My Beef with BFL (Constructive Criticism Only)

[Zeeks]

I almost ordered from them but the same thing which scares me off from buying some videogames at release scared me off from ordering from BFL.

Excessive advertising.

When a company advertises so hard that you see their ads constantly in the relevant places (in this case here on bitcointalk in the adbox and sigs) while also pushing themselves extra hard through their PR outlet and dissing competitors (in this case Josh) and topped off with a wave of fanboy forum shills... it's a pretty good indication that something is very wrong. Something went bad on the back end where we can't see so they step up advertising, step up promises, make it appear as if everything is at 200% awesomeness. Then deliver garbage or in this case deliver a year or more late in a situation where delivering late is almost as bad as not delivering at all.

They get rewarded for their failing though because they get the money first, that's why they haven't stopped advertising and still make it sound like if you order now you get your unit in a couple months (WHICH IS IMPOSSIBLE, they are plainly lying about this). They get the money now and that's it, they got what they wanted while customers may not even get their units this year.

Just going by what got people scammer tags on here in the past it's sort of amazing that the BFL accounts don't have them. They are plainly lying about their shipping and have been every time they give us a shipping date estimate, we know this now because we know they never had any chips until just recently. They lied, they even gave us the evidence that they had been lying all along. BFL is obviously just stringing things along as far as they can go, constantly promising "just a couple more weeks, seriously guys!" for MONTHS now to wring as much money out of this community as possible.

[tvbcof]

...
Just going by what got people scammer tags on here in the past it's sort of amazing that the BFL accounts don't have them. They are plainly lying about their shipping and have been every time they give us a shipping date estimate, we know this now because we know they never had any chips until just recently. They lied, they even gave us the evidence that they had been lying all along.

Didn't they say they actually had chips way back in Oct or Nov, and they worked, but they just want to make them a little better for the good of the customers and all that?  I thought they were claiming functionality, but some clock timing issues kept the chips from scaling to their potential.

To this day I have seen nothing which would make me know that they have chips.  I personally would be surprised if they have anything of the sort or any hope of having them (unless they bought some Avalons.)  But then I have not paid close attention nor do I care that much, and I give absolutely zero credence to anything they say or take pictures of and so on.  Nothing I have seen invalidates the hypothesis that these guys are a total scam, and if that were the case they would naturally be focusing hard on a variety of tricks to make it look like they were legit.

[telemaco]

Are they refunding when asked?

[Red_Evil]

Actually Yes older Order ... Newer are without refund see New Terms

[jspielberg]

They refunded me on Monday without any issues... but I was only in line for two weeks.

I paid in BTC (~16 BTC) and got back the equivalent purchase price in USD (~680), and felt that was fair.  With the appreciation of BTC, I wasn't expecting them to give back BTC.  It took 1 day for them to paypal me, and I chalked it up as a cheap learning experience...

On the other hand, selling 1/2 my BTC stake from 2010 in the mid forties was not a cheap mistake... so the BFL seems like small potatoes to me at the time.

Personally I would get out while you can, but if I had faith in them I wouldn't be awaiting an avalon.

[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.

Ugh, I keep seeing this pseudolibertarian bullshit. Look, it is not a free market. It is a monopoly. The two concepts are opposites.

Monopoly: it's my way or the highway.
Free market: people can buy similar products elsewhere.

Monopolies are generally bad, though that need not necessarily mean the monopolist is bad. As in this case, Avalon is the monopoly because they got their shit together and bASIC and (so far) BFL haven't, not because of any anticompetitive practices from Avalon (ironically, BFL tried the anticompetitive shit).

It's neither pseudoliberterian, nor bullshit. 

A monopoly is not the opposite of a free market.  A monopoly is one possible outcome of a free market. A free market does not guarantee that you can buy a similar product elsewhere.  A free market guarantees that, if you don't like the product on offer, and you have the necessary capital, then you can start making the product that you want to buy, and hope that others agree with you.

In a market with high barriers to entry, a monopoly can quite easily occur naturally, through no nefarious means or back-door dealings.  And in a free market, if the monopolist abuses their position enough, then the capital necessary to challenge the monopoly will eventually come together to do so.

Now if Avalon's "abuse" isn't enough to encourage others to get their shit together, I don't know what is (see my thread here https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=156157).  And believe me, I hope it is.

As you say, it was not Avalon that aspired to monopoly, it was all their competitors that managed to completely drop the ball.  But the ability to drop the ball and disappear in a cloud of angry creditors is as much a part of the free market as is healthy competition.  We just had a perfect storm of one competent company and several incompetents, added with a little of BFL's FUD to possibly scare away other potential competitors. 

Nobody said the free market was perfect, and for sure nobody said it was perfect every minute of every day.  But you can hardly argue that it produces the best overall outcomes over time.  We just happen to be in one of the suboptimal regions right now (hopefully temporarily), and I reject outright your assertion that what has come before this day is not the result of the (imperfect) free market at work.

[Bogart]

...
Just going by what got people scammer tags on here in the past it's sort of amazing that the BFL accounts don't have them. They are plainly lying about their shipping and have been every time they give us a shipping date estimate, we know this now because we know they never had any chips until just recently. They lied, they even gave us the evidence that they had been lying all along.

Didn't they say they actually had chips way back in Oct or Nov, and they worked, but they just want to make them a little better for the good of the customers and all that?  I thought they were claiming functionality, but some clock timing issues kept the chips from scaling to their potential.

Twice actually.  First they supposedly had chips in October, but they were fail because they had a "diffraction issue".  Apparently we're to believe that they were completely unaware of the need to apply OPC to the masksets.

Then they supposedly had another round of chips in December.  The ones with the "clock buffer issues", still in QFN packaging.

[wtfvanity]

Didn't they say they actually had chips way back in Oct or Nov, and they worked, but they just want to make them a little better for the good of the customers and all that?  I thought they were claiming functionality, but some clock timing issues kept the chips from scaling to their potential.

Twice actually.  First they supposedly had chips in October, but they were fail because they had a "diffraction issue".  Apparently we're to believe that they were completely unaware of the need to apply OPC to the masksets.

Then they supposedly had another round of chips in December.  The ones with the "clock buffer issues", still in QFN packaging.
[/quote]

But no one ever saw the first chips. They had clock buffer issues, heat dissipation problems. But again, no one ever saw them. They never proved they could hash anything with the imaginary chips.

Now, they have new chips. Pictures of them even. Shiny. Someone says that they are stable to a specific Mhz. However, in their test rig, they get nothing.

Here is my conclusion on that, is that the chips are bad. I get multi layered boards made from a local shop in 24 hours. In their previous weeks now of silence since they have had chips in their hands, if they only made one board per day and tested that, they could have tested more than a dozen boards. But with how much money is in this, they should be testing several revisions a day.

They obviously have no idea what they are doing, and they have nothing to show for it. It would take all of 5 minutes for someone from BFL to give an update on any of the actual progress. But it's bad news, so they don't. It's better to take some heat for the silence than it is to freak everyone out that their chips simply do not work.

EDIT: Need to add some more.

If BFL had a single working test machine, they would have it hooked up somewhere with videos and pictures and everyone on the planet would know. They would hire more staff to accept all of the preorders that would start flowing in at raised prices.

They have nothing.

[regular]

at least they haven't staged anything yet.  It'd be easy for them to film a small box of fans with lights on, and stash an underclocked Avalon running at 60 gh/s and claim to have a working SC single.

[Minor Miner]

at least they haven't staged anything yet.  It'd be easy for them to film a small box of fans with lights on, and stash an underclocked Avalon running at 60 gh/s and claim to have a working SC single.

That is your perception.   I would argue they have staged EVERYTHING.   No company in the world would CONTINUE to collect "prepayments" for machines they have failed to deliver on and do not have the capacity to even know WHY they cannot make a PROTOTYPE work.    Ask yourself the question I asked.   Could you go to ANY VC in nyc or the valley with a convicted felon and a software tweaker who has a judgement against him for stealing sat TV and ask them for 20MM to build a hardware device that neither person even understands?    Josh did not even understand when someone told him what was wrong with his photos.   Instead he did what every con man has done through history, attack the person that is pulling back the curtain.
I would suggest you people that have pre-orders with BFL contact the government NOW.   If you wait, your money will be zero.   (and that zero can be given in either bitcoins or the fiat you paid in).

[Humanxlemming]

It is a scam they are offering large amounts of money for something that costs little to nothing.

[wtfvanity]

at least they haven't staged anything yet.  It'd be easy for them to film a small box of fans with lights on, and stash an underclocked Avalon running at 60 gh/s and claim to have a working SC single.

That is your perception.   I would argue they have staged EVERYTHING.   No company in the world would CONTINUE to collect "prepayments" for machines they have failed to deliver on and do not have the capacity to even know WHY they cannot make a PROTOTYPE work.    Ask yourself the question I asked.   Could you go to ANY VC in nyc or the valley with a convicted felon and a software tweaker who has a judgement against him for stealing sat TV and ask them for 20MM to build a hardware device that neither person even understands?    Josh did not even understand when someone told him what was wrong with his photos.   Instead he did what every con man has done through history, attack the person that is pulling back the curtain.
I would suggest you people that have pre-orders with BFL contact the government NOW.   If you wait, your money will be zero.   (and that zero can be given in either bitcoins or the fiat you paid in).

When I asked who has contacted the government, the pitch forks came out after me.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=153084.0

[supermine]

Everyone is in this for money of some sort.   We all want it to spread and work but greed is also driving miners, not altruism.    So, I do not know why you hate BFL so much.   I LOVE THEM.   They take (and continue to take) tens of millions of dollars from suckers and people who are too blind from greed, to put one plus one together.   What you say Inaba or Josh or whatever you wish to call yourself?   Would you invest 20 Million dollars in a company run by a person that is a CONVICTED FELON and cannot leave the state of MO and seconded by a mouthpiece with a third rate education that JUST "by coincidence" goes by the same name (and lives in the same state) as a sorry assed loser that was stealing from directTV?   Come on, explain this to me.   You think Sequoia or Benchmark would finance losers like that?

Well, you all did.   And I am laughing my ass off at you all.   Thanks for keeping the difficulty low for me and all the people with half a brain that can use google to do a background search on people before giving them the equivalent of "venture capital".

There is a saying "pigs feed, but hogs get slaughtered".   you all have financed some pigs that have now become hogs by continuing to take more and more money.   what are you going to do about it?   Nothing?   I thought so.   you got what you deserved.  you all bought a lottery ticket from the dude on the corner......    ironic isn't it?

Please provide proove. I'm sure everyone here would appreciate it.

[k9quaint]

Everyone is in this for money of some sort.   We all want it to spread and work but greed is also driving miners, not altruism.    So, I do not know why you hate BFL so much.   I LOVE THEM.   They take (and continue to take) tens of millions of dollars from suckers and people who are too blind from greed, to put one plus one together.   What you say Inaba or Josh or whatever you wish to call yourself?   Would you invest 20 Million dollars in a company run by a person that is a CONVICTED FELON and cannot leave the state of MO and seconded by a mouthpiece with a third rate education that JUST "by coincidence" goes by the same name (and lives in the same state) as a sorry assed loser that was stealing from directTV?   Come on, explain this to me.   You think Sequoia or Benchmark would finance losers like that?

Well, you all did.   And I am laughing my ass off at you all.   Thanks for keeping the difficulty low for me and all the people with half a brain that can use google to do a background search on people before giving them the equivalent of "venture capital".

There is a saying "pigs feed, but hogs get slaughtered".   you all have financed some pigs that have now become hogs by continuing to take more and more money.   what are you going to do about it?   Nothing?   I thought so.   you got what you deserved.  you all bought a lottery ticket from the dude on the corner......    ironic isn't it?

Please provide Proove to your Arguments.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=110805.0

There is also extensive discussion of this at www.lmgtfy.com.

[tvbcof]

...
When I asked who has contacted the government, the pitch forks came out after me.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=153084.0

I remember when ~bitcoinnv mentioned BFL to some govt agency as an out-of-band sidenote to his ~pirateat40 scam investigation.  Now that brought out the pitchforks.  ~inaba himself went completely ape, but there was widespread scorn from all corners including, iirc, several persons who are linked to bitcointalk.org.

To bad my tax dollars didn't go to work against BFL back at that time (around half a year ago I believe) since it would have saved a lot of noobs a lot of tears and saved Bitcoin itself yet another black eye.

[wtfvanity]

...
When I asked who has contacted the government, the pitch forks came out after me.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=153084.0

I remember when ~bitcoinnv mentioned BFL to some govt agency as an out-of-band sidenote to his ~pirateat40 scam investigation.  Now that brought out the pitchforks.  ~inaba himself went completely ape, but there was widespread scorn from all corners including, iirc, several persons who are linked to bitcointalk.org.

To bad my tax dollars didn't go to work against BFL back at that time (around half a year ago I believe) since it would have saved a lot of noobs a lot of tears and saved Bitcoin itself yet another black eye.

Yeah, he was the first reply in my thread and long before I was just asking for info about who had or hadn't. It's been mentioned in this thread, wondering why BFL has such a golden ticket to do whatever they want to on bitcointalk. Because they are paying lots in advertising fees?

[Minor Miner]

Everyone is in this for money of some sort.   We all want it to spread and work but greed is also driving miners, not altruism.    So, I do not know why you hate BFL so much.   I LOVE THEM.   They take (and continue to take) tens of millions of dollars from suckers and people who are too blind from greed, to put one plus one together.   What you say Inaba or Josh or whatever you wish to call yourself?   Would you invest 20 Million dollars in a company run by a person that is a CONVICTED FELON and cannot leave the state of MO and seconded by a mouthpiece with a third rate education that JUST "by coincidence" goes by the same name (and lives in the same state) as a sorry assed loser that was stealing from directTV?   Come on, explain this to me.   You think Sequoia or Benchmark would finance losers like that?

Well, you all did.   And I am laughing my ass off at you all.   Thanks for keeping the difficulty low for me and all the people with half a brain that can use google to do a background search on people before giving them the equivalent of "venture capital".

There is a saying "pigs feed, but hogs get slaughtered".   you all have financed some pigs that have now become hogs by continuing to take more and more money.   what are you going to do about it?   Nothing?   I thought so.   you got what you deserved.  you all bought a lottery ticket from the dude on the corner......    ironic isn't it?

Please provide proove. I'm sure everyone here would appreciate it.

I have.   search my posts.   have posted links to USA government websites that support both "claims"

[Dalkore]

Would like to see SCAMMER TAG added to ALL BFL employees

That is not what I would call constructive.  Deleting your post. 

[Minor Miner]

Would like to see SCAMMER TAG added to ALL BFL employees

That is not what I would call constructive.  Deleting your post. 

I think the poster has a point.   A company that is so far behind in promises and make further promises repeatedly and are still taking people's money with ship dates promised out two months should be considered a scammer.   Why that offends your sense of fairness eludes me.   Even if they are working hard to produce the units paid for 9 months ago, their current actions of "order now" and giving new promises which we know not to be true, would qualify them to be labeled as a scammer.

His criticism is constructive.   when you have screwed up, you should stop collecting people's money until you can actually physically deliver what you overpromised many times before.

[philips]

So you would call even Nasser a scammer?