My Beef with BFL (Constructive Criticism Only)

[Dalkore]

We have been giving BFL a hard time.  


I want to explain my beef.   My beef is:

1.  Lack of communication and customer service that is easily remedied.

2.  When already dealing with bad PR, they hire a fucking troll (sorry Josh but it is true)

3.  When coming out with a gamechanging product (ASIC) they hire a pool operator (sorry Josh but you should choose one)

4.  Makes an announcement well before BFL knew they would deliver ON PURPOSE to chill competion and even before they were consistently shipping FPGA.*  

*Speculation: This tells us that they got a sweet deal on highend chips and they didnt have supply beyond a certain number.  You could of been honest and that would of let people know what to expect.  If I am wrong then why can I not order a FPGA right now and have it in a few days?


With that said, BFL maybe just set their ambitions too high when Avalon grabbed the low hanging fruit and the experience to shoot a lot higher.
At this point we should just tone down the same hateful arguements because what is going to happen, will happen and instead we should be seeing if we can find opportunites.

Comments and Constructive Grievances, please post below.


Dalkore

[Dalkore]

Reserved

[Frankie Delaney]

1. They didn't order engineering samples of the chips 9 months ago.
2. They sacrificed 125 customer ordered singles to "test" chips 3 days early, while they still haven't actually been able to test the chips
3. They constantly gave short term targets knowing full well they had no chance to make them
4. Their main PR mouthpiece snaps on customers and calls them "cocksucker"
5. They Shit talk the competition who actually has hardware in customers hands, and says "there is no viable competition"
6. They are funding their operation with customer pre-order money.
7. They are flying people around with customer pre-order money
8. They are spending customer pre-order money on advertising
9. All of their ads still say "order now" instead of "pre-order now"
10. Their site misleads new customers into thinking they are near shipping, and a new order would be filled in a reasonable amount of time.
11. Their site and manner relating to refunds suggests that once(if) they ship a product, they will refuse refunds on pre-ordered products, regaurdless of the time it takes to deliver.
12. Their COO is taking a significant portion(10%+) of the first batch of chips for himself. His interests are completely at odds with customers who's money he has held for 9 months.
13. They have "22 employees", yet we only see 3 updates per week, and it takes 10 days to process a refund.

Am i doing this right?

[01BTC10]

PR is the worst in the industry. Josh actually don't know what PR means.
Unfair business practice to weed-out competition.

That's all. 

[jermwerty]

12. Their COO is taking a significant portion(10%+) of the first batch of chips for himself. His interests are completely at odds with customers who's money he has held for 9 months.

Wow I didn't realize this.  Go Team Avalon!  Contrast:

"Fun fact: none of the Avalon team have their own mining units (outside of test units)."

[crazyates]

12. Their COO is taking a significant portion(10%+) of the first batch of chips for himself. His interests are completely at odds with customers who's money he has held for 9 months.

Wow I didn't realize this.  Go Team Avalon!  Contrast:

"Fun fact: none of the Avalon team have their own mining units (outside of test units)."

This is simply not true. Yes, Josh is receiving several batch 1 units, but he is not taking these units for his own personal profit, nor is he getting any special place in line. Back before Josh started working for BFL, he started an IPO that bought several BFL pre-orders. These are the units that people keep referring to, but it is extremely twisted point of view.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=89902.0

Side note: You wanna cheer for Avalon, because they're so fair and not taking any mining hardware for themselves? Well why would they have to mine when they could sell you a $1500 unit for $6600 (88BTC). A $1500 unit should cost 20BTC, so where are those extra 68BTC going?

[Rodyland]

Side note: You wanna cheer for Avalon, because they're so fair and not taking any mining hardware for themselves? Well why would they have to mine when they could sell you a $1500 unit for $6600 (88BTC). A $1500 unit should cost 20BTC, so where are those extra 68BTC going?

It's called profit.  It's what people do when they sell stuff.  If you don't like it, don't buy it - free market at work.

[relm9]

They've said the funds will be used for development of their next-generation ASIC.

[Bogart]

23: They are not committing enough engineering resources to the project.  While they hold our millions in funds, their lead engineer Nasser is still living half a world away in France, working remotely for BFL nights and weekends while holding a day job at a bank.  Srsly, WTF?

[Entropy-uc]

They have accepted, and continue to accept an unlimited number of pre-orders.  To the tune of 10s of millions of dollars I expect.

It is one thing to take a limited number of pre-orders to help with non-recurring engineering costs.  If that is done, and you are honest with those early customers about the risks of failure and the consequences to them if you are unsuccessful it could be a reasonable risk sharing mechanism.  Taking an unlimited amount of money in advance is profoundly suspicious.  If they never deliver will Josh refund the salary and business expenses he has collected from unwitting dupes?

Continuing to take orders now, after failing to meet dozens of milestones, without disclosing the size of the order backlog, without any forecast of time to delivery from payment is simply wrong.  

Even if the whole thing isn't an intentional scam, it has become one now.  One more round of Avalon deliveries and BFL investors are unlikely to ever recover what they paid in BTC.

[Syke]

Continuing to take orders now, after failing to meet dozens of milestones, without disclosing the size of the order backlog, without any forecast of time to delivery from payment is simply wrong.

Oh, they're forecasting delivery all right.

https://forums.butterflylabs.com/pre-sales-questions/1084-if-i-order-now-when-will-i-get-my-order.html

The currently estimated shipping time frame if you were to order today is the end of April or Beginning of May.

Or the order page:

https://products.butterflylabs.com/homepage/60gh-bitcoin-miner.html

delivery may take 2 months or more after order.

There's no way an order placed now will be delivered in April or May or in 2 months.

[Entropy-uc]

Continuing to take orders now, after failing to meet dozens of milestones, without disclosing the size of the order backlog, without any forecast of time to delivery from payment is simply wrong.

Oh, they're forecasting delivery all right.

https://forums.butterflylabs.com/pre-sales-questions/1084-if-i-order-now-when-will-i-get-my-order.html

The currently estimated shipping time frame if you were to order today is the end of April or Beginning of May.

Or the order page:

https://products.butterflylabs.com/homepage/60gh-bitcoin-miner.html

delivery may take 2 months or more after order.

There's no way an order placed now will be delivered in April or May or in 2 months.

This is much worse than I thought.

If they started shipping today, I doubt that orders placed yesterday would be fulfilled before October.

Every post and ad on this forum should include this disclaimer:

"Warning: BFL has NEVER delivered to a customer on the date they promised when they took their customer's money.  It is reasonable to assume they never will."

hmm.... what is the current bid for ad space here?  Anybody willing to help me buy an ad slot?

EDIT:  Bid 10BTC for 1 ad slot.  If you want to chip in I will use it to bid higher.  PM me.  Note that I will only use further Bitcoin pledged for this ad to either a) Force Josh to bid higher for all ad slots to bump the ad or b) make a bid in the next round for the same ad.

Anyone who can make a nice HTML format for the ad, or improve the text is welcome to do so!

[PuertoLibre]

I am pretty sure a resounding yes would follow your question.

[smoothie]

12. Their COO is taking a significant portion(10%+) of the first batch of chips for himself. His interests are completely at odds with customers who's money he has held for 9 months.

Wow I didn't realize this.  Go Team Avalon!  Contrast:

"Fun fact: none of the Avalon team have their own mining units (outside of test units)."

This is simply not true. Yes, Josh is receiving several batch 1 units, but he is not taking these units for his own personal profit, nor is he getting any special place in line. Back before Josh started working for BFL, he started an IPO that bought several BFL pre-orders. These are the units that people keep referring to, but it is extremely twisted point of view.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=89902.0

Side note: You wanna cheer for Avalon, because they're so fair and not taking any mining hardware for themselves? Well why would they have to mine when they could sell you a $1500 unit for $6600 (88BTC). A $1500 unit should cost 20BTC, so where are those extra 68BTC going?

How many BTCs were the first BATCH of BFL orders going for? 200btc? 300btc?....and that is just singles. lol 

[smoothie]

They have accepted, and continue to accept an unlimited number of pre-orders.  To the tune of 10s of millions of dollars I expect.

It is one thing to take a limited number of pre-orders to help with non-recurring engineering costs.  If that is done, and you are honest with those early customers about the risks of failure and the consequences to them if you are unsuccessful it could be a reasonable risk sharing mechanism.  Taking an unlimited amount of money in advance is profoundly suspicious.  If they never deliver will Josh refund the salary and business expenses he has collected from unwitting dupes?

Continuing to take orders now, after failing to meet dozens of milestones, without disclosing the size of the order backlog, without any forecast of time to delivery from payment is simply wrong.  

Even if the whole thing isn't an intentional scam, it has become one now.  One more round of Avalon deliveries and BFL investors are unlikely to ever recover what they paid in BTC.

This ^.

I'm surprised that this forum (THEYMOS yes you or other mods) have not labeled BFL, Inaba, etc as scammers. Since when does BFL get a free pass when it comes to not meeting promised deadlines? Pirate was given 3 weeks and BFL is given 5 months? Something isn't right here.

BFL needs to be disallowed to advertise on this forum their BULLSHIT ads which are misleading.

This whole ordeal with BFL feels a lot like PirateAt40 but only 10 times bigger.

Watch out guys...I think the tsunami is on its way. You may not have felt the earthquake but the result is on its way.

Get your popcorn ready for a ton of shit to start flying should BFL continually delay or even run with the funds.

 

[zedicus]

They are inexcusable .. they just hosed down then entire BFL brand with fecal matter.. its gonna a hard road of return and gripes and cancellations and spitting, cursing and possibly a vacation to an undisclosed location!

to be honest the biggest part is the "dialog"


The silence breeds a certain kind of doubt!! When i say breed! Terrible ideas start forming in people head and it gets to riot level and BFL splurts out a lie and the anxiety gets worse, rinse and repeat every month and ... (ouch) ..  

 Edit: and too be quite frank the adverts everywhere.. not just here but everywhere is just a spit in the face of all the investors (cough*)customers!

[Cablez]

The adverts really make me wonder just how much money they are pissing away each month that they need that level of new money.  Its almost like a ponzi.

[marra]

The adverts really make me wonder just how much money they are pissing away each month that they need that level of new money.  Its almost like a ponzi.

either a ponzi or just digging into some quasi martingale bet...

[gill83]

They have accepted, and continue to accept an unlimited number of pre-orders.  To the tune of 10s of millions of dollars I expect.

It is one thing to take a limited number of pre-orders to help with non-recurring engineering costs.  If that is done, and you are honest with those early customers about the risks of failure and the consequences to them if you are unsuccessful it could be a reasonable risk sharing mechanism.  Taking an unlimited amount of money in advance is profoundly suspicious.  If they never deliver will Josh refund the salary and business expenses he has collected from unwitting dupes?

Continuing to take orders now, after failing to meet dozens of milestones, without disclosing the size of the order backlog, without any forecast of time to delivery from payment is simply wrong.  

Even if the whole thing isn't an intentional scam, it has become one now.  One more round of Avalon deliveries and BFL investors are unlikely to ever recover what they paid in BTC.

This ^.

I'm surprised that this forum (THEYMOS yes you or other mods) have not labeled BFL, Inaba, etc as scammers. Since when does BFL get a free pass when it comes to not meeting promised deadlines? Pirate was given 3 weeks and BFL is given 5 months? Something isn't right here.

BFL needs to be disallowed to advertise on this forum their BULLSHIT ads which are misleading.

This whole ordeal with BFL feels a lot like PirateAt40 but only 10 times bigger.

Watch out guys...I think the tsunami is on its way. You may not have felt the earthquake but the result is on its way.

Get your popcorn ready for a ton of shit to start flying should BFL continually delay or even run with the funds.

 

Of course, they are trying to squeeze every last bit. A lot of people have started calling them out in the last few days, and I see their activity here on the forum has decreased. I think they are aware that they have had the most of it, and are not gonna get any more... and are already packing their bags right now.

[Korbman]

Off topic: I like how this thread went to shit after, like, 4 posts. Though I suppose that's to be expected..

On topic:
I have no doubt that they're working on developing some "top tier" tech (compared to everything else coming / already out). My biggest qualms come from the blatant dispersion of misinformation and lack of solid evidence.

After everything that we've seen so far and the difficulties BFL has run into, there's no way they would have actually shipped in 2012..and my guess is that they very well knew that. Essentially they create intricate company timelines as to how everything will proceed, but consistently fail to take Murphy's Law into account during it all.

Their general incompetence was pretty clear when they put Josh in charge of PR. If you're representing a company and trying to create positive public relations, there's absolutely no reason to go about trolling. A PR person should be able to let insults roll off, like "water on a duck's back". Simple as that.