Is new Baikal cube miner a scam?

[newmz]

There has been huge demand for new X11 miners since the dash price went skyward.

Yesterday I got an email from Baikal to say that I could now order from them.

It's a new product that looks just like a mini-miner but does double the hash-rate at 300mh/s for 75W.

Is that credible?

After a few attempts with their TERRIBLE website and sending many emails to them, I finally got an email from "Charles Zhou" who told me that they had arranged for me to pay in Dash and "fixed" my order on the website. I paid their price of 13.86 Dash - which I assume is the $799 plus around $60 shipping (which is a hell of a lot really). Then I sent them 2 different emails with screenshots of multiple confirmations of the dash payment.

I haven't heard a single thing from them about the order since and on their website it says I still have to pay, but also says that I took too long to pay so the order was cancelled.

Has anyone who has paid for one of these new miners actually received any confirmation from Baikal that their order was successful? Or any information about when they are shipping? Or any communication from them at all?

I hope I'm wrong about this but I'm worried that I just got ripped off.

[1715071867]

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[1715071867]

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[1715071867]

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[Gunna01]

As we said int eh other thread it appears to be 1 or 2 guys managing this so responses will be slow.

Keep in mind they are in China so while you might have been waiting all day\night etc they have only been in the office for a few hours. Many people have said they have ordered off them before but they appear responsive at least to me. Just remember the more you nag them the longer it takes them to process things. Send an email, wait a few hours and follow up but be patient.

FYI, this is the 1st time I have ordered off them but based on the above and the last lot of ASICS sold I think you'll be ok

If it was a scam they wouldn't have a stock limit on their site(which no shows out of stock) and would be trying to pump out as many fake orders as possible to get people to pay.

[bittawm]

I am working closely with baikal as you know, i know they have slow response, I have also placed an order and am waiting for a response

[QuintLeo]

The new "Cube" looks like they put 2 of their existing chip on one board, doubled up the heatsink size, and added a bigger fan.
Keep in mind they already HAD link hardware on the old Singles allowing them to be daisy-chained, so 2 chips on 1 board should have been fairly easy to do compared to 2 on 2 boards.
It seems to be a creditable design.
I DO like the increased MH/cubic inch density, especially if the Cubes can stack like the older singles did.
I do NOT like the increase in price per MH, but I'm actually a bit positively shocked they didn't roll back to the $500/150MH price level given current demand.
I do like the move to a PCI-E connector (though there seems to be some conflict depending on which reference you look at, one talks about a "12 v 10 A power cube" which would be the old-style connector - perhaps it has both?).

 I suspect the limited stock is due to them just getting their next batch of miner chips from the foundry and and not having had time to build up a lot of the new miner .... yet.

[baikal]

Dear.

Thank you very much for your support and trust on baikal.

First apologize for our slow response recently, we have been busying for answering all questions since last weekend we released Cube. I really hope we can get back to you timely... and we are trying our best.

By the way, in order to faster our reply to confirm the order soon, I would like to ask if you have been contacting with us by email, please be more patience, it will case some additional working if you come to us again in Skype. same as if you talk by skype first. Thanks in advance.

Now I better go back and type for you, several email come in just now....!

Thank you and have a great day all of you.
Baikal

[Julian1990]

Baikal, if i search baikalminer at skype then is the search result 12 different baikal accounts. which is the real one?

[ofpcarnage]

Baikal, if i search baikalminer at skype then is the search result 12 different baikal accounts. which is the real one?

Now on this you have to be really careful I was recently scammed out of 2 bitcoins because I thought I was speaking to baikal unfortunately I wasn't.

The REAL baikal profile says "BaikalMiner"  if you see something like "live:baikalminer" thats a scammer. also check the links provided on the profile. for example "www.baikalminer.com" compared to
" www.baikalminer.com"

I may not have put in correct website giving my example but thats not the point. The point is the space before www. I missed this tiny detail when I was scammed.

Thankfully baikal have updated their payment method and you can only pay via their website.

When first contacting baikal only give them your order number and ask them to confirm your order. If they really are baikal they will show you a screen shot of your order and shipping details.
They will then give you a final price and will update the price on their website. They will NEVER ask you to send money to them through skype or email.
Stick to these golden rules and you will be fine.

Hopefully this will stop others from being scammed.

[newmz]

I actually got an email from Charles Zhou.

he explained to me that:

We got thousands of emails and orders since we launched the Cube miner. We need to deal with these emails and orders one by one.

So I guess that - given that they are quite a small company, it just takes them a long time to deal with all the orders.

I paid my Dash and sent them confirmation screenshots so hopefully I will get my miner when they have time to process my order.

I am now pretty reassured that they are not a scam - they are just VERY busy.

I still think it would help things a great deal if they could fix their website so that it was a proper effective shop-front, and could independantly deal with orders, rather than the necessity of making an order and then ALSO communicating with them via email and skype to try to conduct the payment, etc. It would make them appear much more professional and trustworthy in my opinion.

Maybe this is a side effect of doing business in China - maybe in China it is difficult to sell products to international customers directly from a website, but I don't know much about it so I'm just guessing,

I will be so happy and relieved when/if I finally get my cube miner delivered. Crossung my fingers but I would love to hear from people who have ordered and actually received one of the new cube miners - so please feel free to post here when they arrive and keep us all happy.

[not.you]

I actually got an email from Charles Zhou.

he explained to me that:

We got thousands of emails and orders since we launched the Cube miner. We need to deal with these emails and orders one by one.

So I guess that - given that they are quite a small company, it just takes them a long time to deal with all the orders.

I paid my Dash and sent them confirmation screenshots so hopefully I will get my miner when they have time to process my order.

I am now pretty reassured that they are not a scam - they are just VERY busy.

I still think it would help things a great deal if they could fix their website so that it was a proper effective shop-front, and could independantly deal with orders, rather than the necessity of making an order and then ALSO communicating with them via email and skype to try to conduct the payment, etc. It would make them appear much more professional and trustworthy in my opinion.

Maybe this is a side effect of doing business in China - maybe in China it is difficult to sell products to international customers directly from a website, but I don't know much about it so I'm just guessing,

I will be so happy and relieved when/if I finally get my cube miner delivered. Crossung my fingers but I would love to hear from people who have ordered and actually received one of the new cube miners - so please feel free to post here when they arrive and keep us all happy.

You should edit your first post to this thread and remove the word scam from the title.  Not fair to associate that word with them without good reason.

[northern.lights]

baikalminer.com is a CROOK and a SCAM (s or no s, they are all BULLSHIT)

I have been ripped off from baikalminer.com for $4676 and want you share my HORROR story so hopefully you don’t end up getting ripped off.  STAY THE HELL AWAY FROM BAIKALMINER.COM !!!  After weeks of research on Google and Youtube, I thought the Baikal Miner would be a good investment mining Dash coins at 300 MH/s using only 75 Watt of power.  Boy was I in for the biggest SCAM and RIPOFF and RIDE of my life!!!  After one month of Baikal Miner hustling and scamming me, he stole $4676 and I am now stuck with a defective Baikal Miner Cube.  I am now still SHOCK and SO DISGUSTED of these people!  This is why they don’t accept credit card or paypal.  Just bitcoin, dash or ethereum.  I don’t think there is any recourse or any way you can get the coins back from these people!

On April 11, 2017, I pulled the trigger and sent baikalminer 0.7216068 BTC which equals to $876.02 USD.  These people are very difficult to deal with and very slow to respond on email.  Worst, they only take bitcoin and they are located halfway around the world in China.   So this made me very concern.  8 days later on April 19, the unit arrived at my home.  I emailed Baikal on what power supply to use and they won’t recommend which power supply to buy or send me an ebay or Amazon link, they just said 12V 10A.  I searched on Google, Amazon and ebay and end up buying 3 power supply from Amazon and ebay.  The first P/S came home the end plug was too big and did not fit.  Then a couple days later the two P/S I ordered on ebay arrived and this one fit.  You would think spending $876 on a little box with a fan, heatsink and circuit board they would include a P/S.  The box did not come with any manuals so I had to google to find the CUBE.pdf manual and figured everything out myself.  When first powered up and log in with the default password baikal, the miner show down.  It looks like they still have their dash wallet address on there.  I setup an account on coinmine.pl and dash.suprnova.cc and added my account and dash wallet address to the Baikal Pool page.  Doesn’t matter what I do, the miner still show down.

On April 24, 2017, I emailed baikal@baikalminer.com.  The following day, they email back ask me to skype them.

Hi,
Thank you for your email.
Please contact us via skype in order to deal your business more effectively.
Our skype account: “baikalminer” (no more other letters or characters)
You can check the following link for your information: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1804508.0
We will take care of your request as soon as we get the message from skype.
Best regards,
Baikal

On Skype, they did not offer any technical support or troubleshooting at all.  They kept on insisting I download and read the CUBE.pdf file.
http://www.baikalminer.com/cn/down/CUBE.pdf  Their support is shitty!  Then they wanted me to ship the unit back at my expense to repair it.  I wasn’t happy at all!!!  To make me happy, they offered a Quad unit at a discounted price.  The miner cube is $800 + $76 Shipping.  Total is $876.  Quad is 4 miner cube so $800 x 4 = $3200.  I already paid for the first miner cube so I just need to pay for the difference of $2326 and I have to ship the defective unit back.  I wasn’t happy paying more at a full price when I already received a defective unit.  So they offer 5% discount + free shipping + power cable at $2166 more + $876 I originally paid.

>4/25 Ok I will deduct the same so that you can pay the shipping price from your end for that cube.
>4/25 3196-870 = 2326$
>4/25 But you have to ship the product to us.
>4/25 Does it make you happy..
>4/25 Ok as this is our fault we give the 5% + free shipping and power cable = 3036- 870 = 2166

On April 27 and 30, 2017, I sent them $2150 to upgrade to a Quad Cube ($900 in ETH and $1250 in BTC).  As of this date, I have sent them
$3026.02.

On May 1, 2017, they offer me two baikal quads for $2400 instead of instead of $3400 .

>5/1 Ok after lot of considerations in your case we feel like the fault is from our end only.
And to do the compensation for that if you are interested we ship out two baikal quads in which you have already paid for one and for the second one we give you 25% off + free power cables and shipping. So you have to pay 2400$ instead of 3400$ I this this makes you a happy customer.
What do you say.?
>5/1 This is only one time offer please don't consider this discount in future just to make sure you should be happy we are offering this and please post this any where in social media.
As people will start bargaining..
This offer for you also only once from next time please don't ask us as definitely we don't give any offers anymore.
Definitely you don't need to worry this time as I personally test the products which we are going to send you.


>5/2 Hello my friend we have received your payment
But we had an issue with our financial tem.
In the morning our jr accountant accepted that you can pay 1600$ later but from afternoon we had so many discussions and our Sr accountant is not agreeing for more than 1000$ credit to a customer and blaming me for giving such credit after 25% discount.
Some how I managed by telling that customer lost a lot because of the machine problem and managed to give you 1200$ or with huge extra offer.
Because we consider the money which we get before the shipping and after shipping we always will be having 50:50.

Case1) pay 1000$ and pay nothing except shipping the old product.
So here for second quad you will be getting 3400-1600 = 1800$ total to pay(800 already paid and balance 1000$). Close to 47% off on total for the second machine.

Case 2) pay 400$ now and remaining 1200$ after shipping.

This is just to make sure that it is fine at least we don't make profit but we should not lose money by selling.
We sell our products through out the world and you are an individual customer for us.
I hope you understand our Sr accountant concern.
Please think for a while and let me know which case suits well so that I will proceed and also please be hurry so that tomorrow morning hours I would like to ship them. Thanks.

On May 2, 5 and 6, 2017, I sent them a total of $1650 in BT and ETH.  After sending them the last payment, they said to me on skype “Hi my friend please contact us via email for the confirmation. thanks.” And this is when the HORROR begins.  I email them at baikal@baikalminer.com and they just pay dumb and said they never received my $$$ BTC and ETH. 

05/02/17 Paid $800 BTC
05/05/17 Paid $550 ETH
05/06/17 FINAL payment $300 BTC

baikalminer.com and all other baikalminer web site and all of the baikalminer on skype are the SAME people.  They will hustle you in sending bitcoin, dash coins or Ethereum coins.  They will steal your coins and you cannot do anything about it like me!  I am very unlucky and very stupid to trust them!  DON’T buy anything from Baikal Miner or any other web site or anyone on Skype.  They are all the same people.  I will attached screen capture of my skype conversion with Baikal Mining and emails so you can read for yourself and share with families, friends, co-worker and the mining community.  I FEEL SO SICK INSIDE.  These people have stole $4676 of my hard earn money.  VERY VERY SAD!  Don’t know what else to do.

Danny

[shakifa]

Hi northern.lights,
 Did you finally get back your money or working miner cubes?  

[Gunna01]

Hi northern.lights,
 Did you finally get back your money or working miner cubes?  

He was dealing with a scam account.

[chiwalfrm]

Hi northern.lights,
 Did you finally get back your money or working miner cubes?  

He was dealing with a scam account.

Where does it say he was dealing with a scam account?  He said he bought from baikalminer.com which is the real website and also Skyped with baikalminer which is also the real one.

[Gunna01]

Hi northern.lights,
 Did you finally get back your money or working miner cubes?  

He was dealing with a scam account.

Where does it say he was dealing with a scam account?  He said he bought from baikalminer.com which is the real website and also Skyped with baikalminer which is also the real one.

He bought off the real baikal but the skype account he was dealing with was a scam account.

He has posted this over the internet on Reddit, here, Dash forums and has been asked to post screenshots of the skype conversation and he hasnt. Baikal has replied saying they have no record of talking to him on Skype, hence the 'playing dumb' when he emailed them

Open Skype and type in BaikalMiner, there are dozens of accounts:



He chose one of them without right clicking to view their profile to ensure the skypename was correct

[shakifa]

...
On April 11, 2017, I pulled the trigger and sent baikalminer 0.7216068 BTC which equals to $876.02 USD.  
...

On April 27 and 30, 2017, I sent them $2150 to upgrade to a Quad Cube ($900 in ETH and $1250 in BTC).  As of this date, I have sent them
$3026.02.
...
On May 2, 5 and 6, 2017, I sent them a total of $1650 in BT and ETH.  After sending them the last payment, they said to me on skype “Hi my friend please contact us via email for the confirmation. thanks.” And this is when the HORROR begins.  I email them at baikal@baikalminer.com and they just pay dumb and said they never received my $$$ BTC and ETH.  
...

You have said 3 times sent money to them, but the question is that how did you send money? Did you use the correct method or you have sent money to some address provided by the other party via email or Skype? If the latter is correct then you are really got scammed!

[adamantasaurus]

Idk, I sent them the wire transfer and sent them a screenshot of the receipt he then requested for my passport.... That was really strange I thought and a red flag went up I called their bank to see if they needed my passport (which they don't) and sent him an email saying he doesn't need my ID he replied saying it is just to make the payment more safe (IDK) I replied saying the bank confirmed you don't need my passport so I am not sending it. and he stopped replying to my emails so I sent him multiple telling him to answer or I will cancel the wire transfer. still nothing.

I thought maybe I was talking to the scam email accts. and called my bank again.

I went through the process of canceling the wire with my bank then I saw on a dash forum that someone sent to Victore Holdings the same beneficiary I sent to and they received a miner. So I called my bank again to let the wire go through and we will see what happens when/if I receive my miner I will update here.

[puwaha]

Idk, I sent them the wire transfer and sent them a screenshot of the receipt he then requested for my passport.... That was really strange I thought and a red flag went up I called their bank to see if they needed my passport (which they don't) and sent him an email saying he doesn't need my ID he replied saying it is just to make the payment more safe (IDK) I replied saying the bank confirmed you don't need my passport so I am not sending it. and he stopped replying to my emails so I sent him multiple telling him to answer or I will cancel the wire transfer. still nothing.

I thought maybe I was talking to the scam email accts. and called my bank again.

I went through the process of canceling the wire with my bank then I saw on a dash forum that someone sent to Victore Holdings the same beneficiary I sent to and they received a miner. So I called my bank again to let the wire go through and we will see what happens when/if I receive my miner I will update here.

The shifting goalposts of placing the order should have been the red flag.  Con-artists and swindlers do this type of thing all the time to people.

[adamantasaurus]

Idk, I sent them the wire transfer and sent them a screenshot of the receipt he then requested for my passport.... That was really strange I thought and a red flag went up I called their bank to see if they needed my passport (which they don't) and sent him an email saying he doesn't need my ID he replied saying it is just to make the payment more safe (IDK) I replied saying the bank confirmed you don't need my passport so I am not sending it. and he stopped replying to my emails so I sent him multiple telling him to answer or I will cancel the wire transfer. still nothing.

I thought maybe I was talking to the scam email accts. and called my bank again.

I went through the process of canceling the wire with my bank then I saw on a dash forum that someone sent to Victore Holdings the same beneficiary I sent to and they received a miner. So I called my bank again to let the wire go through and we will see what happens when/if I receive my miner I will update here.

The shifting goalposts of placing the order should have been the red flag.  Con-artists and swindlers do this type of thing all the time to people.

shifting goalposts what do you mean?

Before I sent the wire the guy mentioned that I need to send a passport confirmation which I thought he was talking about the confirmation number for the wire but I guess he meant my actual passport....

[kezjo]

baikalminer.com is a CROOK and a SCAM (s or no s, they are all BULLSHIT)

I have been ripped off from baikalminer.com for $4676 and want you share my HORROR story so hopefully you don’t end up getting ripped off.  STAY THE HELL AWAY FROM BAIKALMINER.COM !!!  After weeks of research on Google and Youtube, I thought the Baikal Miner would be a good investment mining Dash coins at 300 MH/s using only 75 Watt of power.  Boy was I in for the biggest SCAM and RIPOFF and RIDE of my life!!!  After one month of Baikal Miner hustling and scamming me, he stole $4676 and I am now stuck with a defective Baikal Miner Cube.  I am now still SHOCK and SO DISGUSTED of these people!  This is why they don’t accept credit card or paypal.  Just bitcoin, dash or ethereum.  I don’t think there is any recourse or any way you can get the coins back from these people!

On April 11, 2017, I pulled the trigger and sent baikalminer 0.7216068 BTC which equals to $876.02 USD.  These people are very difficult to deal with and very slow to respond on email.  Worst, they only take bitcoin and they are located halfway around the world in China.   So this made me very concern.  8 days later on April 19, the unit arrived at my home.  I emailed Baikal on what power supply to use and they won’t recommend which power supply to buy or send me an ebay or Amazon link, they just said 12V 10A.  I searched on Google, Amazon and ebay and end up buying 3 power supply from Amazon and ebay.  The first P/S came home the end plug was too big and did not fit.  Then a couple days later the two P/S I ordered on ebay arrived and this one fit.  You would think spending $876 on a little box with a fan, heatsink and circuit board they would include a P/S.  The box did not come with any manuals so I had to google to find the CUBE.pdf manual and figured everything out myself.  When first powered up and log in with the default password baikal, the miner show down.  It looks like they still have their dash wallet address on there.  I setup an account on coinmine.pl and dash.suprnova.cc and added my account and dash wallet address to the Baikal Pool page.  Doesn’t matter what I do, the miner still show down.

On April 24, 2017, I emailed baikal@baikalminer.com.  The following day, they email back ask me to skype them.

Hi,
Thank you for your email.
Please contact us via skype in order to deal your business more effectively.
Our skype account: “baikalminer” (no more other letters or characters)
You can check the following link for your information: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1804508.0
We will take care of your request as soon as we get the message from skype.
Best regards,
Baikal

On Skype, they did not offer any technical support or troubleshooting at all.  They kept on insisting I download and read the CUBE.pdf file.
http://www.baikalminer.com/cn/down/CUBE.pdf  Their support is shitty!  Then they wanted me to ship the unit back at my expense to repair it.  I wasn’t happy at all!!!  To make me happy, they offered a Quad unit at a discounted price.  The miner cube is $800 + $76 Shipping.  Total is $876.  Quad is 4 miner cube so $800 x 4 = $3200.  I already paid for the first miner cube so I just need to pay for the difference of $2326 and I have to ship the defective unit back.  I wasn’t happy paying more at a full price when I already received a defective unit.  So they offer 5% discount + free shipping + power cable at $2166 more + $876 I originally paid.

>4/25 Ok I will deduct the same so that you can pay the shipping price from your end for that cube.
>4/25 3196-870 = 2326$
>4/25 But you have to ship the product to us.
>4/25 Does it make you happy..
>4/25 Ok as this is our fault we give the 5% + free shipping and power cable = 3036- 870 = 2166

On April 27 and 30, 2017, I sent them $2150 to upgrade to a Quad Cube ($900 in ETH and $1250 in BTC).  As of this date, I have sent them
$3026.02.

On May 1, 2017, they offer me two baikal quads for $2400 instead of instead of $3400 .

>5/1 Ok after lot of considerations in your case we feel like the fault is from our end only.
And to do the compensation for that if you are interested we ship out two baikal quads in which you have already paid for one and for the second one we give you 25% off + free power cables and shipping. So you have to pay 2400$ instead of 3400$ I this this makes you a happy customer.
What do you say.?
>5/1 This is only one time offer please don't consider this discount in future just to make sure you should be happy we are offering this and please post this any where in social media.
As people will start bargaining..
This offer for you also only once from next time please don't ask us as definitely we don't give any offers anymore.
Definitely you don't need to worry this time as I personally test the products which we are going to send you.


>5/2 Hello my friend we have received your payment
But we had an issue with our financial tem.
In the morning our jr accountant accepted that you can pay 1600$ later but from afternoon we had so many discussions and our Sr accountant is not agreeing for more than 1000$ credit to a customer and blaming me for giving such credit after 25% discount.
Some how I managed by telling that customer lost a lot because of the machine problem and managed to give you 1200$ or with huge extra offer.
Because we consider the money which we get before the shipping and after shipping we always will be having 50:50.

Case1) pay 1000$ and pay nothing except shipping the old product.
So here for second quad you will be getting 3400-1600 = 1800$ total to pay(800 already paid and balance 1000$). Close to 47% off on total for the second machine.

Case 2) pay 400$ now and remaining 1200$ after shipping.

This is just to make sure that it is fine at least we don't make profit but we should not lose money by selling.
We sell our products through out the world and you are an individual customer for us.
I hope you understand our Sr accountant concern.
Please think for a while and let me know which case suits well so that I will proceed and also please be hurry so that tomorrow morning hours I would like to ship them. Thanks.

On May 2, 5 and 6, 2017, I sent them a total of $1650 in BT and ETH.  After sending them the last payment, they said to me on skype “Hi my friend please contact us via email for the confirmation. thanks.” And this is when the HORROR begins.  I email them at baikal@baikalminer.com and they just pay dumb and said they never received my $$$ BTC and ETH. 

05/02/17 Paid $800 BTC
05/05/17 Paid $550 ETH
05/06/17 FINAL payment $300 BTC

baikalminer.com and all other baikalminer web site and all of the baikalminer on skype are the SAME people.  They will hustle you in sending bitcoin, dash coins or Ethereum coins.  They will steal your coins and you cannot do anything about it like me!  I am very unlucky and very stupid to trust them!  DON’T buy anything from Baikal Miner or any other web site or anyone on Skype.  They are all the same people.  I will attached screen capture of my skype conversion with Baikal Mining and emails so you can read for yourself and share with families, friends, co-worker and the mining community.  I FEEL SO SICK INSIDE.  These people have stole $4676 of my hard earn money.  VERY VERY SAD!  Don’t know what else to do.

Danny

Starting from step 2 I recognised this as a typical scam trick. They trap you in step by step. Sorry for you dude but I've fallen for a similar scam when I was in college and lost $1000. We all get to lose something to learn.....

[fanatic26]

That account posted its story over and over again for a few days and was never heard of again. He probably finally realized he got scammed because he did not do his own due diligence which is why he never posted again.