Black Arrow 28nm 100Ghash Bitcoin ASIC from $0.49/GH/s

[ChuckBuck]

I was a bit of an apologist in the beginning, just waiting for any good news from this outfit.

If there's any trace of a delay again in next couple weeks, I'll have to line up for a refund like everyone else.

Sucks, because Black Arrow had their window of opportunity in February.  Truth is they don't even have a working prototype this late stage of the game.

We'll see what the next production update gives us...

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[raskul]

Is shipping by approximately five weeks from now still a realistic goal?

depends how you look at it. I have 170GH here and i'm now mining alt SHA coins - and dumping them. I'm making more BTC selling them early, than if I were to mine BTC (which I now only do via cloudhashing).

I guess congratulations?

I wouldn't go as far to celebrate just yet... it's a hobby, that's all.

[bennybong]

Has anyone actually received a BTC refund then? They have even opened my 2 support tickets...

[PurpleDino]

Has anyone actually received a BTC refund then? They have even opened my 2 support tickets...

From BA no, from Minersource yes.

[bennybong]

Has anyone actually received a BTC refund then? They have even opened my 2 support tickets...

From BA no, from Minersource yes.

Well that sucks

[rokshis]

Hello, bobsag, please confirm my refund request. I wrote you to pm, to your thread. Cant get response, so writing here too.

[bittymymitty]

Reading the status updates.. just feels like they're jerking us around.  Just waiting for the other shoe to drop with their email saying they're delayed another month or two because some random part that no serious miner cares about is not 100% to their standards.  They don't seem to be in any rush since its other people's money.  At this point I'd rather them start buying parts from bitmain and ship that, I'd at least have something I can mine with.

[bennybong]

Got a reply this morning:

Dear Ben,

We are sorry to hear that you do not wish to continue with your order. As your order has already been put in production it is difficult for us to issue you with a refund. However, we do not want to make anyone unhappy therefore we will do our best to refund your money by moving your order to a new customer.

We trust that Bitcoin mining will be profitable in May as well or all the Bitcoin mining will stop. The online profitability calculators are wrong just because nobody in the right mind will keep doubling the hashrate of the network every month if they are loosing money. The hashrate of the network will keep growing only if the bitcoin value goes up again. For this reason and because we provide the lowest prices possible we do not think that our miners will have a negative return of investment. However, we understand that you might not agree with us and we'll offer you the refund if you decide to go ahead with it.

We understand that the 25% extra mining power is not something that will consider as right compensation for the delay.
We improved our compensation offer - to conditions below.
* 25% of your purchased hashing power, free of charge, from our Rent-Some-Minions cloud program for 6 months.
* 10% discount from for all Black Arrow ASIC products which you will purchase from us. The discount will be valid for any further
purchases for the next 22 months (until the end of 2015).

If you wish to proceed with the refund, please understand and agree with the following:
1. A refund request is final. We will not accept to reinstante your order if you change your mind later.
2. As per agreed terms and conditions of sale, we are not obliged to issue you with a refund and this delay is acceptable. However, we are doing our best to keep everyone happy and we'll issue the refund.
3. To cover time used to refund this order, for each transfer needed to be made, we will charge 50 USD and all 3rd party fees. In some cases, we might also need to charge a further 30 USD handling fee for each incorrect or incomplete transfer information provided by the customer.

If you have paid in fiat (USD/EUR/GBP etc) please note that we cannot refund you right now. Please provide us with your complete bank details and we will be doing our best to send your money back within 1 month.
BTC refunds are available sooner and we acknowledge your BTC Wallet that you have already provided.

Please let us know if you wish to continue with this refund and feel free to contact us anytime for further questions, thank you.

Sincerely,
Sylvia

I have responded and will update her when I recieve my refund.

[heslo]

This $50 fee to cover the "time taken" for a refund is bullshit. If anything you should be getting paid an extra $50 for being screwed around for so long.

I'm gonna have a long hard think this weekend but as it stands at the moment, come Monday, I too will be requesting a refund

[ChuckBuck]

Well said, Pentax.

It still boggles my mind that in the face of this 3 month delay, they still had the audacity to start a scrypt miner project with their customers money...

Soon to be BFL Junior.

[K1773R]

Well said, Pentax.

It still boggles my mind that in the face of this 3 month delay, they still had the audacity to start a scrypt miner project with their customers money...

Soon to be BFL Junior.

Soon? BFL atleast did some refunds...

[ChuckBuck]

Well said, Pentax.

It still boggles my mind that in the face of this 3 month delay, they still had the audacity to start a scrypt miner project with their customers money...

Soon to be BFL Junior.

Soon? BFL atleast did some refunds...

Believe alot of the Minersource refund requests have been processed, although the BA ones(ironically) have been very sketchy.

Just want to see the next couple of updates first before I personally make a decision to kick or stick.

[breakingcode]

Thank you for the update Black Arrow. This is nice specificity and transparency.

Unfortunately difficulty increases are killing the positive ROI on these. I hope you revisit your compensation program when you get closer to delivery.

Lets phrase that as a question and see if we get an answer...

BA, since you originally promised customers that if they did not hit a positive ROI within 6 months, and now you are telling us you will have extra miners and a brand new facility to house them in for the expansion of the Rent a Minion program, is there a plan to revisit the compensation package to make your customers happy?

Positive ROI on what terms, USD or BTC, whatever currency they paid in?
I am thinking this could turn into big mess quickly.

The only thing people are going to measure against is "What would I have today if you had delivered on time" That's the line in the sand, be it in BTC, or in USD. You can't really say "what if I would have had your miner and exchanged BTC low on day 4 and then sold high on day 16 of not having it" b/c that's all 100% theoretical. What you can say for a fact is, if I got this on time I would now have X BTC. Or I could cash them out today for X USD. And even that scenario works against us as the price has been dropping, but it's the only real measure I can think of that isn't complete theory math.

I personally would like to see a menu of compensation packages to choose from comprised of different ratios/combos of:
A. Discounts on scrypt hardware (which is great for BA b/c they're making this stuff, so it's a win for them)
B. Time on Farm hashing
C. More hashing hardware. If profits are there,.. eventually throw me an X1 or some minions along with my X3.
D. Pool payouts (Setup a "Founder" pool that does nothing but kick some coins back to gen1 "Founder" orders forever) Am I wrong in assuming everyone would like a 100% constant free trickle of small amounts as an option? (this would allow BA to "be the good guys" and turn the amounts up/down as their profitability allows.) Sell it as a "share" that we can buy or sell from each other within the pool and let BA take a per trade comission like some of the new profit share pools do. Again,..win/win.
And yes,.. I sent all this to BA as part of their survey.

Considering that you're only compensating the people who initially funded the effort g1'ers, (assuming BA sales continue and they don't botch another pre-order) at some point, it's going to be a trivial thing to "pay off" or even god forbid "overcompensate" those people for their investment.

That's the one thing that I haven't seen any mining hardware mfg do on their pre-orders,.. Lay it out like it is and say "Hey,.. without your amazing willingness to fund/support a new (risky) product,... We wouldn't be here,..so YOU deserve a reward,. for that alone if nothing else. But I guess I'm biased, I've run several startups and I give away the lion's share in order to fund the next big project every time, because I know it's the people who "take the leap" with you, that deserve a huge part of the credit for any/all success.

[PurpleDino]

That's the one thing that I haven't seen any mining hardware mfg do on their pre-orders,.. Lay it out like it is and say "Hey,.. without your amazing willingness to fund/support a new (risky) product,... We wouldn't be here,..so YOU deserve a reward,. for that alone if nothing else. But I guess I'm biased, I've run several startups and I give away the lion's share in order to fund the next big project every time, because I know it's the people who "take the leap" with you, that deserve a huge part of the credit for any/all success.

This is a very sensible way to go about business and one that is terribly lacking in the world of crypto currency. Call it business savvy, karma or whatever you want, but it is going to make your future business endeavours so much easier - and likely more fruitful too.

[sorehammer]

So how do you get Minersource to refund you, I have 2 X1's on batch 2 but every time I ask to shift to my order to a antminer they say not at this time sorry, and when i ask to cancel they don't reply not good.

[bobsag3]

So how do you get Minersource to refund you, I have 2 X1's on batch 2 but every time I ask to shift to my order to a antminer they say not at this time sorry, and when i ask to cancel they don't reply not good.

batch 2 orders are not eligible for refund yet as they were technically not effected by the delay.

[sorehammer]

You see that is a reply that explains the situation not just a sort of fob you off comment. So if they are delayed again past the 15th will batch 2 then be able to be refunded.

[DallasMiner]

batch 2 orders are not eligible for refund yet as they were technically not effected by the delay.

Most jurisdictions in the US provide a rather stringent set of consumer protection laws. Those are what decide whether customers are eligible for refunds, not you.

Being that MinerSource is located in Denver, Colorado, it took only a couple minutes of Googling to find all the state (and local) consumer protection agencies for Denver.  While one of them forcing a refund is (probably) a bit unlikely, it's still the kind of attention that many businesses just don't want to to have to deal with, and a headache all around.

Not to mention that people in other US jurisdictions that placed orders may have their own recourse options available.  I'm not saying that anyone can,should, or will ask for governmental or legal intervention, but a blanket statement that a large number of orders (that haven't shipped yet) aren't eligible for refunds is rarely a good way to conduct business.

[jimmothy]

batch 2 orders are not eligible for refund yet as they were technically not effected by the delay.

Most jurisdictions in the US provide a rather stringent set of consumer protection laws. Those are what decide whether customers are eligible for refunds, not you.

Being that MinerSource is located in Denver, Colorado, it took only a couple minutes of Googling to find all the state (and local) consumer protection agencies for Denver.  While one of them forcing a refund is (probably) a bit unlikely, it's still the kind of attention that many businesses just don't want to to have to deal with, and a headache all around.

Not to mention that people in other US jurisdictions that placed orders may have their own recourse options available.  I'm not saying that anyone can,should, or will ask for governmental or legal intervention, but a blanket statement that a large number of orders (that haven't shipped yet) aren't eligible for refunds is rarely a good way to conduct business.

Minersource is issuing refunds.

[DallasMiner]

Minersource is issuing refunds.

Except where they said Batch 2 isn't eligible. And it appears several of us have contacted them for refunds and been given a flat "no".