Gathering funds for legal action against HashFast (troll-free)

[freethink2013]

My opinion is that HashFast is untrustworthy. They represented something overly optimistic to make more sales, but put their actual expectations into the contract. My advice is to seek your refund per this thread:

http://www.justanswer.com/consumer-protection-law/82mir-made-pre-order-online-product-august-9-2013.html

It is probable that you will only get the dollar amount of the Bitcoins you paid.

Thank you for the link. I will crosspost your quote in my thread if you don't mind.

^^ I've yet to read the link in its whole and it could be only useless ad hoc created content to rank high on google, for what i understood so far. Anyway, i will post it here.

I've used justanswer.com before and they are genuine 'experts' answering your questions.

[cedivad]

Just to clarify, it's "lied" to "laid".

Thanks, i even tried to look it up before. Makes sense.

[cedivad]

As projected, the mid november delivery dateline was only the last lie and as per last announcement, we are now looking at a mid december timeline. That's 15 days before the refund timeline, that was promised to be of the same btc amount of our purchases. We will probably see how much they lied to us on that point too, if they fail to deliver by the end of the year and we will ask for a refund. (and btc will be at 500$).

They will start refunding in fiat sometime in December.  Regardless, if they have the miners of not.  It makes a perfect business sense to do the refunds and mine or auction this production run in January.  They are protected by the contract you guys agreed to when you placed your orders.

They will be nothing you can do legally.

They lied. The whole time. There is a lot we can do legally.
And they cannot issue USD refunds, since that they always promised BTC refunds.

[cedivad]

Indeed, you are right. The product was priced in USD and so, we should only get an USD refund.
However, they always promised, several times here in the forum, that if refunds where to happen, they would have been of the original BTC amount.
Also, when an user of this forum went to visit them one week ago, they repeated that point. If refunds where to happen, they would have been for the original BTC amount.

So, while i completely agree with you that we are not gonna see BTC refunds, i'm awaiting for when they will issue USD refunds and they will have lied another time.

Now since the only payment option is in BTC Will I get the same ammount of BTC back should you fail to deliver by December 31st?

Orders are taken in BTC, in the unlikely event we get to refunds they will be given in BTC.

HashFast has completed logical and physical design, paid their NRE, taped-out a very complex chip in record-breaking time (over a month ago), and expects their TMSC wafers to be done next week.
Cointerra might have done some of those things, but we don't know.  In any case, Cointerra's chips won't be here for another two months, at best.

To summarize for the TL;DR crowd:
HashFast - chips done next week

Dear HF, Cointerra didn't ask 15$/GH for an October delivery. They are asking 3$/GH. Can you spot the difference? You lied knowing what you where doing, they are simply late.

[cedivad]

Also, please not with how much attention they fail to give a deadline for shipping the MPP, and they only talk about the "benefits", and how they are calculated. We all know that regardless of when you ship us the BJ, we would have to receive 4 times the hashrate anyway, at this point they are useless.

For those of you covered under the Miner Protection Program™ (https://hashfast.com/miner-protection-program/), this delay will not affect the starting point from which benefits are calculated. For First Batch Baby Jets, the start date of the program will be retroactive to October 30th. We want to make sure a delayed ship date does not reduce the value of the program.

[cedivad]

[...]So you can forget BTC refunds.

Again, i completely agree with you, but that doesn't change anything.
From my point of view, promising BTC refunds is just another way to prove how fake they are.

[fubly]

When will HF start shipping batch one.

How does the mpp work for me, as batch one customer?

[cedivad]

When will HF start shipping batch one.

Should be around the 15th of Dec.

How does the mpp work for me, as batch one customer?

You should get 4x the initial hashrate the first of Feb. However, there is no delivery deadline. It could be Feb 2015, and then we are screwed. Even a few weeks late would kill every chance of having a relative return.

[markm]

False advertising is not hearsay.

Actually I always had the impression that hearsay was when someone else claimed someone said or wrote something, not when the person actually did say it or write it themselves.

A poster by Pepsi corp claiming their cola cures cancer is false advertising; someone telling you they saw such a poster on the subway is hearsay. Or so I had always thought. I am not a lawyer though.

-MarkM-

EDIT: Oops, my bad, that should say such a poster might be false advertising; I don't actually know for a fact that Pepsi cola doesn't cure cancer... Just like we maybe don't yet know for a fact that they don't refund your bitcoins-paid...

[minternj]

However, there is no delivery deadline. It could be Feb 2015, and then we are screwed.

We've already been screwed. We've posted many questions that need to be addressed yet they waste time putting up a pic of the ceo holding the wafer that should have been here a month ago.

[arorts]

What are the chances of 100% bitcoin refund?

Zero. The purchase was denominated in USD.
But you can choose between a 100% USD refund and 10% of your initial BTC back.

(still looking for a valid consumer protection lawyer). You, "American", suggest me one you trust.

I think that's incorrect. It doesn't matter what currency it was denominated at. If you paid X amount of ***BTC*** then you get whatever amount and currency you paid with, so BTC in this case. If the actual payment was in dollars, then yes dollars should be the currency to employ but that was not the case.

[vokain]

Reneging on a contract = return of agreed upon exchange

In this case, bitcoins for a promise to deliver miners.  

This is a clear case of contract law violation when they changed the terms.

[Ytterbium]

What are the chances of 100% bitcoin refund?

Zero. The purchase was denominated in USD.
But you can choose between a 100% USD refund and 10% of your initial BTC back.

(still looking for a valid consumer protection lawyer). You, "American", suggest me one you trust.

I think that's incorrect. It doesn't matter what currency it was denominated at. If you paid X amount of ***BTC*** then you get whatever amount and currency you paid with, so BTC in this case. If the actual payment was in dollars, then yes dollars should be the currency to employ but that was not the case.

You get whatever the judge awards you.

[arorts]

What are the chances of 100% bitcoin refund?

Zero. The purchase was denominated in USD.
But you can choose between a 100% USD refund and 10% of your initial BTC back.

(still looking for a valid consumer protection lawyer). You, "American", suggest me one you trust.

I think that's incorrect. It doesn't matter what currency it was denominated at. If you paid X amount of ***BTC*** then you get whatever amount and currency you paid with, so BTC in this case. If the actual payment was in dollars, then yes dollars should be the currency to employ but that was not the case.

You get whatever the judge awards you.

"Judge"?? As if we didn't have ecommerce laws already?? It's not the first time that a customer demands a refund from a website using standard claim process irrespective of the what the exchange rate they based their payment. It's always about the currency they ultimately received from the customer. Apples in. Apples Out. That's it.

[cedivad]

Crosspost:

I receive a lot of questions via pm with persons interested to sue them, but everyone stops, due to laziness i think.

Well, they lied about the promised delivery time, they promised something that they knew would have never happen and we can easily prove that. I really don't see what else is needed.

I have money i want to trow away against HF. And arbitration looks like a dead track. Again, please, let's do something serious. (i can already visualise ice or their peers trolling me with this post, but who cares...). I want to have john to regret what he said about how many lawsuit bfl had. It's the minimum they deserve.

[Flying Hellfish]

Crosspost:

I think that regardless of everything, we should sue them and see what happens. I receive a lot of questions via pm with persons interested to sue them, but everyone stops, due to laziness i think.

Well, they lied about the promised delivery time, they promised something that they knew would have never happen and we can easily prove that. I really don't see what else is needed.

I have money i want to trow away against HF. And arbitration looks like a dead track. Again, please, let's do something serious. (i can already visualise ice or their peers trolling me with this post, but who cares...). I want to have john to regret what he said about how many lawsuit bfl had. It's the minimum they deserve.

Have you talked to an attorney in your home country? 

Not sure how much you have tied up with HF or how much your willing to waste on chasing them, but shouldn't you seek legal advice first from a legal expert in your country.  Perhaps a quick consultation with a lawyer locally may yield some help or at least a base understanding of what the next step might be.

[nwfella]

There isn't a single piece of mining hardware that you can currently purchase (in-hand or pre-order) that will ROI (in it's usable lifetime) if measured exclusively in BTC imho.

*If you think your going to get rich quick mining, might want to re-evaluate whatever ended up leading you to draw that conclusion.

But again, true ROI can only be measured if one takes into account whatever small part they played in supporting the BTC network while they could (it's what we can do for our children that counts)!