Sonny Vleisides' finally sticking it up his investors' asses!

[Phinnaeus Gage]

https://forums.butterflylabs.com/bfl-forum-miscellaneous/3521-bfl-doesnt-refund-anymore.html

He got his, now the rest can all go fuck yourselves.

What a motherfuckin' piece of shit. It's a shame I didn't see this coming otherwise I would have joined the choir and warned you all.

The end is nigh!

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[wrenchmonkey]

On an order placed 2-3 weeks ago, yeah, I see no problem with holding him to the "no refunds" policy, unless their delivery time gets pushed back for a long time (as has happened with previous orders).

[Syke]

On an order placed 2-3 weeks ago, yeah, I see no problem with holding him to the "no refunds" policy, unless their delivery time gets pushed back for a long time (as has happened with previous orders).

Really? You have no problem with them promising refunds publicly, and then switching without warning to a "no refunds" policy?

If a customer wants a refund, we issue a refund.  End of story.

BFL refunds anyone who asks.  We always have.

Their official policy is pre-orders are "non-refundable".

No luck involved.  Email office@butterflylabs.com and we will happily refund your order at any time.  It's always been that way.

I know, for my part, I would not want a device that runs at 200w at 60 GH/s - it would never see a positive ROI.

LOL. How's the crow taste? Why are you selling devices that will "never see a positive ROI"?

[eve]

No refund, that is very scary where is josh the inaba

[wrenchmonkey]

The website now says at checkout that all sales are final. You're quoting months old posts. You people have been screaming that the sky was falling since day one. Said they were going to take all the pre-order money and run without shipping a product. They shipped a product, and you said they were just going to ship a few to get more orders, and then take the money and run without ever shipping to customers.

They've been shipping hundreds of orders for the past few weeks, and now you're screaming that they're going to take the money and run, because they're enforcing their 'no refunds' policy on new orders that were placed AFTER they started shipping.

Every time you people are proven wrong, you come up with more bullshit to speculate about and say "I told you so" even though you've been wrong every time. I'm looking at you Phinnaeus Gage

[sneef]

I can confirm i got the same bullshit email from BFL.

I ordered a couple of 30gh/s machines in February, they have not even shipped a single one of those, they have not even finished redesigning it...

I asked politely for my refund and was told no.

Maybe i just need to call Inaba a cunt in public, in order to get a refund...

[Rampion]

I'm interested in taking part in a joint legal action against BFL. I requested refund after Inaba's rant against Gar255 and I just received the same BS reply.

This is outrageous.

[titomane]

This is a theory

less than 300 Jalapenos(600chips), less than 10 singles(100chips) and 3 minirigs (300chips)
Total 1000 chips

It is likely that the first order was only 1000chips. Now made ​​another batch, this request will take between 8 and 12 weeks.

When they show all the chips they need, it began shipments of bulk.
The question is:
Have they done the order of 100000 chips they need for preorders?

Or are they waiting until someone buy these 100000:
https://products.butterflylabs.com/65nm-asic-bitcoin-mining-chip.html
 To pay almost 100% of the order (200000)

[sneef]

I'm interested in taking part in a joint legal action against BFL. I requested refund after Inaba's rant against Gar255 and I just received the same BS reply.

This is outrageous.

Inaba's rant against Gar255 and comments made about every single member of this board, were most certainly the issue that pushed me to ask for a refund, combined with the fact that BFL is clearly a ponzi.

[Flying Hellfish]

On an order placed 2-3 weeks ago, yeah, I see no problem with holding him to the "no refunds" policy, unless their delivery time gets pushed back for a long time (as has happened with previous orders).

You should probably read the link below.  Just for fun I have copied a pretty important section when it comes to refunds.

When You Must Cancel an Order

You must cancel an order and provide a prompt refund when:
•the customer exercises any option to cancel before you ship the merchandise;
•the customer does not respond to your first notice of a definite revised shipment date of 30 days or less and you have not shipped the merchandise or received the customer’s consent to a further delay by the definite revised shipment date;
•the customer does not respond to your notice of a definite revised shipment date of more than 30 days (or your notice that you are unable to provide a definite revised shipment date) and you have not shipped the merchandise within 30 days of the original shipment date;
•the customer consents to a definite delay and you have not shipped or obtained the customer’s consent to any additional delay by the shipment time the customer consented to;
•you have not shipped or provided the required delay or renewed option notices on time; or
•you determine that you will never be able to ship the merchandise.


http://business.ftc.gov/documents/bus02-business-guide-mail-and-telephone-order-merchandise-rule

Taking pre-order full payment for a product not yet delivered falls into different category than product already shipped.  While it may be perfectly legal to offer a no refund policy on items shipped/received (aside from defects/warranty issues), it certainly appears that not allowing a full refund before shipping a product is not acceptable to the FTC.

If I was BFL I would not want lawyers looking into this stuff

[Flying Hellfish]

https://forums.butterflylabs.com/bfl-forum-miscellaneous/3521-bfl-doesnt-refund-anymore.html

He got his, now the rest can all go fuck yourselves.

What a motherfuckin' piece of shit. It's a shame I didn't see this coming otherwise I would have joined the choir and warned you all.

The end is nigh!

P.G maybe this was a decision of Sonny K. and NOT Sonny V.  Are you sure your accusing the right person here  .  Guess we should ask Josh to clear this up for us eh?

[polarhei]

Luckily, I am able to kill the parasite inside my 'body' within 45 day limit. I used to place my 10Ghash/s on April 2013 via paypal. Currently some people think the company is the parasite which must be controlled or be killed if getting worse.

I feel happy that I am able to kick the ass successfully at last...

[Phinnaeus Gage]

The website now says at checkout that all sales are final. You're quoting months old posts. You people have been screaming that the sky was falling since day one. Said they were going to take all the pre-order money and run without shipping a product. They shipped a product, and you said they were just going to ship a few to get more orders, and then take the money and run without ever shipping to customers.

They've been shipping hundreds of orders for the past few weeks, and now you're screaming that they're going to take the money and run, because they're enforcing their 'no refunds' policy on new orders that were placed AFTER they started shipping.

Every time you people are proven wrong, you come up with more bullshit to speculate about and say "I told you so" even though you've been wrong every time. I'm looking at you Phinnaeus Gage

There I was, jacking off to new girl (small tits, tight pussy) on MFC when I had this uncomfortable feeling that I was being watched. Sure enough, I was right.

I've yet to be proven wrong about Sonny K. not being revealed.
I've yet to be proven wrong about there not being any FCC certifications in spite of Josh stating that they were forthcoming in-two-week^TM back in last November.
I've yet to be proven wrong about there not being any UL certifications.
I've yet to be proven wrong about there not being any CE certifications.
I've yet to be proven wrong about Josh not also owing a 1000 BTC bet/guarantee promise to charity.

And, I've yet to be proven wrong about amassing free scrap copper and saving pre-1981 Lincoln cents (pennies) is a better investment than purchasing copper bullion over spot.

Now, who's looking at whom?

<Zip!>

[seleme]

[sarcasmon] Shocked to see monkey replying first defending BFL [/sarcacmoff]

[polarhei]

From the outside, it's hard to tell if BFL is just a poorly managed company run by some marketing "visionaries" getting caught up in a get rich quick scheme, or simply just maximizing their own ROI before the Kansas State Attorney General gets involved.  With the recent hard-line stance on refund refusal and the shipping slowing to a trickle, the latter might make sense - they would take the liquid assets out of the company after a initial shipping push (securing more pre-orders and upgrade funds) while not continuing to tie liquidity up on actual material orders like chips and PCB's.  That's if they were planning on "taking the money and run" approach, which I'm sure BFL is not, because they seem like nice, honest folks.

Having Bitcoin involved is handy, with some creative book keeping, and actually making effort to develop and ship a hardware device to limit criminal liability.  It's not illegal in the US to be inept, so if a business fails, and you were doing everything a legitimate business would do, you could conceivably get away with murder, and 'lost' everyone's money simply due to some bad circumstances with the BTC market, for instance.

The other alternative is of course, they are actually in the business of making miners.  They're having a legitimate business delay that is tying up shipping.  In that case, the short-term business outlook becomes more and more bleak as people start requesting refunds and doing charge backs.  They could lose what customer good-will they were able to secure with expensive marketing campaigns, and facing the possibility of bringing a worthless product to market by the time the backlog could be fully shipped.  The harm this would do to a legitimate business could be substantial, so managing public perception is important, in that case.  Managing PR and putting things in a positive light would be critical to staying in business.  A business in such a position might do everything they could to manage customer expectations and treat existing customers well, in that case.  This is fairly obvious, because to stay in business they might need to rely on that good will, a la repeat customers and existing customers who would advocate for future product offerings.  The best way I can offer to substantiate this case, is to look for evidence of BFL fostering their customer relationships. 

Like I said, it can be hard to tell from an outsider's view what's going on.

It is not easy to state what wrong it is. The delay is very serious for packaging in ASIC as BFL has their own FPGA for studying. I used to trust when they firstly ship out the 5Ghash/s to follow, by putting in US$700.00 to test out. After 14 days, I think there is problem so I use the paypal policy to blow them out as A true company cannot do no bounds. While I notice that, I have my backup plan before the action as GPU cannot stand for last. For example,how signal become stable? In the ideal case, It requires infinity copies of the same signal( not only in DSP but bitcoin) with different locations (indices) to make stable. I use the concept to stable me by using Virtual mining like hashrack(put 0.25 BTC for it), cloudhashing(0.11 BTC giveaway) and pyramining(No easy to get in but I finally make it, putting 0.01 BTC to power that up...).  After the grid forms(at least three points), GPU used is meaningless so I sell my GPU (AMD 7970)to others in a fair price (60% of the initial cost,approximately HKD 2,499) to get rid of bad suppliers.

[Phinnaeus Gage]

On an order placed 2-3 weeks ago, yeah, I see no problem with holding him to the "no refunds" policy, unless their delivery time gets pushed back for a long time (as has happened with previous orders).

You should probably read the link below.  Just for fun I have copied a pretty important section when it comes to refunds.

When You Must Cancel an Order

You must cancel an order and provide a prompt refund when:
•the customer exercises any option to cancel before you ship the merchandise;
•the customer does not respond to your first notice of a definite revised shipment date of 30 days or less and you have not shipped the merchandise or received the customer’s consent to a further delay by the definite revised shipment date;
•the customer does not respond to your notice of a definite revised shipment date of more than 30 days (or your notice that you are unable to provide a definite revised shipment date) and you have not shipped the merchandise within 30 days of the original shipment date;
•the customer consents to a definite delay and you have not shipped or obtained the customer’s consent to any additional delay by the shipment time the customer consented to;
•you have not shipped or provided the required delay or renewed option notices on time; or
•you determine that you will never be able to ship the merchandise.


http://business.ftc.gov/documents/bus02-business-guide-mail-and-telephone-order-merchandise-rule

Taking pre-order full payment for a product not yet delivered falls into different category than product already shipped.  While it may be perfectly legal to offer a no refund policy on items shipped/received (aside from defects/warranty issues), it certainly appears that not allowing a full refund before shipping a product is not acceptable to the FTC.

If I was BFL I would not want lawyers looking into this stuff

BFL sure are a brazen bunch, given that they're on PayPal's radar, they opt to give them the finger, clearly telling PayPal that the almighty BFL will do what the fuck they please.

[Loredo]

The website now says at checkout that all sales are final. You're quoting months old posts. You people have been screaming that the sky was falling since day one. Said they were going to take all the pre-order money and run without shipping a product. They shipped a product, and you said they were just going to ship a few to get more orders, and then take the money and run without ever shipping to customers.

They've been shipping hundreds of orders for the past few weeks, and now you're screaming that they're going to take the money and run, because they're enforcing their 'no refunds' policy on new orders that were placed AFTER they started shipping.

Every time you people are proven wrong, you come up with more bullshit to speculate about and say "I told you so" even though you've been wrong every time. I'm looking at you Phinnaeus Gage

Here's my response to you, and, again, I don't have a dog in this ring.

There must be hundreds of "common folk" among the readers and posters of this forum.  I don't have any count, but it looks to me that most of the reports of hardware are from first-day adopters, luminaries, bitcoin insiders, or opinion makers such as bloggers.  I may be wrong in that, but if so, someone could easily show a list of "I got mine" posts from "just folks."

Nothing you state changes the perception of a company with serious cash flow problems.  As some one posts here, without the need for tin foil hat, it is very plausible that the announced chip sales is an attempt to get sufficient pre-sale capital to pay for the shipment of production chips. 

There is, in the real world, something termed counterparty risk.  I means the risk that the other side of your transaction either fails to deliver, or, more precisely, fails.  About ten days ago, there was stress in the Chinese banking system, and the overnight bank-to-bank lending rate hit 25%!  The reason was simply a deep concern that one or more large banks might be on the brink of failure.  None did, not surprisingly, and the market unfroze again. 

There is, here, with BFL, very well delineated counterparty risk; anyone can see it.  From this, detractors will extrapolate to ruin, supporters will explain and excuse the actions causing that perception.  The perception, though, is real enough.  If there is, in fact, a new restriction on refunds, some will see that as a defense against a "run", which will only add to the perceived risk.     

[k9quaint]

The website now says at checkout that all sales are final. You're quoting months old posts. You people have been screaming that the sky was falling since day one. Said they were going to take all the pre-order money and run without shipping a product. They shipped a product, and you said they were just going to ship a few to get more orders, and then take the money and run without ever shipping to customers.

They've been shipping hundreds of orders for the past few weeks, and now you're screaming that they're going to take the money and run, because they're enforcing their 'no refunds' policy on new orders that were placed AFTER they started shipping.

Every time you people are proven wrong, you come up with more bullshit to speculate about and say "I told you so" even though you've been wrong every time. I'm looking at you Phinnaeus Gage

Here's my response to you, and, again, I don't have a dog in this ring.

There must be hundreds of "common folk" among the readers and posters of this forum.  I don't have any count, but it looks to me that most of the reports of hardware are from first-day adopters, luminaries, bitcoin insiders, or opinion makers such as bloggers.  I may be wrong in that, but if so, someone could easily show a list of "I got mine" posts from "just folks."

Nothing you state changes the perception of a company with serious cash flow problems.  As some one posts here, without the need for tin foil hat, it is very plausible that the announced chip sales is an attempt to get sufficient pre-sale capital to pay for the shipment of production chips. 

There is, in the real world, something termed counterparty risk.  I means the risk that the other side of your transaction either fails to deliver, or, more precisely, fails.  About ten days ago, there was stress in the Chinese banking system, and the overnight bank-to-bank lending rate hit 25%!  The reason was simply a deep concern that one or more large banks might be on the brink of failure.  None did, not surprisingly, and the market unfroze again. 

There is, here, with BFL, very well delineated counterparty risk; anyone can see it.  From this, detractors will extrapolate to ruin, supporters will explain and excuse the actions causing that perception.  The perception, though, is real enough.  If there is, in fact, a new restriction on refunds, some will see that as a defense against a "run", which will only add to the perceived risk.     

I agree with everything you posted except for the part I highlighted in bold. I used to think anyone could see if one was kind enough to connect the dots for them. However, confirmation bias is a very powerful effect, and people will cling to their original lines of thinking to the point of refusing to read content that could prove them wrong. It is baffling to witness in others, but I guess it is just part of the human condition.

[Syke]

The website now says at checkout that all sales are final.

The website has always said that, but they have stated time and time again to not worry about that. They will refund anyone. Well, Inaba lied. Again.

[MPOE-PR]

https://forums.butterflylabs.com/bfl-forum-miscellaneous/3521-bfl-doesnt-refund-anymore.html

He got his, now the rest can all go fuck yourselves.

What a motherfuckin' piece of shit. It's a shame I didn't see this coming otherwise I would have joined the choir and warned you all.

The end is nigh!

Time perhaps to register sonny-vleisides.com to go with josh-zerlan.com?

I agree with everything you posted except for the part I highlighted in bold. I used to think anyone could see if one was kind enough to connect the dots for them. However, confirmation bias is a very powerful effect, and people will cling to their original lines of thinking to the point of refusing to read content that could prove them wrong. It is baffling to witness in others, but I guess it is just part of the human condition.

Point in case, consider this bit from some Surda guy who really really thinks he should be taken seriously:

I'm unsubscribing this RSS feed, I thought I might learn something but it doesn't look that way.

The actual reason? It became unnervingly clear other people are aware he's being stupid and why. Which is not something the random muppet with delusions of self importance can tolerate too well.