before I dismiss you as delusional (which you seem to be)
Lets wait for the timer to run out.
Delusional? For what? Stating what happened in all of this mess. Here is how this all went down:
1. BKK starts making the board and makes major headway early on
2. TH sees this and see's an opportunity to make some money so they license the board from BKK and help him with some coding
(During all of this time everyone still assumed Avalon was on time)
3. Avalon is weeks late and BKK slows work to very minimal effort
4. TH doesn't seem worry too much since Avalon doesn't even have chips and no chips are even on the horizon
5. TH must have forgotten some people got Zefir chips so they were caught off-guard
6. TH trying to push their way through as quick as they can.
Now I do fault TH for step 5 up there, they should have been fully ready when chips other than their own were being shipped but I think they figured since chips were so far out from coming they slowed down and were either hoping BKK comes back and helps or they were trying to do it on their side and not getting through it as fast as they anticipated.
Since it doesn't seem like TH is going to be getting our chips for a few more weeks
they should have more than enough time to iron out the code. So some of this is TH's fault and waiting too long hoping the person that they paid to do their job actually did their job but if I contract out you don't assume they won't produce.
Assumption is the mother of all fuckups.
TH 'started a business' without the necessary capital to fund it; took a huge order from cloudhashing and apparently did not get a contract in place specifying that they were allowed to use those pre-order funds to buy the chips and cloudhashing absolutely could not cancel unless Bitsyncom failed to deliver, and if that happened they would be required to wait until TH got their money back from Bitsyncom; when cloudhashing cancelled, TH opened up pre-orders to get cash flow to be able to refund cloudhashing.
That was guessed in this thread, and confirmed in this thread by TH.
When they announced pre-orders, they claimed it was because of demand from the community to take pre-orders; it was not until AFTER they took orders and people's money that they admitted they needed that money to refund a previous customer. In short, they knowingly willfully and purposely mislead EACH AND EVERY single customer who pre-ordered from them.
They assumed chips would be on time
They assumed nothing would go wrong with the open source board and firmware development
They banked on these assumptions and bought components and chips, spending probably a goddamn good portion of what funds they had left, plus spent money on an office and utilities and who knows what other business costs - ALL of that before they could even reasonably guarantee that they would be able to fulfill the commitments they had undertaken and paid for by the money they were spending. They took a LOT of risk with everyone ELSE'S money. You risk investors' money, you DO NOT risk customers' money. You can argue that as long as they refund us, they didn't risk our money; except that in order to refund us, they have to use some other customer's money. What happens if they have to refund those later customers as well?
They committed in this thread to telling people where they stood in line for orders, and allowing them to make the choice of cancelling or keeping their orders. They failed to follow through with that commitment.
They have severely lacked in even the most basic communication
Now they've come along and admitted they're legally liable for refunds, but insist that customers who want them have to wait 3 months. Conveniently, they're opening up 'reservations' for their hosting and considering next gen chip products. You can get your reservation for as little as 750 dollars (25% of 3000, the amount needed to buy the smallest block of hashing power they're selling).
Gee, you think maybe they're using the next batch of customers' money to refund those of us in line now waiting for refunds?
First order went bad - get more orders to refund it and hope nothing goes wrong with plan b. Plan b goes bad - get more orders and hope nothing goes wrong with plan c. What the hell happens if something falls through with plan c?
Do you see the problem here?
They've certainly made more fuckups than just one or 2 little things. Anyone who can't or won't admit that is plain out being dishonest, either to everyone else or to themselves.
Ask ANY successful businessperson, corporation, business professor, consultant, advisor, or even student and they'll tell you TH has made several of the most major fuckups possible when it comes to running a business. I still don't attribute it to malice, but abject fucking stupidity and arrogance.
end. of. story.
Now the odds are that sooner or later one of their plans won't fail and will work out. It's just a matter of whether they can keep kicking the can down the road, getting orders to refund and placate earlier customers, and holding people at bay long enough for that to happen.
Sadly, I seriously doubt they're learning any lessons from any of this; rather, if they do manage to keep it going long enough to work out, instead of realizing how lucky they got and learning not to do this shit again I have a feeling they're going to take it as vindication that they were right.
