Did BFL mine with my unit for 3 weeks before shipping it to me?

[labsbitforum]

Got my BFL 60GH/s single on Monday.  Was disappointed to find that it only does 56GH/s.  Tried better power supply, bfgminer, cgminer, windows, ubuntu, etc no luck.  Looking at the per chip stats in bfgminer I can see all cores are functional just not very good hashers.  The second group of 8 cores 0i-0p was a lot worse.  I saw a few others said theirs had a loose heatsink so I decided to open the thing up to verify both were tight.

First thing I noticed is it had a fair amount of dust for only running for a couple days.  Then on the bottom of the PCB I found a sticker that said:
Rec Date Sep 27
Build Date 9/28

My unit shipped out from BFL on 10/19

So did they mine with it for 3 weeks or do you think they sent me a used one?  Anyone else know their dates?

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[jayeeyee]

Most likely answer: YES.  It's well known BFL mined using customer hardware as a "burn-in/testing" process.

[philips]

It is a well known accusation. Could be that the PCB was build earlier and nothing more.

[Inaba]

Most likely answer: YES.  It's well known BFL mined using customer hardware as a "burn-in/testing" process.

Of course this is an outright lie, so as long as you understand that jayeeyee is lying, you can believe whatever you want.

[Xian01]

Most likely answer: YES.  It's well known BFL mined using customer hardware as a "burn-in/testing" process.

Of course this is an outright lie, so as long as you understand that jayeeyee is lying, you can believe whatever you want.

 So long as you understand that Inaba is lying consistently mistaking, you can believe whatever you want.

 *smootch*

[labsbitforum]

Really didn’t intend to call Josh out and start a back and forth mudslinging event.  The forum is full of those and they only add noise at this point.  I honestly was wondering why the 3 week difference between build date and ship.  Did others have the same gap between build date and ship date?

Josh, as long as you have joined the conversation I have to ask.  Does BFL mine or do you just make mining equipment?  Why would my unit have a 3 week gap between build and ship?

Thank you,

[Inaba]

We just build equipment and ship it out as fast as it's built.  For your specific question, I have no idea... the most likely scenario is the unit has a different MOSFET and was shelved until we got a new firmware rev that addressed a heat issue with those specific MOSFETs, at which point it was pulled off the shelf, reflashed, retested and sent out. 

It could be any number of other scenarios, but what is definitely isn't is BFL holding equipment back and mining with it.  Every unit we manufacture is shipped within ~24 hours of it being assembled, sometimes a bit longer, depending on when it goes onto the burn-in rack, but no more than 48 hours.

[labsbitforum]

Thanks Josh

[jelin1984]

Buy a chili board

[mruiter]

Most likely answer: YES.  It's well known BFL mined using customer hardware as a "burn-in/testing" process.

Of course this is an outright lie, so as long as you understand that jayeeyee is lying, you can believe whatever you want.

Most of us don't think so. BFL is doing mining with our stuf, ore else they would be lying again.
They called in burn-in , most people call it mining. Maybee the unit was just a refubished rma one.
But whatever.

Mining with BFL stuff isn't make any profit for more then a month now. There just air heaters
So why , o why please tell me would they mine with them there ROI is already made when they got youre money some long time ago....

BFL is lying in one constant stream of messages. So don't shoot the people , we don't ever gone trust scammy lying and money stealing BFL anymore

Hope they die a painfull death.

[ScaryHash]

BFL always tells the truth, come on, everybody knows that.

It just takes 2 weeks (TM) to come out.

/sarc off

By the way, where are my fucking Jalepenos that I ordered 6 months ago?

[southerngentuk]

So did they mine with it for 3 weeks or do you think they sent me a used one?  Anyone else know their dates?

I don't think so.  Too much hassle for what is worth.  I think they are too busy pushing the current gen products out of the door before they become completely worthless.  Nobody is ordering BFL products (with exception of Monarch), they are worth much less than their sticker price.

I'd worry about order cancellations.  I'd definitely not mine with customer products, I'd want to get rid of them asap before customers cancel them and ask for refunds.

  We are, and there not accepting.

[Bicknellski]

We just build equipment and ship it out as fast as it's built. 

Evidence?

[reactor]

We just build equipment and ship it out as fast as it's built. 

Evidence?

Do you want a webcam on the production floor showing every piece of hardware from unboxing from manu to production and shipping? 

Shit, people gotta stop whining about BFL.  Love or hate them, love or hate Josh, they have shipped tons of orders and people are hashing on their hardware.  Can't say the same for many vendors.  Or you could, look at all the AM hardware that was always overpriced, every step of the way.  Or look at the KNC thread that is almost at 1000 posts where everyone is talking about negative ROI, making your miner actually work, varied results on different firmware, or units crapping out from the get-go because they rushed to the gate without doing their due diligence first. 

If you don't support BFL then don't purchase from them, instead you could buy from HashFast (oh wait), bAsic (oops), put in a new order from KNC that will never pay for itself (or go self-hosted and be totally in the dark), overpay for AM stuff over in group buys, join the list of people who want Yifu's head, support Labcoin (oops again), or drop some cash at CoinTerra or some of the other clone/custom units that, again, you will never make your money back on.

BFL wasn't the best with customer service, but unlike many they delivered and continue to do so.  And I speak as someone who has an order from 3/27 that has been sitting on Fulfilled for four days while the blog shipping dates creep closer to my pay date, and I never asked for a refund because I knew the risk going in and therefore didn't bitch out when things got rocky, I just adjusted my expectations.

[ScaryHash]

There is no ROI with a BFL single, little single, jalepeno, or anything else as of right now, if it's not in your hands hashing as of 3 months ago.

That's just a basic fact.

So, the fact that the OP is even asking that question, and is finding a lot of dust in his machine, indicates that BFL screwed him out of real money. Period. End of story.

The OP's post, and many threads regarding BFL, is not indicative of customers going nuts, or having unreasonable demands.

It is indicative of a company that treats its customers like crap and does not ship on time. Just because they actually are shipping stuff, does not mean that we should give them any kind of credit. They are simply behaving a little big better than before.

It's kind of like having a child molester in your neighborhood on parole, after the judge said he was free to go because of good behavior. That does not mean that you're gonna let him play with your kids at the park, or that he is guaranteed to be fully reformed.

BFL is fucking pathetic.

[reactor]

There is no ROI with a BFL single, little single, jalepeno, or anything else as of right now, if it's not in your hands hashing as of 3 months ago.

That's just a basic fact.

So, the fact that the OP is even asking that question, and is finding a lot of dust in his machine, indicates that BFL screwed him out of real money. Period. End of story.

The OP's post, and many threads regarding BFL, is not indicative of customers going nuts, or having unreasonable demands.

It is indicative of a company that treats its customers like crap and does not ship on time. Just because they actually are shipping stuff, does not mean that we should give them any kind of credit. They are simply behaving a little big better than before.

It's kind of like having a child molester in your neighborhood on parole, after the judge said he was free to go because of good behavior. That does not mean that you're gonna let him play with your kids at the park, or that he is guaranteed to be fully reformed.

BFL is fucking pathetic.

This is why the mining side of Bitcoin needs to settle and die down to a happy, boring, marginal increase every two weeks when the market is saturated with ASICS running at just about what power costs will allow vs. BTC price.  You're comparing child molesters to people who produce and ship mining/money printing machines.  Get a grip.

I've worked in hardware, while I can't vouch for what Josh said I know damn well we have had to sit on hardware before for 2-3 months (months!) waiting for a firmware update from some component vendor who couldn't get their crap together.  So yes, it sits on a shelf, it collects dust, customers bitched at us left and right, but we weren't about to A) ship out non-working hardware or B) throw our vendor under the bus.  You all would be the same people bitching if they went the KNC route and flooded out tons of half-working hardware that didn't perform to spec and requires a part-time job worth of effort to get and keep running.  But waiting to ship hardware they are sure will work?  That's absurd, we want our miners and we want them now!  Even with a 20% HW error rate!

[reactor]

There is no ROI with a BFL single, little single, jalepeno, or anything else as of right now, if it's not in your hands hashing as of 3 months ago.

That's just a basic fact.

It's also a fact for just about any other vendor you inject into this statement.  Except this is for stuff people are taking money for today.

[Bicknellski]

We just build equipment and ship it out as fast as it's built.

Evidence?

Do you want a webcam on the production floor showing every piece of hardware from unboxing from manu to production and shipping?  

Do you want to take Inaba's word for it?

Many do not. Nor should they, given the delays and the excuses for the delays. He is the one making the statement where is the EVIDENCE to support that claim. He makes a lot of claims then walks away and never responds to them again. Anyhow if you believe anything he says at face value then I suspect you have a larger order pending for Monarch's right? You accepted his company was going to tapeout in August some 2 full  month ago right? Sorry given his history it is up to him to prove claims because at this point no one believes anything he is saying.

At this point nothing would be satisfactory given the scope of the delays. They should be providing REFUNDS not ignoring FTC regulations. People simply need to report them to the FTC.... here is how... https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=319522.0

It is a little more than disingenuous to put this back on people who have legitimate complaints about the unethical and some believe criminal behaviour of this company.

[xhomerx10]

There is no ROI with a BFL single, little single, jalepeno, or anything else as of right now, if it's not in your hands hashing as of 3 months ago.

That's just a basic fact.

It's also a fact for just about any other vendor you inject into this statement.  Except this is for stuff people are taking money for today.

While I detest the business practices of BFL, neither of these statements are factual without some qualification.  They are merely statements.  Perhaps you will never be able to mine as many coins as you paid to purchase the equipment and this is what you intended to state.  In this case it would have been better to buy the coins and hold them until a later date but we can only make statements of fact about that as far as the PAST is concerned.  We hope that the coins are going to increase in value and if that increase is large enough, you may still make an ROI with your dusty old BFL piece of shit which you have been waiting for over 6 months now because they took more orders than they could comfortably fill and are still up to the same tactics today but I digress.  Maybe we can even dust off the old video cards and blow the dust off or our old CPUs... but wait, we are responsible people and would have kept our equipment covered and free from dust so it would work properly lest we need it in the future...

Take care

[labsbitforum]

I’m inclined to believe Josh’s categorical denial that BFL mines.  If this was something they always did with all customer equipment I would guess other hard evidence would have surfaced by now.  Not sure how long they have been attaching these stickers on the bottom of the PCBs but its pretty easy for people to check their units and see how these dates compare to their ship date.
 

I agree with many in these forums that after 30 some missed “two more weeks” estimated ship dates you have to call that intentionally deceptive.  Intentionally deceptive in the context of selling a product is fraud.  Josh is doing what he thinks is necessary to keep his company viable.  As others have pointed out, in this thread and others, most attempts to bring a viable product to market have ended in complete failure with people losing their investment and getting nothing.  The decision to no longer give refunds in this situation is also likely going to be a problem for BFL.  The FTC will take action on them and people living in the US do stand a pretty good chance litigating this if they decide to spend the time and money to do so.

I’m not defending Josh’s actions.  Just pointing out I can see why he has done what he did.  If he had not BFL likely would have collapsed and people like me would have lost our investment and got nothing.  I won’t get my money back as things stand.  I will recoup some of my investment and I have an interesting black box memento and story to tell friends…