Announcement: Bitmain launches AntMiner solution, 0.68 J/GH on chip

[nazban]

For orders upaid/unconfirmed/unshipped...

The blockchain which they use for order processing has been having serious problems. I to my self have the same problem along with many others more information can be found in this thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=417159.3720

Email them letting them know you paid for your order but it shows unconfirmed. Use http://blockr.io/address/info/paymentaddresshere to show proof its paid.

They announced they will not be contacting us 1 by 1 and to be patient as they are going through all orders manually and since the disaster of the crappy blockchain service a lot us PAY FOR more and more orders and users are getting confirmed so don't worry yet its still early and lets all hope we get our miners it looks like we will.

[o3u]

I placed an order this weekend which i canceled promptly before it was shipped, i see the note to cancel has been added on the order, but i have not been refunded yet.

I contacted BITMAIN

Please refund my 1.984bitcoin and keep me updated on the process, i know other orders that went through later than that have already been shipped!

Edit : jusst got an email/processing - thanks.

[nazban]

Message deleted to much troll.

[freebit13]

Two of my orders are still showing as unconfirmed.  One I ordered yesterday and another one today.

No responses to any email messages asking for an update. 

Just thinking ... what would Amazon.com have done if their web site was showing unconfirmed but paid-for orders?  Would they simply leave them as "expired"?  Would they not return any of the customer inquiries?  Would they allow customers to keep making more purchases while being fully aware that there is a serious problem with their ordering system?

Perhaps in our pursuit of bitcoin, we have become sufficiently accepting of mediocre sales practices and non-existent customer support?  Are we putting such a low bar on how we should expect businesses that accept bitcoin to behave that many of us keep repeating "trust BitMain", "they are going to make this right"? 

I remember how everyone was just so upset that DirectTV or Dell customer service agents were in India and had an accent.  Now we are all just fine with no customer service number of any kind and unanswered emails.  Heck, I'd love to talk to a BitMain customer service agent anywhere, India, China, Indonesia, anywhere.  Someone who can tell me "don't worry, your order will be fulfilled within 1 business day".  "I know our system is down and we are working on it ... we will put periodic updates on our site".  Nope.  Too much to ask for.

Even Overstock that accepts bitcoin.  Sure, they have customer service ... but if I pay with bitcoin -- no refunds if I need to return an item.  No problem with refunds if I paid by Credit Card.  Is that the promise of Bitcoin?  A sub-standard service that makes me wish I used my credit card instead?  And we are rewarding these retailers with business?

I sure hope that all of us in the Bitcoin community demand better.  We can all start with BitMain.

This is why crypto "currency" will only be a faze and never accepted. It is all a joke and everything else is even more unprofessional. If you have not figured this out yet then this might not be the place for you, its not a get rich quick scheme... my advice make as much as you can spend as much as you can before bitcoin and other coins loose all value. Which they will with the rate of people getting scammed over the rate of successful transactions looks like 1 to 100.

This crypto we call currency has been tainted by far to many people who don't know any good business practice, people who can't run pools or nodes, and the list just keeps going. If anyone here really believes this easy street will last forever you got another thing coming especially by the end of 2014. People may have been dumb 20 years ago but far to many people already have to deal with greedy governments who steal and take money this shit won't fly with the new generation.

(Nothing against bitmain here just pointing out the reality of bitcoin and crypto)

Sooo, the internet was abandoned because some modem manufacturers made some crappy hardware and everyone just lost interest.... wait no, that didn't happen did it?

[TechCF]

The unit I ordered yesterday and paid immediately still shows as unpaid. I sent a mail to the webmaster@bitmaintech.com address. I placed an order for one unit a few weeks ago and it went through with shipping next day, and delivery the day after that. Was hoping for the same fast experience now... but I guess the payment provider issues are holding them up.

[jjiimm_64]

Everyone please relax... BITMAIN will process all orders asap.

[Blawpaw]

My order is no showing has paid!
Hope shipping goes fast!

Thanx

[jasper1000]

are they out of stock S1 and S2?

[ChuckBuck]

are they out of stock S1 and S2?

No, I think they've stopped processing all orders for the time being due to the Blockchain.info issues:

From Bitmain website:

we are double checking all payment for those orders which were placed from 7:50 pm BeiJing time Mar 17th (UTC +8) to the present, there are so many emails and pms to us, will not reply them one by one, to spend more time on payment confirmation and shipment. please take it easy, we will confirm orders and arrange shipment soon, once we receive full payment, any new progress will be updated in the account of website store.

In meantime, you can order from one of the other resellers like Ninjatech, 112bit, Minersource, and various others in the forum.

[Wookie50]

Something is just not right with this.  My orders are showing as expired as of 2 days ago, having been fully paid for minutes after ordering.  I totally get that sometimes something crashes.  I'm a software engineer.  I fix software problems every day.

But, I've also started and run a business.  In business, customer is #1.  Customer is always right.  It is never appropriate to tell the customer to "relax, all will get fixed at some indefinite time".

We've all spent real, hard-earned money with BitMain.  The responsibility to communicate and to over-communicate if necessary is theirs.  They have to earn our trust not by letting us sit here and worry but by openly communicating what is happening, why it's happening and various challenges they are having and what they are doing to resolve them.  We will all get it.  We will all give them time.  We will all appreciate their honestly.

But... them simply disappearing into ether with a "don't worry, we'll fix it eventually" is not acceptable in 21st century.  Perhaps we in the Bitcoin community accept it.  But nobody "normal" will ever accept it.  The model is Amazon.com.  They will bend backwards to ensure the customer is 100% happy with every aspect of what they do.  Their customer service will pick up the phone instantly.  They will be courteous and respectful.  It is NOT EXPENSIVE to have great customer service.  All it takes is to have someone provide periodic update like: "we have 150 orders that need fixing and we are done with 87 of them".  An hour later it would be "we are done with 99 of them".  That's ok.  That will allow us to sleep easy. 

But that's NOT what BitMain is doing.  They are letting us all hang out there to dry while holding on to our money.  That is not what we should expect of our service providers.  And this is not what a 21st century consumer would expect when they really start doing business with Bitcoin-centric businesses.  We *must* expect better.

BitMain -- step up to the plate. 

[ChuckBuck]

Something is just not right with this.  My orders are showing as expired as of 2 days ago, having been fully paid for minutes after ordering.  I totally get that sometimes something crashes.  I'm a software engineer.  I fix software problems every day.

But, I've also started and run a business.  In business, customer is #1.  Customer is always right.  It is never appropriate to tell the customer to "relax, all will get fixed at some indefinite time".

We've all spent real, hard-earned money with BitMain.  The responsibility to communicate and to over-communicate if necessary is theirs.  They have to earn our trust not by letting us sit here and worry but by openly communicating what is happening, why it's happening and various challenges they are having and what they are doing to resolve them.  We will all get it.  We will all give them time.  We will all appreciate their honestly.

But... them simply disappearing into ether with a "don't worry, we'll fix it eventually" is not acceptable in 21st century.  Perhaps we in the Bitcoin community accept it.  But nobody "normal" will ever accept it.  The model is Amazon.com.  They will bend backwards to ensure the customer is 100% happy with every aspect of what they do.  Their customer service will pick up the phone instantly.  They will be courteous and respectful.  It is NOT EXPENSIVE to have great customer service.  All it takes is to have someone provide periodic update like: "we have 150 orders that need fixing and we are done with 87 of them".  An hour later it would be "we are done with 99 of them".  That's ok.  That will allow us to sleep easy.  

But that's NOT what BitMain is doing.  They are letting us all hang out there to dry while holding on to our money.  That is not what we should expect of our service providers.  And this is not what a 21st century consumer would expect when they really start doing business with Bitcoin-centric businesses.  We *must* expect better.

BitMain -- step up to the plate.  

According to your timeframe, 2 days ago is when the BlockChain.info problems occurred causing the order flow delays with Bitmain.

So actually, it's not Bitmain's fault.  They probably had an automated system with Blockchain to verify orders, then when Blockchain went down or had issues, they probably had to do everything manually.

Too late with these particular order(s), but in the future if you do decide to order again any Ants, try the resellers or distributors like Ninjatech, 112bit, or Minersource as they're all much more responsive than Bitmain.  You can even PM them and they'll respond!  

[kano]

Finally got an AntS1 binary out - it's 4.2.0 with a patch to make the Luci display work as well as the standard API so anyone wanting to use the API to their AntS1 can use the same code for their AntS1 as for any other cgminer device.

The patch (for anyone interested in knowing what I had to change) is here:
https://github.com/kanoi/cgminer/commit/28f27672d4deaef742c66a12522b745105b770f5

The binary and README are in my usual cgminer-binaries git here:
https://github.com/kanoi/cgminer-binaries/tree/master/AntS1

Read the README on the screen there for how to replace the /usr/bin/cgminer binary in your AntS1 with the new one.

Of course this binary includes all cgminer changes up to 4.2.0 and the one extra commit after 4.2.0 was released:
https://github.com/ckolivas/cgminer/commit/c73e9e7a4f457e94d0f61e0cfc9e8f4531a99f4b

The specific AntS1 changes are of course the changes that have been advertised in cgminer since I merged in the full AntS1 support.
They are:
Enable temperature management code (it doesn't work in the Bitmain code)
Use stratum time rolling to reduce CPU - it still runs at 100% CPU like the Bitmain version does, though.

[Wookie50]

Something is just not right with this.  My orders are showing as expired as of 2 days ago, having been fully paid for minutes after ordering.  I totally get that sometimes something crashes.  I'm a software engineer.  I fix software problems every day.

But, I've also started and run a business.  In business, customer is #1.  Customer is always right.  It is never appropriate to tell the customer to "relax, all will get fixed at some indefinite time".

We've all spent real, hard-earned money with BitMain.  The responsibility to communicate and to over-communicate if necessary is theirs.  They have to earn our trust not by letting us sit here and worry but by openly communicating what is happening, why it's happening and various challenges they are having and what they are doing to resolve them.  We will all get it.  We will all give them time.  We will all appreciate their honestly.

But... them simply disappearing into ether with a "don't worry, we'll fix it eventually" is not acceptable in 21st century.  Perhaps we in the Bitcoin community accept it.  But nobody "normal" will ever accept it.  The model is Amazon.com.  They will bend backwards to ensure the customer is 100% happy with every aspect of what they do.  Their customer service will pick up the phone instantly.  They will be courteous and respectful.  It is NOT EXPENSIVE to have great customer service.  All it takes is to have someone provide periodic update like: "we have 150 orders that need fixing and we are done with 87 of them".  An hour later it would be "we are done with 99 of them".  That's ok.  That will allow us to sleep easy.  

But that's NOT what BitMain is doing.  They are letting us all hang out there to dry while holding on to our money.  That is not what we should expect of our service providers.  And this is not what a 21st century consumer would expect when they really start doing business with Bitcoin-centric businesses.  We *must* expect better.

BitMain -- step up to the plate.  

According to your timeframe, 2 days ago is when the BlockChain.info problems occurred causing the order flow delays with Bitmain.

So actually, it's not Bitmain's fault.  They probably had an automated system with Blockchain to verify orders, then when Blockchain went down or had issues, they probably had to do everything manually.

Too late with these particular order(s), but in the future if you do decide to order again any Ants, try the resellers or distributors like Ninjatech, 112bit, or Minersource as they're all much more responsive than Bitmain.  You can even PM them and they'll respond!  

I am not putting any technical blame on BitMain.  Their fault lies in their inability to communicate to their customers of what is happening.  That should never be the case in the day of Internet where all it takes is a simple post on the web site to update progress.  Secondly, they should always assume that it is a possibility that a dependent service will crash, so a Plan B should be available with that eventuality in mind.

Seriously, this is not a dorm-room business ... there are plenty of best practices available of right vs. wrong way to treat customers.  BitMain is doing it all wrong.  I'm still waiting to hear what happened to my orders.  According to the original timeline, I should be receiving them this Saturday and they haven't been shipped yet. 

There better be a HUGE coupon coming.

[mitak64]

Finally got an AntS1 binary out - it's 4.2.0 with a patch to make the Luci display work as well as the standard API so anyone wanting to use the API to their AntS1 can use the same code for their AntS1 as for any other cgminer device.

The patch (for anyone interested in knowing what I had to change) is here:
https://github.com/kanoi/cgminer/commit/28f27672d4deaef742c66a12522b745105b770f5

The binary and README are in my usual cgminer-binaries git here:
https://github.com/kanoi/cgminer-binaries/tree/master/AntS1

Read the README on the screen there for how to replace the /usr/bin/cgminer binary in your AntS1 with the new one.

Of course this binary includes all cgminer changes up to 4.2.0 and the one extra commit after 4.2.0 was released:
https://github.com/ckolivas/cgminer/commit/c73e9e7a4f457e94d0f61e0cfc9e8f4531a99f4b

The specific AntS1 changes are of course the changes that have been advertised in cgminer since I merged in the full AntS1 support.
They are:
Enable temperature management code (it doesn't work in the Bitmain code)
Use stratum time rolling to reduce CPU - it still runs at 100% CPU like the Bitmain version does, though.

Kano for King !!! 

Installed it on 3 of mine for now.
Noticed improvements :
1. Finally Anubis is showing "MH/s avg" correctly, instead of just displaying "0%"
2. My rejects on P2Pool dropped significantly

[Humancell]

Hey Bitmain,

I'm still waiting for *any* word on my order after 2+ days ...  :-(

Please let us know if anything is going on?  How long until you'll recognize my order as being legit?

I ordered on your site with the same username ... please catch up and get these orders processed!

:-/


Humancell

[Gologuzan]

who was that smart ass to talk bitmain to switch from UPS to DHL in europe? who ever it is/ they were, i have to say you are not normal!!

now we will have ton of paperwork and extra expenses.

DHL in europe- you have to fill 4 different forms, and sending them order confirmation is a must. they charge their service of customs taxation of products around 30euros on top of value that customs declare. and after everything is over they ship 2-3days AFTER you pay them.

UPS in europe- they ask for your ID, and to send them one line in mail. they call you to inform you when taxation is done and how much money to prepare. and you give money when package arrives. and there is NO charge for their service of making all papers for customs department.

anyone can guess which one is better?

[freebit13]

I am not putting any technical blame on BitMain.  Their fault lies in their inability to communicate to their customers of what is happening.  That should never be the case in the day of Internet where all it takes is a simple post on the web site to update progress.  Secondly, they should always assume that it is a possibility that a dependent service will crash, so a Plan B should be available with that eventuality in mind.

Seriously, this is not a dorm-room business ... there are plenty of best practices available of right vs. wrong way to treat customers.  BitMain is doing it all wrong.  I'm still waiting to hear what happened to my orders.  According to the original timeline, I should be receiving them this Saturday and they haven't been shipped yet. 

There better be a HUGE coupon coming.

I wouldn't say that Bitmain is not communicating to their customers, they have clearly stated on their site (exactly where everyone is ordering from):

we are double checking all payment for those orders which were placed from 7:50 pm BeiJing time Mar 17th (UTC +8) to the present, there are so many emails and pms to us, will not reply them one by one, to spend more time on payment confirmation and shipment. please take it easy, we will confirm orders and arrange shipment soon, once we receive full payment, any new progress will be updated in the account of website store.

Would you prefer them to concentrate on answering everyone's panic emails they have been receiving (in triplicate) over the last 3 days or concentrate on getting the orders sent to everyone? Personally I'd rather they get the units out or it will just result in more emails and more backlog.

Also, how can they afford employ someone to handle all of these support emails, when at the same time everyone is calling for reductions and coupons and special treatment? Customer service costs money and nobody wants to pay for it.

If Bitmain is doing it all wrong, could you please direct me to someone who is doing it right... or even a little bit better?

Also folks, when sending them an email for a support request, formulate it properly with all the information in one place, don't just tell them "I ordered yesterday and you still haven't answered", give them all the info in one place i.e. order no., wallet address, tx confirmation link, email address, Bct username etc., don't make them go and cross-check information, I'm sure it's wasting their time. If you've paid, I'm sure you'll be receiving your order in the next couple of days...

Notice how many people come and complain about their orders and never return?... most don't inform anyone here when their unit actually arrives, they just complain here until it does, which makes everyone else panic.

[bizzyb]

Nice to hear a (rare) voice of reason....

I am not putting any technical blame on BitMain.  Their fault lies in their inability to communicate to their customers of what is happening.  That should never be the case in the day of Internet where all it takes is a simple post on the web site to update progress.  Secondly, they should always assume that it is a possibility that a dependent service will crash, so a Plan B should be available with that eventuality in mind.

Seriously, this is not a dorm-room business ... there are plenty of best practices available of right vs. wrong way to treat customers.  BitMain is doing it all wrong.  I'm still waiting to hear what happened to my orders.  According to the original timeline, I should be receiving them this Saturday and they haven't been shipped yet. 

There better be a HUGE coupon coming.

I wouldn't say that Bitmain is not communicating to their customers, they have clearly stated on their site (exactly where everyone is ordering from):

we are double checking all payment for those orders which were placed from 7:50 pm BeiJing time Mar 17th (UTC +8) to the present, there are so many emails and pms to us, will not reply them one by one, to spend more time on payment confirmation and shipment. please take it easy, we will confirm orders and arrange shipment soon, once we receive full payment, any new progress will be updated in the account of website store.

Would you prefer them to concentrate on answering everyone's panic emails they have been receiving (in triplicate) over the last 3 days or concentrate on getting the orders sent to everyone? Personally I'd rather they get the units out or it will just result in more emails and more backlog.

Also, how can they afford employ someone to handle all of these support emails, when at the same time everyone is calling for reductions and coupons and special treatment? Customer service costs money and nobody wants to pay for it.

If Bitmain is doing it all wrong, could you please direct me to someone who is doing it right... or even a little bit better?

Also folks, when sending them an email for a support request, formulate it properly with all the information in one place, don't just tell them "I ordered yesterday and you still haven't answered", give them all the info in one place i.e. order no., wallet address, tx confirmation link, email address, Bct username etc., don't make them go and cross-check information, I'm sure it's wasting their time. If you've paid, I'm sure you'll be receiving your order in the next couple of days...

Notice how many people come and complain about their orders and never return?... most don't inform anyone here when their unit actually arrives, they just complain here until it does, which makes everyone else panic.

[BITMAIN]

In the past few days, the blockchain.info API stopped working and we cannot confirm all the transaction until yesterday. We had to manually confirm some of the orders, but the man hands' speed could not be compared with computer, so lots of order were delayed in shipping. We feel sorry for what happened, and we are deploying the second payment API, and our private payment service is planning.

We will adjust the price of the S1, and starts to sell Batch 3 of S2. All the orders which is influenced by above accident will get coupons.

[CrazyRabbi]

In the past few days, the blockchain.info API stopped working and we cannot confirm all the transaction until yesterday. We had to manually confirm some of the orders, but the man hands' speed could not be compared with computer, so lots of order were delayed in shipping. We feel sorry for what happened, and we are deploying the second payment API, and our private payment service is planning.

We will adjust the price of the S1, and starts to sell Batch 3 of S2. All the orders which is influenced by above accident will get coupons.

Can you please refund orders that haven't been fully paid?