Let me preface this statement about Avalon & BFL for those that are new to the co-op, I'll help anyone that asks for my help or opinion on this forum. Doesn't matter if they're a competitor here or IRL. Not to toot my horn but I'm involved in 3 education based volunteer community projects in Kauai schools & my IT job is literally to keep modern Research Labs running (oh & go design some stuff when neat projects come up), so helping others comes naturally to me.
Based on the words *and* actions of the public faces of both companies I refuse to have anything to do with Avalon and BFL Group Buys. I find the words and actions of both Sr. company officers here and on BFL's forums to be completely amateurish for Customer Service in *any* industry, derogatory, insensitive, and just plain hurtful. I'll have nothing to do with either company as long as they're the public faces and primary actors for both companies. They may make fine products. They may make the best products in the near future. Still won't have anything to do w/ 2 companies that caused so much anguish and distress among their *already paid* customers.
I'm an empath. Often, I literally *feel* the distress of others & have my whole life, as if it was my own. Yup, always been a softie but this softie has ridden 25' face waves as a teen, and still surfs, and skates (well more like bombs hills and mountains w/ a bunch of diff. land boards). BTW, we call that 25' wave: 10-12' Hawaiian (AKA as "the macho" scale) around here.
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So back to my phone call to HashFast's VP Marketing & Sales, John S.: I called him because I was trying to secure a 2nd Sierra via 50%-ish deposits for 2 units, 1 w/ MPP (R3), and 1 without (R4) at Flash Sale pricing. Let's just say that it took a while to resolve our R1 order (they even overcharged me & kept it for almost 1.5-2 weeks) so I felt like they owed me. Plus, I can be slightly persuasive.
First off, he said he wasn't pissed off at me at all. Previously, I had mentioned in a PM that HashFast only got 4 votes in the Sept. ASIC miners poll I host (
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=291775.0 Yup, I told him that) but I still sold a 2nd HashFast miner (well, I was approached w/ a buyout offer from an online friend here, but the result's the same). John said it really takes a lot to get him upset. He's been in marketing for a while, and he says this is the most welcoming market he's ever seen! It helps that they're launching on the heels of bad news from Avalon and BFL, with a huge market void in the price range/performance they had released at (as far as product availability).
John said HF is *not* catering to the hobbyist with Sierras; that's what Baby Jets are for. He didn't know that he was talking to someone that gets to help design custom servers (even proprietary ones) and is a server monkey, so I already knew that what w/ that 2RU rackmount profile meant. He said that while they're a professional company, they're a small start-up that runs very lean. He mentioned that they released the lowest priced unit that they possibly could at the time with the Baby Jet. I said that their customers appreciate it and welcome their product launch and prices.
I mentioned that GBCs such as myself appreciate the prices but that most people can't afford even the cheapest HF unit & that Coordinators such as myself help broaden HashFast's reach, appeal, and accessibility to the average miner, and that my co-op offers at-cost pricing to buyers & that we included UPS/Batt. requisitions into our share prices (to keep BTC flowing during 20-30 minute outages, sags, spikes); essentially, I was helping them out in market for free, at much, much lower price points - three, even two digits for this GB - then they can offer for the foreseeable future. So, that's how we ended up w/ a R4 miner with Flash Sale pricing through the end of the week.
As a small company he said that the stringent CC regulations and the risk of too many chargebacks sinking their company dissuaded them from CC sales. John said that people could do pre-orders which would be used for work and hardware acquisitions, and they could refund them right before shipment (perhaps people selling pre-orders and bailing the orders?) which would sink them at this point if that were to happen. He also mentioned that they looked at BTC escrow but couldn't find anything that could help them that was insured to the levels they need.
I asked him about the 1RU controller for the Sierra & mentioned there was no pricing or product specs for this. He said any cheap 1RU unit would work as long as there were lots of USB ports.
He said a Pi (which ships w/ their Baby Jet) could even run a Sierra provided you had (Pi compatible) USB port expanders w/ their own power adapter since Pis don't put out enough oomph (that's a technical term in electronics and automobiles). I have 1 Pi ready to go I was going to ship to Bob before he gets the Sierra miners he's hosting for us. BTW, John's in *sales* so don't hold him to the Pi being able to control a Sierra as gospel.
I also gave him my full name because he'll need it for the buyout we've scheduled for Order 616. I sent HF the links related to the R2 buyout; to "prime the pump." Then, I followed up with emails confirming the things we talked about.
As for John S.: I found him to be engaging, level headed, & while I could tell he was busy I didn't feel rushed in covering questions I had related to various co-op GB Rounds. We laughed about how simple this is compared to our past experiences. I mentioned having to deal with panicking Project Managers in charge of billions of dollars of funding when I used to work at PMRF and he laughed about how friendly everyone was, and hasn't found his customers to be difficult to deal with at all.
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