Purchase of miners and mining behavior themselves are indeed investment and economic behavior of high risk. Participants should be equipped with awareness and preparation for corresponding risk. Those who participated in this activity gained huge profits overnight can be found everywhere, however, there is also a number of people who suffered losses at the same time. But objectively speaking, such gains and losses may not be controlled or anticipated in advance.
I understand and am very aware that there are risks associated with mining. In the case of the A5, the biggest risk that we took which led to our demise was trusting in Innosilicon.
We hoped that Innosilicon would be able to deliver a reliable product that we paid for in the agreed upon timeframe, and most importantly value their customers and provide a good customer experience like any legitimate company would attempt to do.
As we have learned, Innosilicon was not only incapable of following the agreed upon contract terms, but was also unresponsive on all communication platforms towards their customers and just overall incompetent and irresponsible throughout the whole process.
When you say there is high risk in mining behaviour, usually those things include price volatility of the cryptocurrency market, competitors with more efficient mining equipment, mining difficulty increasing, ect. We shouldn't have to worry about the company delaying the product for such a long period of time that it defeats the purpose of paying the initial purchase price. Likewise, we shouldn't have to worry about miners catching on fire and the company being so irresponsible as to say "sorry, here's an email on how to desolder the hash boards" without offering any recalls, refunds or compensation. The "risks" that turned out to be the biggest factors preventing anybody from capitalizing on this investment are those in which were imposed on us by Innosilicon from the start. These types of risks could have been controlled in advance, or more fairly compensated for if Innosilicon had been responsible enough to care for their customers and/or reputation of their company.
Many people in the industry knew that the production process of A5 miner has been disastrously affected by the malicious interference and destruction of its competitors, which not only directly causes a substantial increase of production cost, but also leads to a longer delay of delivery than planned. The extent of destruction and interference is far beyond the bottom line of normal business competition, and even further beyond the imagination of many people. Such immoral behavior is the root cause for everyone's loss.
Again, no communication to customers about this event. This is the first I'm hearing about it.
Since your talking about morals, why did you make your customers suffer the consequences of this unfortunate event? Doesn't Innosilicon have responsibility involving risks that are inherit with doing business? I understand that if this did happen, Innosilicon would have also suffered a substantial financial loss. However, if Innosilicon were to have put their customers first then we would have been fairly compensated for the late shipping dates that resulted from this incident.
Notice I said 'fairly' compensated. I did get 'compensation' but not as one would expect. More on that below.
In the face of this unexpected situation, as a manufacturer, while enduring self-loss without any complaint, we have taken the initiative to increase the amount of compensation for subscribers, and provide coupons with the real purchasing power and almost no limitations. Extra miners were even directly presented to some customers for compensation. We know that these measures can't fully compensate for the total investment losses of the customers, however, as a manufacturer, we not only faithfully implement the pre-agreed compensation clause, but also delicate much to our subscribers within our capacities, in the hope of returning to customers as much as possible and reducing their losses.
I was never offered any coupons, only offered the 'free' A4+ without PSU as compensation (I was force to pay $403.33 USD for what Innosilicon insisted was the cost of shipping) plus DHL boarder fees. I was promised that "Delivery of the miners will be finished within 3 biz days after payment confirmation" ( – quote taken straight from the email). 3 days in reality ended up being 43 days before it was even shipped out. This is after me constantly attempting to contact them after I paid, finally got through to them through Twitter where they finally responded and confirmed my payment over a month later. By the time it arrived it was only capable of netting $4 a day, now it's netting about $2.50. It's been plugged in since it arrived and I have so far only net $50 USD after subtracting shipping costs and DHL boarder fees. Still in the negative about $100 USD since I had to pay for my own PSU as it was not supplied as part of the compensation. So in conclusion, this 'free' miner has yet to pay for itself, not to mention help to re-cooping investments lost in the A5.
Can I get compensated for the late arrival of your compensated A4+ miner? Serious question, because I would have never paid for this 'free' miner if your company didn't say it will be delivered in 3 business days. I thought perhaps that you may have learned from your mistakes and actually tried to deliver on your promises. I guess that's fool me twice, shame on me.
It is gratifying that most customers still give us very high level of trust and support. Their support and commitment are the driving force for our progress and the cornerstone of our development. Through this incident we also learned a lot, especially in the supply chain management and risk prevention, we have made a lot of improvement. As a result, you can feel that our delivery speed and efficiency have been completely improved. To some extent, this incident not only did not let us fall, but it made us stronger and faced more cruel and fierce market competition.
Judging from your Twitter page, it doesn't seem like 'most' customers give you very high accolades. Read the comments from any of your recent tweets and miner releases. It's not hard to find.
Also, I could imagine that the $10,000 price tag per A5 unit that you unjustifiably refused to refund helped to cushion your 'fall'.
