Bitmain is not a bad company but a busy company.
Busy when you have your fingers in every pie and are the only game in town for several things.
When the most respected community leaders tell you to bring your problems to the community when you've been refused decent customer service by the "busy" manufacturer it builds resentment among the users.
The past few months I've been the first to say when, and when I haven't had issues. I've been making sure I speak volumes regarding the things bitmain does well, and the things bitmain does horribly. The simple facts are that in my experience the customer service is the worst I have ever received from any company except GAW unless you are lucky enough that Yoshi or the Denver boys can help you, which unfortunately does not happen with most of us. Yoshi stepped in and helped me with getting a replacement fan, but he is mostly interested in supporting large accounts. I think he has good intentions, but his hands are tied in so many ways. Denver is in the same boat, they are even more tied down regarding what they can do, and they help when they can.
Starting with the S5+ they began a strict China RMA process rather than allowing the repairs to be initiated through Denver. I understand they have opened up Denver to handle some items AFTER they have been approved by China, but again, getting China to respond can be painful.
Have you seen the stories of so many people receiving DOA S7s and when they finally do receive an RMA they are waiting a minimum of weeks, many people longer. Tupsu mentioned he'd waited beyond a reasonable time. These products aren't "toys" too most people, they are a device they use in a specific window to reach ROI. As my minifarm grows larger I too have been forced to respect ROI. I began with the express intent of giving zero fucks about it, but in order to maintain a reasonable growth after a successful summer and fall it has become an important aspect. I do not have money invested I cannot lose, as a matter of fact the fiat I started with has been repaid by my BTC income, and now it is a choice if I want to invest additional fiat, but it is rare. I used to trade fiat every month for coin via my power bill, but even that has slowed to a trickle.
I feel fortunate I have not needed to RMA a hash board, or an S7. My S5+ and S7s have been doing OK except the stock frequencies do not ever meet the quoted hashrate, it is always consistently under. None of my power supply loads exceed 80% and are all strong 12v+ 2880s and 2000s using Jabber and sidehacks b/o boards. I use quality equipment and if I decide to overload a power supply that is on me, and I always post a disclaimer of such.
If you cannot understand the below average level of customer service, haven't seen the things which others are seeing, then take my initial experience with them as an example. About 12 months ago I purchased an S4 from Amazon from Zoomhash who were drop-shipping directly from bitmain and there was not a statement at that time that Bitmain would not honor factory warranty for a re-seller. As a matter of fact is was very common for bitmain to handle warranties for large re-sellers like zoomhash. At the time I never saw, accepted or signed any disclaimers regarding warranty being handled by the re-seller when a new unit shipped directly from bitmain. I understood and have known for years how this works with re-sellers sometimes. They receive a better discount to handle warranty. With this equipment they usually do not, or if they do, it is poor. Within a few weeks or less the first power supply failed. Knowing my way around electronics in general I troubleshot the unit to the Power Supply and THEN found out about ALL of the issues people were having with them. It was only after spending several weeks troubleshooting (or trying to) with Bitmain that they decided to tell me they did not honor the warranty of re-sellers. Regardless that the miner shipped directly from them to me in an unopened package. They did handle it, but it took ten tons of e-mails, calling, emailing paperwork, and obviously my dime on freight. The first run was crap and bitmain admitted it. It took almost two weeks to receive a replacement even though I was Johny on the spot with every piece of documentation. They claimed to have sent me a batch 2, but again, the same issues, and it failed miserably. This went on for approximately 90 days before they asked me to return the entire unit. There would be days upon days without a response. The third failure and I was done. I hooked up a 2000 with sidehacks b/o board, made my own cables with ring terminals, and have been running the unit ever since. I did pickup a batch 2 power supply a few months ago on my own dime just so I could sell the unit without having a different power supply configuration. I moved it to a friend's house this past weekend and told him about the issues, as well as telling him he should get it setup with a backup power supply.
By the way, it was after the S4 incident when Bitmain decided to publicly post that they do not honor the warranty of re-sellers. They should have negotiated lower discounts because they know their re-sellers are not going to offer warranty service of an appropriate caliber. I know there are some companies who are capable of doing so, but 99% do not stock, they drop-ship, or if they stock units, they do not stock parts.
This did not happen with just one S4, this happened with several until I stopped purchasing them. Sure some were second hand, but it was a power supply issue. The fans were coming apart for many people. Prelude actually gave some great advice how to keep the fans alive and it worked for me. The original ones are still running. If I'd followed the bitmain way, I would have been replacing them constantly. I sold every single S4 as fast as possible except for one and each had a full disclaimer of the issues I knew about.
Bitmain never owned up to their issues with me and even when I offered a considerable amount of money to simply trade it back for two S5 units they wouldn't answer. They didn't just say no, they didn't answer at all. I offered a great deal of coin, and even asked them to tell me what it would take. I always try to be more than fair in any business dealing. I am interested in long term business relationships with people I can trust. I am loyal. If I do venture outside of my normal vendors it is normally because they offer something I cannot get at my normal ones. Usually, it is a reference of one of my long time vendors to someone they know and respect.
After those experiences I did not purchase a miner form Bitmain until the S5+, and the only reason I did it with the S5+ is because they were literally the only game in town, and all of us had been waiting for months to see any new miners. My first S5+ arrived and had a fan which was DOA. The response from Bitmain China was that they would sell me a fan. What? Why is there a 90 day warranty? Sell me a fan? I ended up working with Yoshi to get a fan and out of my feeling that Yoshi was trying to help and did not agree with their policy I bought one direct from them just to show it isn't that I wanted anything free, I wanted warranty. I could have purchased the fan for much less with other sources, but I still proceeded. It is their policy. I was told this by China and Yoshi. A fan, even on a new miner, is not going to be covered. If so, it wouldn't be a reasonable amount of time because they want the community to buy those fans. Well, the community outside of china. China gets their warranty fans.
It is sad that if you want to mine using the most efficient ASIC chips available to a small home miner you must tolerate the poorest customer service I have ever experienced. We have a high bar set for customer service here in the US, especially at my company. We pride ourselves on never losing a customer. It happens, but it isn't because we don't do everything imaginable. We have replaced entire million dollar systems because the President or CEO had a bad vibe or feeling because something may have went wrong, or they perceived it as wrong at some point. (They normally have zero technical knowledge or even understands the issues.) You might say well that is a million dollar machine, or even a $170,000.00 USD system so big difference, but it isn't. The warranty costs are relative to the system pricing. We guarantee a technician onsite within 24 hours or less within the continental US and normally our times are much less. It happens as fast as we can get someone on a flight. Internationally we have an unwritten guarantee overall, but negotiate specific times based on the individuals location, but I've never seen it take longer than 48 hours, and again, normally much less.
I understand it takes shipping time, but even if we cannot expect a stock of parts in Denver shipped out to us next day air we should be able to expect a ground shipment at no charge like most companies will cover. I even offered to pay freight and extra "handling charges" and was simply ignored. It is a different mindset in China and Mexico for that matter. You may say I am being racist, but it isn't racist when you have worked with companies in those countries for years and have similar experiences across the board. You usually hear the same from most people who do quite a bit of business in those countries with multiple companies. Don't get me wrong, some people have worked with great companies in China and have zero complaints. I have had some great experiences, but they were very few. Please do not turn this into racism when there are obvious cultural differences. It is a geographic, cultural issue that has nothing to do with color and I am certainly not stating every company in china does X, or every company in Mexico does X, I am stating that in my personal experiences and those of hundreds of other business people I have had this conversation with over the years far long before I ever heard of bitcoin share those same experiences and views. To me, everyone's money is green. It takes a severe moral issue or a personal vision of a bad future relationship, employees being treated poorly, etc before I refuse anyone's money. It all spends the same in this context. However, bitmain has been on the lower side of the scale even in relative terms when they have such enormous potential. Look at how they hired dogie and then told so many of us he was not to be used for anything official, and they even told many of us to ignore the things he posted. He would then and still does today defend them to the core even when there is obvious proof to the contrary regarding a range of experiences by good forum members. There are many, many good people here on the forum who will say very little to nothing on this forum because they do not want to feel any backlash from bitmain. I do not think most of these people are scared, I think it is a pure business decision. They know the status quo and making something bad even worse is not worth them making a true public statement. Many have and I know will continue to discuss this with me privately because I do not repeat what I have been told and name names. That is their decision and I respect their privacy regardless of my own views. I want to see bitmain succeed while taking care of the issues we experience in a fair manner. At least on par with their peers in the vein of other businesses. It isn't that they should be as good as other bitcoin businesses. They should be setting the example and be as good or better than other businesses in general.
What about the compensation from batch 1? Many of us would have appreciated a token, even something smaller than what they stated they would do, even a coupon, but nadda. To my knowledge no one has received a penny and I would estimate much more than 90% received their units late with a very few receiving them before they would be owed compensation. Even some reviewers received units well after others like me had paid right away when the sale opened.
Bitmain is capable of building a good product and have done so. The S3+, the S7 overall, but the facts are available for anyone to peruse this forum and see. People know they will get much better support here. It is when they need parts that most people are in for a long term exchange.
Avalon is an option, but their pricing, lower hashrate, and not quite as good quoted efficiency with the new string design do not make for a better miner, on paper anyway. I have not found an Avalon unit for a reasonable price or I would have purchased 1, 5, or 10. Although I have not dug for one in a month. I hope that by now I could find one, but I decided that after my last batch 8 units arrive from bitmain I am again going into a holding pattern and stacking coin for a while. The January 20th pre order is not my style, and if I'd known the batch 1 pre-order was a true pre order as it turned out to be, I wouldn't have ordered when I did and wouldn't have lost the amount of coin I did. bitmain should do whatever it takes to provide prompt customer service. Every e-mail received by X time everyday should receive a response and they should have a toll free number with English speaking personnel who have the ability to approve an RMA.
Do not get me wrong, as I said I also commend them where it is due. Again, I feel fortunate my S7s are running, and I receive close to the advertised hashrate. I love the aluminum chassis, and before the batch 8 pennies saved my removing the additional headers from the control board they were doing a good service by having those options for people who do experience a controller failure. They are able to keep their units hashing while waiting through the arduous RMA process. Now that has been removed as an option.
It reminds me of many companies across the world including the US who pay their best talent just enough to keep them from getting another job. They realize these people have families, do not want to uproot their children and move, they make promises to these people of things to come SOON, but usually it is a tactic, and those promises are postponed or half filled. It fosters resentment among your most talented people. The smartest CEOs know that you reward your talent well. You push them to get out of the office many times, you force them to take vacations, and make them take a break from the 60, 70, 80+ hour work weeks because they are much more productive when their time is more limited and focused.
It is the long term treatment of your customers which defines how successful your business will be in a long term situation. When a significant amount of your user base would jump at the opportunities presented by a competitor things can turn around for you in a flash. Even if the customer knows much less and has zero experience with that competitor, they think I may as well give it a shot, as long as the product is on par, how much worse could the service be? There are hundreds of people purchasing miners from bitmain in that mind set. If / when Bitfury begins selling chips, if the other expected miner hits in January, or any number of companies who claim to have products begin delivering you better believe Bitmain will lose a huge amount of orders not because the S7 is a bad miner, people love their S7s, but because they want to give another company a try so they know if they can receive a better overall product.
Once again I want to say I know personally there are some good people at bitmain who do everything they can to help people like you and me. They try, and are simply limited by the policies put in place by Senior Leadership and the CEO. They have a severe customer relations issue and only the continuing control they gain through centralization of their pool, hashnest, and a pure lack of competition will allow them to continue when it could be the opposite. People would never even consider a different unit if they become comfortable with the Vendor they are currently using. People do not like change, they want to stay with what they know, it is human nature.
It would be awesome if bitmain actually had a forum representative who took some time everyday to discuss the most common concerns and communicated what they are doing to make things better. I fear they simply don't care. Price manipulation is another huge concern. People speculated the rise and fall many times had to do with the release or the act of not releasing new technology. Why not control the price by making sure no one can touch your mines efficiency? It isn't as though bitmain are selling to the public out of the good of their hearts. I understand they are in it to win it and make a profit, but I know for a fact you can make a great profit without many of the tactics employed. I have seen similar tactics used to grow an already healthy profit margin of 60% to over 500% when companies decided to employ similar models. It is the difference of a 5 million dollar bonus for a CEO and a 50 million dollar bonus. It is also a way to destroy your conscience and become a cold-blooded machine who lives a miserable life with plenty of money. You can make plenty of money and work with eyes wide open having a bounce in your step by treating people fairly. You do not need to be the richest man in the graveyard. You should aspire to be very comfortable, happy, and feel good about the choices you make.
The current difficulty increases show bitmain has either lost some of the control they had through 2015, or they no longer care about the increases against their own mines because they have been preparing for a long time and have the hashrate to justify these increases. Which do you think it is? Bitmain are not stupid in that regard and have long controlled or heavily influenced the increases. When you essentially control your customers through the lack of another choice, and at the same time treat so many, so poorly, the resentment continues to build. I for one welcome a healthy competition in the mining scene. We need a price war for high end miners. We need Spondoolies to release single SP50 units. (I have no illusions it will happen with SPtech any longer, but a company who cannot be bought to collusion must step up.) We need Avalon to do something to impact bitmain's control in a big way.
When the competition comes, and it will happen, believe it, and when it does come, no one should be surprised when bitmain drops their pricing to the floor to maintain that control. This is how monopolies maintain control over an industry.
Once that situation arises it is the only thing they have to offer because customer service is not a selling point they can mention and the people in the room maintain a straight face.
