New BFL update. 25 February 2013.

[Korbman]

There's information missing or information being fabricated.

This is BFL we're talking about, so both

[Xian01]

This is BFL we're talking about, so both

 I sort-of feel bad for Josh. I can understand being in his position; Someone at the mercy of forces beyond his control.

 However, he is quickly becoming the spokesperson for "Bullshit Fabrication Laboratories" and is one bad bender away from pulling a full on Tom and imploding all over the forums.

 Josh/Inaba, as your customer, I advise you to rent a very fast car with no top. And you'll need the cocaine. Tape recorder for special music. Acapulco shirts. Get the hell out of Kansas for at least 48 hours.

 Let this shit with the bump fac resolve itself. Shit happens. But chill the fuck out man.

[crazyates]

I sort-of feel bad for Josh. I can understand being in his position; Someone at the mercy of forces beyond his control.

 However, he is quickly becoming the spokesperson for "Bullshit Fabrication Laboratories" and is one bad bender away from pulling a full on Tom and imploding all over the forums.

 Josh/Inaba, as your customer, I advise you to rent a very fast car with no top. And you'll need the cocaine. Tape recorder for special music. Acapulco shirts. Get the hell out of Kansas for at least 48 hours.

 Let this shit with the bump fac resolve itself. Shit happens. But chill the fuck out man.

This is the worst advise ever. Running away from your problems don't make them go away or magically "resolve themselves".

[Phinnaeus Gage]

I sort-of feel bad for Josh. I can understand being in his position; Someone at the mercy of forces beyond his control.

 However, he is quickly becoming the spokesperson for "Bullshit Fabrication Laboratories" and is one bad bender away from pulling a full on Tom and imploding all over the forums.

 Josh/Inaba, as your customer, I advise you to rent a very fast car with no top. And you'll need the cocaine. Tape recorder for special music. Acapulco shirts. Get the hell out of Kansas for at least 48 hours.

 Let this shit with the bump fac resolve itself. Shit happens. But chill the fuck out man.

This is the worst advise ever. Running away from your problems don't make them go away or magically "resolve themselves".

Given the current weather conditions in KC, chilling with his buddies would be a better suggestion.



The image above depicts an actual recent outing in KC. Them boys there are a weird lot.

[Miner99er]

Itchy trigger finger has me wanting to buy 7970's cause the damn price is so high...

What's another month... and another month... and anther month.

*Watches Avalon get shipped*

*watches ASICMiner get built*

Hope to get it by my birthday... maybe Christmas.... 2014.

[davecoin]

Itchy trigger finger has me wanting to buy 7970's cause the damn price is so high...

What's another month... and another month... and anther month.

*Watches Avalon get shipped*

*watches ASICMiner get built*

Hope to get it by my birthday... maybe Christmas.... 2014.

Do it! Mine, then resell or have a sweet gaming rig!

[repentance]

Regardless of what technical issues BFL might be having, there's not really any excuse for the administrative side of their business not being in order.  They should be able to provide people with the dimensions and weight of the ready to ship units and they should have their customer management system sorted out (this should have been done long ago).  

Making people wait for non-technical information makes them look as incompetent at managing the administrative side of their business as they've seemed at managing the technical side and they can't play the "but this is really hard" card when it comes to releasing basic information like weight and dimensions and having their customer management database in order.

Oh, and "the ASIC team" is a contractor in California.

The ASIC team is a third party we have contracted with to do the design and routing on the chip itself, they are located in California.

https://forums.butterflylabs.com/bfl-forum-miscellaneous/1054-chip-testing.html#post16189

[Miner99er]

Itchy trigger finger has me wanting to buy 7970's cause the damn price is so high...

What's another month... and another month... and anther month.

*Watches Avalon get shipped*

*watches ASICMiner get built*

Hope to get it by my birthday... maybe Christmas.... 2014.

Do it! Mine, then resell or have a sweet gaming rig!

Already have a pair of 7970's in my rig... 6970 on GF's rig... 5850 in my sons Rig and another in my media box...

and 24 other assorted 5k Radeons in the shop.

[firefop]

If the bumping facility really has the chips bumped and ready for testing by Friday (as they imply for the projected start of deliveries is March 9th) then there is really no need to burn, i.e. destroy 1 whole wafer. 1.000 chips less for the 1st month pre-orders....

I think there point is that there's no benefit in waiting until all of the wafers are bumped - they're going to have to destroy a wafer in order to test unpackaged chips so they might as well destroy the first bumped wafer now as wait until the end of the week.  The alternative is waiting until they have some packaged chips to test.

If the chips test OK then being able to accelerate the delivery of the other 69,000 chips might be worth the sacrifice - but early chip delivery isn't going to worth a damn unless they get the rest of their production processes streamlined in a hurry.  If they can't get 6,000 chips bumped, packaged, placed on boards, assembled into units and shipped, how the hell are they going to manage turning their 63,000 bulk order into working units and getting them to customers before hell freezes over?

They are accelerating by 1 week at the most according to their latest timeline.... seeing as the project is already 4 months delayed I really don't see the benefit in destroying 1000 chips

Especially not since those 1000 chips could go towards 1st month orders. They are now sacrificing 1st month orders to get later orders filled earlier. As everyone has already paid for their order...and the money is already in the bank for them, they are simply showing a lot of disregard for their early believers.... IMO

Not really, if they're holding the 2nd batch for the top 5 layers... that means there probably isn't a 3rd batch right now. What would you rather have? a 1/6th reduction in the size of the first batch... followed by the immediate completion of the second batch... with no delay between processing after that followed by them being able to grow enough to cover all orders...

Or

wait 2 weeks for all 6 to come out of bumping, dicing, packaging and then they are finally able to test... delaying the second batch being grown, and the ordering of batch 3...

imo the point of this who process is to get the NRE handled and the processes in place - then they can reasonably project a real timeline from order to shipped. That's the really important thing for BFL from a product delivery point of view. Because I promise you, anyone who hasn't handed of their money for pre-orders isn't going to until someone has a working unit in hand and they have a good idea about how long it will take to fill the order.

[creativex]

They're bumping orders placed at least EIGHT months ago from the first batch to the second batch with a questionable decision and as we already know BFL can generate delays from nowhere so there's no guarantee that those sacrifices will yield any streamlining going forward at all.

[repentance]

They're bumping orders placed at least EIGHT months ago from the first batch to the second batch with a questionable decision and as we already know BFL can generate delays from nowhere so there's no guarantee that those sacrifices will yield any streamlining going forward at all.

While this is true, they're screwed if "Batch 3" people decide to cancel their pre-orders now and wait until BFL's delivery schedule for units made from the bulk order chips is more certain.  If they can't accelerate their delivery schedule, then they risk their only guaranteed future sales being those from Batch 1 and Batch 2 who place further orders to get their "discount" (and who'll have to wait months to receive those units).  Batch 1 and Batch 2 may not even be profitable for BFL at all, much less where they stand to make the bulk of their profits.

People will start deciding to hang onto their money until someone can deliver in less than a month rather than continuing the "order an ASIC, any ASIC" frenzy because they're starting to realise that low end units (< 60 GH) in particular probably aren't going to be especially profitable if they're not delivered until the second half of this year.  The network isn't standing still while BFL gets its shit together.

It's understandable that Batch 1 customers are pissed off at seeing every advantage they thought they'd have slip away, but from a purely business stand-point BFL needs to worry about its ability to minimise the amount of people cancelling later orders and its ability to attract new orders - especially if there's any possibility there'll be new vendors entering the market in Q3.

Has Josh posted the picture of the wafer yet?  He said yesterday that he'd do it "tomorrow".

[Xian01]

Bullshit Fabrication continues.

"The ASIC team has promised me pictures of the wafer tomorrow, Tuesday the 26th. As soon as I get those, I will be posting them."

26th has come and gone with no update.

[DutchBrat]

Bullshit Fabrication continues.

"The ASIC team has promised me pictures of the wafer tomorrow, Tuesday the 26th. As soon as I get those, I will be posting them."

26th has come and gone with no update.

Maybe they are waiting for a picture of the burning wafer 

[repentance]

Bullshit Fabrication continues.

"The ASIC team has promised me pictures of the wafer tomorrow, Tuesday the 26th. As soon as I get those, I will be posting them."

26th has come and gone with no update.

Josh should probably start saying "mañana" given how often "tomorrow" turns out to be at least a week later than estimated.

[creativex]

Bullshit Fabrication continues.

"The ASIC team has promised me pictures of the wafer tomorrow, Tuesday the 26th. As soon as I get those, I will be posting them."

26th has come and gone with no update.

Josh should probably start saying "mañana" "unemployment sucks" given how often "tomorrow" turns out to be at least a week later than estimated.

FTFY

[Cluster2k]

Well, I want to order more units from BFL but feel committing money now when any delivery at all is still not certain doesn't seem prudent.  I will only consider further orders once I receive my existing orders from September.

[PuertoLibre]

It appears that some of the rumors may be true, some requests for refund are indeed being delayed or are ignored for a lengthy period of time.



Source Link: https://forums.butterflylabs.com/pre-sales-questions/1127-cancelling-my-order.html
https://forums.butterflylabs.com/pre-sales-questions/1166-why-hell-your-e-mails-skype-phone-dead-customers-why.html

[repentance]

It appears that some of the rumors may be true, some requests for refund are indeed being delayed or are ignored for a lengthy period of time.



Source Link: https://forums.butterflylabs.com/pre-sales-questions/1127-cancelling-my-order.html
https://forums.butterflylabs.com/pre-sales-questions/1166-why-hell-your-e-mails-skype-phone-dead-customers-why.html

Hmmmm.  That's very open-ended.  Even though they never enforced the old policy, at least it stated that orders were considered non-refundable up until delivery or 1 January, whichever came first.

I wonder whether it's even legal to accept pre-order money on a non-refundable basis when you don't have either a product or a delivery timeline.  Who defines "fail to perform"?  

I'd be copying this response from BFL to whatever government department oversees consumer protection in Missouri, because I suspect they're on very thin legal ice here.

You generally can't unilaterally change the terms of a contract.  If this is their new policy, then they need to let all of their customers know and give them a chance to opt out before implementing it.

If I was one of those people planning to cancel in April or later, I'd be concerned about this development.

[PuertoLibre]

Composite picture of Test Chips:



 Full Size: http://i48.tinypic.com/142g21g.png

[crazyates]

It appears that some of the rumors may be true, some requests for refund are indeed being delayed or are ignored for a lengthy period of time.

[img]http://i50.tinypic.com/2w1zl6q.png[/ img]

Source Link: https://forums.butterflylabs.com/pre-sales-questions/1127-cancelling-my-order.html
https://forums.butterflylabs.com/pre-sales-questions/1166-why-hell-your-e-mails-skype-phone-dead-customers-why.html

Is it your job to stalk the BFL forums?

I sent their Cust Support an email about an issues (not a refund, however), and it took them 12 days to get back to me. I would assume that a refund would take about the same amount of time, so I don't consider this to be a purposeful delay. You can calm down on the OMG BFL ISN"T REFUNDING ORDERS for a lil bit.