Possible to get refund from BFL? (paid via Bitcoin)

[greyhawk]

it's perfectly possible to get a BTC refund

Just contact their support asking to cancel your order, you'll get the refund within 3-4 days (or it was so for me atleast)

Your refund was in May. It is August now. The linear passage of time changes things.

[baloo_kiev]

Got a reply from BFL asking my BTC address for refund.

[zuerdemon]

That said, you should be able to get a refund from BFL in USD.

Huh??

He mean they will convert the USD value of the product you bought to BTC based on current exchange rate if you want to request BTC refund

[k9quaint]

That said, you should be able to get a refund from BFL in USD.

Huh??

He mean they will convert the USD value of the product you bought to BTC based on current exchange rate if you want to request BTC refund

Unless the exchange rate has fallen since then. 
Then I bet they only return how many Bitcoin he paid.

[litecoin_messiah]

Got a reply from BFL asking my BTC address for refund.

Don't worry, they have the miners in stock and could switch the one they built with your money on for a few hours and send you your refund

[baloo_kiev]

Received the coins. It took 8 days since my first email to them. Expected this to be much harder.

P.S. Just to make it clear. They refunded the same amount in USD which I had paid. The amount of BTC I received is essentially different from what I paid.

[Flying Hellfish]

Received the coins. It took 8 days since my first email to them. Expected this to be much harder.

Was there any correspondence from BFL you could share with us?  It is weird that they seemingly so easily gave you a BTC refund after they have been publicly stating for a few months now no refunds will be honoured.  I am curious why you are the only non PP customer I have seen recently get a refund.

[Syke]

Received the coins. It took 8 days since my first email to them. Expected this to be much harder.

Was there any correspondence from BFL you could share with us?  It is weird that they seemingly so easily gave you a BTC refund after they have been publicly stating for a few months now no refunds will be honoured.  I am curious why you are the only non PP customer I have seen recently get a refund.

It might have to do with his AG and BBB filed complaints.

[Paladin69]

Many more people should become Bitcoin Foundation members.  Their hidden forums seem to have many professional people willing to aid in legal assistance, tax assistance, or point you in the right direction.

[Xian01]

Many more people should become Bitcoin Foundation members.  Their hidden forums seem to have many professional people willing to aid in legal assistance, tax assistance, or point you in the right direction.

 https://bitcoinfoundation.org/support

 Good idea. Will look into membership this evening.

[baloo_kiev]

Received the coins. It took 8 days since my first email to them. Expected this to be much harder.

Was there any correspondence from BFL you could share with us?  It is weird that they seemingly so easily gave you a BTC refund after they have been publicly stating for a few months now no refunds will be honoured.  I am curious why you are the only non PP customer I have seen recently get a refund.

Nothing special in the correspondence. They just asked for BTC address, then told that they have requested BitPay to process my refund, and then I received the coins. Maybe that was so easy because I only had 1 Jalapeno. Anyway, their statement of "sales final" doesn't apply in case of several months of not delivering and they know it.

[Flying Hellfish]

Anyway, their statement of "sales final" doesn't apply in case of several months of not delivering and they know it.

Agree 100%

What I am wondering is:

-Did BFL get enough pressure (or finally wake the fuck up) and are starting to honour refunds and they are trying to keep it as quite as possible to stem the flow so to speak (ya unlikely I know but I have to consider it as possible)
-Did your pressure aid in getting you only a refund (did you file a complaint with any government agencies?)
-Was this a mistake or something like that on BFL's part

[baloo_kiev]

Anyway, their statement of "sales final" doesn't apply in case of several months of not delivering and they know it.

Agree 100%

What I am wondering is:

-Did BFL get enough pressure (or finally wake the fuck up) and are starting to honour refunds and they are trying to keep it as quite as possible to stem the flow so to speak (ya unlikely I know but I have to consider it as possible)
-Did your pressure aid in getting you only a refund (did you file a complaint with any government agencies?)
-Was this a mistake or something like that on BFL's part

I told them in my first email that I was going to file complaints and I actually did it to BBB and Attorney General (see my above posts) but I don't think it worked so fast (I filed them on Sunday I think).
At the BBB site http://www.bbb.org/kansas-city/Business-Reviews/electronic-equipment-and-supplies-wholesale-and-manufacturers/bf-labs-inc-in-overland-park-ks-1000002011/complaints, there were already 7 complaints before me.
I don't think refund was their mistake because when running a multi-million dollar company, you would definitely refund those $187 instead of dealing with another BBB complaint.

[bcp19]

That said, you should be able to get a refund from BFL in USD.

Huh??

He mean they will convert the USD value of the product you bought to BTC based on current exchange rate if you want to request BTC refund

Unless the exchange rate has fallen since then. 
Then I bet they only return how many Bitcoin he paid.

Clueless.  BFL takes BTC payments through Bitpay which means whatever coins are immediately converted to USD and sent to them.  BFL does not have a storage wallet they keep BTC in, they only have the USD.  If you had bought in May when BTC was $100-120 and refunded in Aug when BTC hit $70 you'd have done well.

[k9quaint]

That said, you should be able to get a refund from BFL in USD.

Huh??

He mean they will convert the USD value of the product you bought to BTC based on current exchange rate if you want to request BTC refund

Unless the exchange rate has fallen since then. 
Then I bet they only return how many Bitcoin he paid.

Clueless.  BFL takes BTC payments through Bitpay which means whatever coins are immediately converted to USD and sent to them.  BFL does not have a storage wallet they keep BTC in, they only have the USD.  If you had bought in May when BTC was $100-120 and refunded in Aug when BTC hit $70 you'd have done well.

This has already been debunked thoroughly. Bitpay will only convert the bitcoins if the merchant instructs them to. BFL could have kept all of their payments in Bitcoin without converting any of them, which they should have in case they needed to refund them.

The original thread:

BFL did not receive bitcoins for preorders.  BFL received USD and allowed customers to exchange BTC for USD using BitPay for their own convenience.

Customers paid in BTC. Bitpay acted on behalf of BFL (like a bank or credit card company would) to receive that BTC. What BFL instructed Bitpay to do with that BTC after receiving it is BFL's business. If BFL received USD from Bitpay, then it was only because BFL instructed Bitpay to convert the BTC into USD.

When a customer placed an order they immediately exchanged their BTC for USD and used that USD to pay for the order.  This is exactly the same as if you sold bitcoins for cash, deposited cash into your bank account, then used your debit card to pay for the preorder, except that it is much much easier and quicker.  BFL did not gamble on any currency, they did exactly the opposite.  

You clearly did not read the bitpay faq here: https://bitpay.com/faq
Bitpay does what the merchant instructs with the funds. If BFL wanted the BTC so they could escrow it and refund it like they claimed to, then Bitpay would have sent them BTC. If BFL wanted to instead spend that BTC on operations and development, then Bitpay would have converted it to USD for them.

From the bitpay faq: https://bitpay.com/faq
How do I get paid?
Merchants choosing to keep the bitcoins can be anywhere in the world. Merchants in some countries can choose to receive a direct deposit into their bank account.

When do I get paid?
We prefer to send one payment to every merchant each day, which clears out their balance with BitPay. This prevents balances from accumulating and discourages hackers. Payments to bank accounts are made per business day. Payments in bitcoins are sent to the bitcoin address of your choice, at least once per calendar day.

[ordy]

Received the coins. It took 8 days since my first email to them. Expected this to be much harder.

Was there any correspondence from BFL you could share with us?  It is weird that they seemingly so easily gave you a BTC refund after they have been publicly stating for a few months now no refunds will be honoured.  I am curious why you are the only non PP customer I have seen recently get a refund.

It might have to do with his AG and BBB filed complaints.

prolly that coupled with their fresh cash from new monarch 'customers'.

[Syke]

I told them in my first email that I was going to file complaints and I actually did it to BBB and Attorney General (see my above posts) but I don't think it worked so fast (I filed them on Sunday I think).
At the BBB site http://www.bbb.org/kansas-city/Business-Reviews/electronic-equipment-and-supplies-wholesale-and-manufacturers/bf-labs-inc-in-overland-park-ks-1000002011/complaints, there were already 7 complaints before me.

Good to see BFL with the BBB rating they deserve.

[k9quaint]

I told them in my first email that I was going to file complaints and I actually did it to BBB and Attorney General (see my above posts) but I don't think it worked so fast (I filed them on Sunday I think).
At the BBB site http://www.bbb.org/kansas-city/Business-Reviews/electronic-equipment-and-supplies-wholesale-and-manufacturers/bf-labs-inc-in-overland-park-ks-1000002011/complaints, there were already 7 complaints before me.

Good to see BFL with the BBB rating they deserve.

There needs to be a G.

[bcp19]

Clueless.  BFL takes BTC payments through Bitpay which means whatever coins are immediately converted to USD and sent to them.  BFL does not have a storage wallet they keep BTC in, they only have the USD.  If you had bought in May when BTC was $100-120 and refunded in Aug when BTC hit $70 you'd have done well.

This has already been debunked thoroughly. Bitpay will only convert the bitcoins if the merchant instructs them to. BFL could have kept all of their payments in Bitcoin without converting any of them, which they should have in case they needed to refund them.

Ah yes, here's the old hindsight is 20/20 routine.  Obviously they kept all the BTC they were ever paid without ever converting it into USD cause they KNEW the price was going to spike.      

I supposed they also kept all the rubles and francs and pounds and marks and yen they were paid without converting them either, IN CASE THEY HAD TO REFUND THEM AS WELL.

Businesses cannot afford to hold onto a commodity (Yep, I said commodity and not currency) like Bitcoin due to it's volatile nature.  No business wanting to keep it's doors open would be that stupid.  Sure, you have the luxury now of saying "BUT!  See how stupid they were if they didn't hold any?!?!?" cause you KNOW what happened.  BTC spiked back in 2011 at over $30 and then 6 months later it was $3.  The price had only recovered to $5-$6 by the time BFL started taking preorders.  Maybe you would be willing to take a chance at losing 1/2 your money, but that would be suicide for a business.  In addition, your logic doesn't hold water.  Let's get rediculous and say only 1/5 of all orders were paid for by BTC and BFL hedged and kept 10% of all the BTC and converted the rest to USD for their operating budget.  Now we have to step into speculation, which I dislike doing, but it's the only option I have with no hard data.  Using http://bfl.ptz.ro/ as a guideline, we can see 4951 orders totalling $10mil, which is unrealistic to begin with since it's based on the original pricing of the miners which almost doubled around April.  These ~5000 orders represent only 7% of potential orders.  49 of these 'known'(I use ' ' because trust is vague since people could post complete BS on here) orders were Day 1.  10 Mini-rig, 90 Singles, 8 Little Singles and 36 Jalapenos 'KNOWN' to be ordered day 1 and this could be 1/1 to 1/6 of actual day one orders..  $298,990 + $224,910 + $9,968 + $5,364.  $539,232 * 1/5 * 1/10 = $10,784 or ~1600-1800BTC.  2% is an extremely small amount to keep and we're seeing a minimal stash being worth $160k-180k from only a percentage of Day 1 orders, of which there could be 2-5 times as many of.  By December over 14000 potential orders had been placed.  88 'known' minirigs have been ordered.  This is from 1200 of a possible 14000 orders.  BTC price end of Dec is around $13.5, so lets use that even though it shorts us on BTC.  88 * $29.899 = $2,631, 112 * 2% = 52,622.24 / 13.5 = 3897 BTC.  In todays market almost half a million dollars if they had only kept 2% of total sales as BTC from 'known' minirigs orders from Jun - Dec.  You have to at least doublt that to account for the other 'known' products.  And this is from only 10% of the potential orders made!  That's potentiallly 100,000BTC from only keeping 2% of sales from Jun through Dec as BTC.

April 5th BFL raises prices while BTC value is climbing.  April 10th BTC tops $250 before plummeting to $80, climbs back above $150, drops below 100, climbs again to 130.  Yea, let's ride the freaking roller coaster with 10's of millions of dollars FROM ONLY 2% OF SALES!

See, this is where it makes absolutely no sense to me... After receiving a potential 12,000 orders in March while BTC prices climbed from $20 to $60 and beyond, tripling the value BFLs BTC holdings in a single month, they double the price on all units.

We just became multimillionaires from holding onto a small percentage of all sales as BTC and we're so freaking greedy we stick it to the customers.

Dude, believe in your fantasies.  I just don't see it.

[k9quaint]

Clueless.  BFL takes BTC payments through Bitpay which means whatever coins are immediately converted to USD and sent to them.  BFL does not have a storage wallet they keep BTC in, they only have the USD.  If you had bought in May when BTC was $100-120 and refunded in Aug when BTC hit $70 you'd have done well.

This has already been debunked thoroughly. Bitpay will only convert the bitcoins if the merchant instructs them to. BFL could have kept all of their payments in Bitcoin without converting any of them, which they should have in case they needed to refund them.

Ah yes, here's the old hindsight is 20/20 routine.  Obviously they kept all the BTC they were ever paid without ever converting it into USD cause they KNEW the price was going to spike.      

I supposed they also kept all the rubles and francs and pounds and marks and yen they were paid without converting them either, IN CASE THEY HAD TO REFUND THEM AS WELL.

Paypal, Amazon, Ebay, and many other companies give you back exactly what you put in when you ask for a refund. That is what is common business practice.

Businesses cannot afford to hold onto a commodity (Yep, I said commodity and not currency) like Bitcoin due to it's volatile nature. <snip>stuff about hedging risks</snip>

Businesses should not hold on to Bitcoin yes. But scams would. Why else would BFL ask for a 100% deposit yet claim they would not spend the pre-order money?
If they were not going to spend it, but instead hold it, then yes they should assume the asset risk. Instead, they pushed that off on their customers because most of them don't have the faintest clue what proper business behavior looks like

April 5th BFL raises prices while BTC value is climbing.  April 10th BTC tops $250 before plummeting to $80, climbs back above $150, drops below 100, climbs again to 130.  Yea, let's ride the freaking roller coaster with 10's of millions of dollars FROM ONLY 2% OF SALES!

If BFL didn't need the money like they claimed, they could have taken a 10% deposit and lessen their commodity risk. It isn't the customers fault that BFL was faced with 12 months of currency risk. They shouldn't have to pay that toll as well.

See, this is where it makes absolutely no sense to me... After receiving a potential 12,000 orders in March while BTC prices climbed from $20 to $60 and beyond, tripling the value BFLs BTC holdings in a single month, they double the price on all units.

We just became multimillionaires from holding onto a small percentage of all sales as BTC and we're so freaking greedy we stick it to the customers.

Dude, believe in your fantasies.  I just don't see it.

I am not saying BFL did keep all the BTC, I am saying that BFL should have and could have (since they claimed they were escrowing pre-order funds)
If they set the precedent that someone could get all their BTC back, every single person who pre-ordered with BTC in 2012 would ask for a refund. BFL would go out of business if they actually offered to make their customers whole. However, that is the risk they took by taking 100% deposits and being late by 10 months.

Or BFL could have just been upfront and said "all refunds to be paid in USD because we are converting BTC to USD and spending it on development". Strangely, BFL has begun refunding people who paid in BTC with BTC. I guess that federal judge declaring that BTC was money put the fear of legal reprisal into them. Up till now, they just told you to fuck off if you paid with BTC.