ridiculous.

BFL and Pirate, bitcointalk admins let pirates ponzi play out completely. 
Shills abound, several of pirates fools/shills overlap with BFL's investors/shills heavily so it comes as no surprise.

No scammers tags are only for little fish on bitcointalk, big fish are welcome to bribe and buy their way out of any situation they can, if they cant THEN they get the scammers tag.

[SgtSpike]

Anyone who has been waiting more than 30 days after they sent their payment is entitled to a refund under US law. So, they sure as hell better be honoring refund requests.

From the information I've seen, the 30 days time limit only applies where no specific delivery timeline was specified. Since BFL did state an expected delivery time of October, as soon as they missed that deadline they were required to contact everyone who'd ordered from them and tell them that their order wouldn't arrive on time and they'd get a full refund. (Actually, legally I think they're meant to automatically refund anyone who hasn't explicitly consented to the delay 30 days after the original delivery deadline, but that's probably not workable.) Note that the FTC guidance I read explicitly stated it was the earliest delivery estimate that mattered, so if you quote an estimate of October and then add a bit elsewhere in the small print that you won't refund before January, the fine print's not going to save you.

Their delivery timeline is, and always has been, somewhere between late October and January 1st.

[creativex]

Yeah I got it. The October delivery thing was just to draw the pre-orders away from competitors.

It's December 5, 2012 and BFL is hoping to receive respun chips next week. Does anyone seriously believe this company is going to ship out anything but more BS by January 1, 2013?

[Syke]

Their delivery timeline is, and always has been, somewhere between late October and January 1st.

Let's look at their actual statements, not your opinions:

So will the BitForce SC product line REALLY come out in October? This is a fair question.  Let's review our track record.  If you're not aware, our initial product, the BitForce Single had a slow delivery cycle.  This was initially due to a last minute design change before initial product release.  When we did release it, we weren't quite prepared for the explosive success we had.  After several rounds of scaling, single delivery is in sufficient volume to catch up quickly. The Mini Rig product release has followed it's development and release timeline pretty well.  Initial deliveries aren't far from estimates and the speed of production is on pace to ensure most customers will get their Mini Rigs ahead of schedule. The SC product line has been under development for quite some time and is not the result of an expedited development process.  Although there are always issues during development, our team is highly experienced in exactly this field and we're currently ahead of our original timeline.  Honest Abe, we're scheduling shipments for October of 2012.

They gave every impression that they'd really really be shipping in October. October came and went. November came and went. December is going to come and go, and you'll keep making excuses for them. Get ready for the yearly BFL Chinese New Year excuse for more delays.

[SgtSpike]

Their delivery timeline is, and always has been, somewhere between late October and January 1st.

Let's look at their actual statements, not your opinions:

So will the BitForce SC product line REALLY come out in October? This is a fair question.  Let's review our track record.  If you're not aware, our initial product, the BitForce Single had a slow delivery cycle.  This was initially due to a last minute design change before initial product release.  When we did release it, we weren't quite prepared for the explosive success we had.  After several rounds of scaling, single delivery is in sufficient volume to catch up quickly. The Mini Rig product release has followed it's development and release timeline pretty well.  Initial deliveries aren't far from estimates and the speed of production is on pace to ensure most customers will get their Mini Rigs ahead of schedule. The SC product line has been under development for quite some time and is not the result of an expedited development process.  Although there are always issues during development, our team is highly experienced in exactly this field and we're currently ahead of our original timeline.  Honest Abe, we're scheduling shipments for October of 2012.

They gave every impression that they'd really really be shipping in October. October came and went. November came and went. December is going to come and go, and you'll keep making excuses for them. Get ready for the yearly BFL Chinese New Year excuse for more delays.

They certainly were planning to ship out in October.  So?  Unforeseen delays happened.  What do you expect them to do?

[creativex]

Honest Abe, we're scheduling shipments for October of 2012.

I expect them to not play word games with my hard earned money and therefore labor. Anybody reading this is going to believe this means they're shipping in October, but that's NOT what it means. It's like an official statement from Bill Clinton. Examine Josh's statements more closely and you will find this is a recurring theme. The man says NOTHING without a whole bunch of weasel clauses.

[Frizz23]

Examine Josh's statements more closely and you will find this is a recurring theme. The man says NOTHING without a whole bunch of weasel clauses.

Every company has the representative(s) it deserves -> BFL must really be a shitty company.

[Syke]

They certainly were planning to ship out in October.  So?  Unforeseen delays happened.  What do you expect them to do?

I expect them to tell the truth.

They were not "highly experienced", they're working on their first ASIC and finding out ASIC design isn't as easy as FPGA routing.
They were not "a market leader in microprocessor design", they are FPGA programmers.
They had no real hope of "shipments for October", they just wanted you to think that so you wouldn't buy from someone else.
They were not "installing high-speed equipment", they were simply bidding on ebay for such hardware.
They don't have "venture capital funding", they just have $19 million stolen from customers in a mail fraud scheme and a lot of customer pre-order funds.

I'm scheduling to retire with $10 million in the bank next week. Do you believe that?

[creativex]

I'm scheduling to retire with $10 million in the bank next week. Do you believe that?

YES! Moreover I have a ONCE IN A LIFETIME investment opportunity for you my friend!

[Jack1Rip1BurnIt]

December is a bust, and probably January as well. Although I'm wondering what they will release that will keep people from pulling massive amounts of refunds. I bet they release some form of evidence of a working prototype around Christmas, a video most likely.

[SgtSpike]

They certainly were planning to ship out in October.  So?  Unforeseen delays happened.  What do you expect them to do?

I expect them to tell the truth.

They were not "highly experienced", they're working on their first ASIC and finding out ASIC design isn't as easy as FPGA routing.
They were not "a market leader in microprocessor design", they are FPGA programmers.
They had no real hope of "shipments for October", they just wanted you to think that so you wouldn't buy from someone else.
They were not "installing high-speed equipment", they were simply bidding on ebay for such hardware.
They don't have "venture capital funding", they just have $19 million stolen from customers in a mail fraud scheme and a lot of customer pre-order funds.

I'm scheduling to retire with $10 million in the bank next week. Do you believe that?

1) Highly experienced in their industry in general is what I would take that to mean.  I would assume they mean that they have engineers onboard who have designed ASICs for other projects before.  Obviously, they hadn't designed an ASIC for Bitcoin mining before.  No one had.
2) They've probably developed ASICs before, which are most certainly microprocessors.
3) You have no proof of them lying about this.
4) Ok, I agree, a lie, or at the very least, a half-truth.  They should have clarified this by stating "procuring and installing high-speed equipment".  However, I still put this statement in a much different pool than I would put them in if they said the same thing and they weren't actually buying any equipment to install.
5) You have no proof of them lying about this.

And no, I wouldn't believe you, because you haven't given me good reason to believe you.  However, if you began to post verifiable indicators of your vast store of wealth, such as photos of you driving your Ferrari and pictures of your Bitcoin miners inside your mansion, I might believe you.