[Closed]R17x: Black Arrow Prospero X-3 <DZMC Exclusive> $130 / 40GHS

[Lloydie]

You are more than welcome to sell your shares to someone else and have them transferred (after the spreadsheet maintenance is done) however the DZMC doesn't have a cash / BTC reserve to buy back / refund as soon as an order is placed it is paid for.

You can spin how you like. My guess is that the content was copied over from the old site to the new site. I know for a fact that I relied on the quoted refund terms, certainly from the OP and most likely from the web site as well, when I ordered my shares.

Maybe with this only-two-month delay and the compensation plan not everyone will want a refund. It is entirely possible that many will want to stick it it out with you, and things will work out. If so I wish you the best.

I however, relied on a refund policy for my shares (a small number BTW -- fewer than phil) and I expect the refund policy to be honored until you and unless you claim you guys are flat broke (in which case we can discuss liquidating assets to meet your obligations). Anything less than that is fraud, plain and simple.  Goes with the territory I suppose, but I hoped you guys were better than that.

What you have above is the option to make money without any of the risks. Ask yourself, does any such thing exist in the real world? DZcoop is a stand up not for profit coop. You'll just end up spamming this thread with threats, insults and never understand that you took a risk with pre ordering.

Ask yourself: did you or did you not take a risk with pre ordering? If yes, then don't spam the thread any further.  If not, then you are being exceedingly unrealistic by expecting someone to take all the risk and you all the profits if it worked out. So, which is it?

[1714507243]

1714507243

[1714507243]

1714507243

[smooth]

What you have above is the option to make money without any of the risks. Ask yourself, does any such thing exist in the real world?

Let's see, maybe R13 where the same policy was in place (without the restocking fee even), the miners weren't delivered on time, and we got refunds?

Ask yourself: did you or did you not take a risk with pre ordering? If yes, then don't spam the thread any further.  

No, I did not take a risk associated with pre-ordering because I was told that I was able to get a refund up until shipment. I hate pre-orders and have always hated pre-orders.  In fact in three years of mining I have only done one pre-order (BFL) which also had a refund policy (I paid in fiat and had the option for a refund in fiat), though I elected to stick with it and eventually got the miner (which I sold at a profit).

If not, then you are being exceedingly unrealistic by expecting someone to take all the risk and you all the profits if it worked out. So, which is it?

It is neither.

There are plenty of risks associated with mining that have nothing to do with pre-ordering.

You can buy miners out of stock (as I have done) and you can order miners with a refund policy (as I have also done) and you are still risking losing money.  For example, the miners may break down or just be flaky, difficulty may go up faster than expected, bitcoin prices may crash, you may have pool trouble, network trouble, power outages, etc. Those are risks associated with mining.  

The risks associated with pre-ordering without a refund policy (which was not the case here) are separate from that, and not at all inherent in mining.  If you want to do that, go right ahead.  I don't and I didn't.

[Lloydie]

What you have above is the option to make money without any of the risks. Ask yourself, does any such thing exist in the real world?

Let's see, maybe R13 where the same policy was in place (without the restocking fee even), the miners weren't delivered on time, and we got refunds?

Ask yourself: did you or did you not take a risk with pre ordering? If yes, then don't spam the thread any further.  

No, I did not take a risk associated with pre-ordering because I was told that I was able to get a refund up until shipment. I hate pre-orders and have always hated pre-orders.  In fact in three years of mining I have only done one pre-order (BFL) which also had a refund policy (I paid in fiat and had the option for a refund in fiat), though I elected to stick with it and eventually got the miner (which I sold at a profit).

If not, then you are being exceedingly unrealistic by expecting someone to take all the risk and you all the profits if it worked out. So, which is it?

It is neither.

There are plenty of risks associated with mining that have nothing to do with pre-ordering.

You can buy miners out of stock (as I have done) and you can order miners with a refund policy (as I have also done) and you are still risking losing money.  For example, the miners may break down or just be flaky, difficulty may go up faster than expected, bitcoin prices may crash, you may have pool trouble, network trouble, power outages, etc. Those are risks associated with mining.  

The risks associated with pre-ordering without a refund policy (which was not the case here) are separate from that, and not at all inherent in mining.  If you want to do that, go right ahead.  I don't and I didn't.

Did you understand that DZ coop is an "at cost" coop? Yes or no?

[smooth]

Did you understand that DZ coop is an "at cost" coop? Yes or no?

Look I don't know what goes on behind the scenes. Is there any actual transparency here? They charge fees which on the surface seem totally reasonable (and I have said so when others have complained) but without auditing their books I have no idea what their costs really are. I also have no knowledge of what their dealings with Black Arrow might be in this regard. They seem to be rather closely involved, or at least they wanted to portray it that way when selling the deal.

I know that when you make an offer with a refund policy you better stand by that.  If you won't or can't, well...I guess we'll see what happens. It's really that simple. No need to complicate things here.

[Lloydie]

Did you understand that DZ coop is an "at cost" coop? Yes or no?

Look I don't know what goes on behind the scenes. Is there any actual transparency here? They charge fees which on the surface seem totally reasonable (and I have said so when others have complained) but without auditing their books I have no idea what their costs really are. I also have no knowledge of what their dealings with Black Arrow might be in this regard. They seem to be rather closely involved, or at least they wanted to portray it that way when selling the deal.

I know that when you make an offer with a refund policy you better stand by that.  If you won't or can't, well...I guess we'll see what happens. It's really that simple. No need to complicate things here.

Nothing complicated. DZ coop is an at cost coop. They take the money they give the money to bobsag3 to get the best deal with blackarrow, as he is their US reseller. DZ coop will refund us if they have the money and haven't paid BA. But if they don't have the money because they paid BA they can't refund us. That is what an at cost coop is. Kapeesh?

[smooth]

Nothing complicated. DZ coop is an at cost coop. They take the money they give the money to bobsag3 to get the best deal with blackarrow, as he is their US reseller. DZ coop will refund us if they have the money and haven't paid BA. But if they don't have the money because they paid BA they can't refund us. That is what an at cost coop is. Kapeesh?

That may be your view.

Perhaps they shouldn't have offered refunds prior to shipping (in which case I would not have bought in).  I guess that would be your advice to them given your perspective above, and perhaps it would be good advice (though they seem to have an agenda of growing their business, and certainly offering a good refund policy, and even honoring it as they did on R14 probably helps to grow a business, so who knows).

But that is water under the bridge. They did offer it, I relied on it when deciding to buy in, and now I expect them to honor it.

[Lloydie]

Nothing complicated. DZ coop is an at cost coop. They take the money they give the money to bobsag3 to get the best deal with blackarrow, as he is their US reseller. DZ coop will refund us if they have the money and haven't paid BA. But if they don't have the money because they paid BA they can't refund us. That is what an at cost coop is. Kapeesh?

That may be your view.

Perhaps they shouldn't have offered refunds prior to shipping (in which case I would not have bought in).  I guess that would be your advice to them given your perspective above, and perhaps it would be good advice (though they seem to have an agenda of growing their business, and certainly offering a good refund policy, and even honoring it as they did on R14 probably helps to grow a business, so who knows).

But that is water under the bridge. They did offer it, I relied on it when deciding to buy in, and now I expect them to honor it.

Well they don't have the money to honor it, unless I'm mistaken. So no point complaining further. Enforce it with a lawyer if you can. I have 16 shares in r17. I'll be lucky to get half back.

[BorisAlt]

I have to agree with Smooth.  I'm honestly surprised there isn't more of an uproar about the changing of TOS after folks have committed their funds.

I am still in shock how this "sure thing" turned into "sorry nothing we can do". I am not even into TOS yet.

[vulgartrendkill]

Maaaaan.  Just caught up with this. So disapointed its not even funny.

This seemed to be going so well.

The DZ website still says that even thought it would be difficult they will issue refunds.

Bobsag3, DZ , Thomas_s please consider this a request to refund my 7 shares.

[TookDk]

Maaaaan.  Just caught up with this. So disapointed its not even funny.

This seemed to be going so well.

The DZ website still says that even thought it would be difficult they will issue refunds.

Bobsag3, DZ , Thomas_s please consider this a request to refund my 7 shares.

Sorry mate, don't think that is going to happen
I am in for 12 shares myself...

thanks for staying on top of it guys.

any chance of selling our shares back if something isnt worked out soon?

You are more than welcome to sell your shares to someone else and have them transferred (after the spreadsheet maintenance is done) however the DZMC doesn't have a cash / BTC reserve to buy back / refund as soon as an order is placed it is paid for.

[BorisAlt]

DZMC is in a horrible pickle. With this GB they attracted a huge audience based on their previous reputation. It's very hard to see how they can come out in a positive light memorized by dozens users on bitcointalk.

Any future GBs by the DZ MC or by its members will be scrutinized and commented on for months to come.

If they miraculously preserve their reputation (probably at some heavy personal losses), then they may become 800-pound gorilla of hosted mining. The odds are strongly against them no matter how you look at it.

I agree that if I get HALF of the money back from #17, I will consider it "good".  Sigh.

For some comedy relief I go to the thread where a GB lead keeps offering 40-100% ROI. Check it out: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=418356.msg4874485

[patriks]

We all appreciate the hard work that goes into organizing just one of these, so it's amazing that DZ has been creating so many group buys.

I am extremely disappointed that the refund option is now being back tracked.  Many of us entered this group buy with more comfort due to the refund option being clearly stated on the first post.  Even if it was a copy paste from the other group buy, that simply isn't acceptable after so much business was made on that initial agreement.

Personally I am waiting on bobsag3's visit to BA to better consider my situation on the whole ordeal.

Hoping for the best and again, thank you for your efforts!

[smooth]

Well they don't have the money to honor it, unless I'm mistaken. So no point complaining further. Enforce it with a lawyer if you can. I have 16 shares in r17. I'll be lucky to get half back.

This community runs on reputation and trust first, legalities may come into it, but we will see. I personally don't have enough at stake here to pursue legal action on my own. I would consider joining with larger stake holders, however.

Trust and reputation are exactly why you are 100% wrong about there being no point in "complaining" further. This will be discussed and kept in the forefront as long as the issue is outstanding, which is as it should be.

[howardb]

Hugely disappointed, especially with the communication. DZ This was a major event and you could/should have at very least pm'd the members of R17. Even now, skimming the thread I still cannot perceive what the real situation is, what you are doing about it, and what our prospects are for delivery or refund?

I would urge people to keep the expletives and angry posts to a minimum, as it just makes it difficult to spot the real useful information.

On the bright side (glass half full), for those like me who also hedged in KNC Neptune shares, you should recover some of your lost BA money there, as a large part of the future difficulty increase was attributable to BA shipping on time. Neptunes should be far more profitable (and likely to deliver).

I also consider myself very lucky, I came into some money, and very nearly ordered 2 of the units directly from BA, but have been burned by Chinese ethics before so didn't.

[alh]

While I have no particular "dog in this fight", when you do a "Group Buy on a Pre-Order", you have taken on two levels of risk. The 1st is that the Group Buy leader will abscond with your money, be it BTC or USD. You also have the Pre-Order risk. In a sense you double down on risk. I've only nibble at Pre-Orders before, while I didn't lose my money it was always a disappointment, and late.

I personally have zero appetite for pre-orders, be they BFL or another company.

[Lloydie]

Hugely disappointed, especially with the communication. DZ This was a major event and you could/should have at very least pm'd the members of R17. Even now, skimming the thread I still cannot perceive what the real situation is, what you are doing about it, and what our prospects are for delivery or refund?

I would urge people to keep the expletives and angry posts to a minimum, as it just makes it difficult to spot the real useful information.

On the bright side (glass half full), for those like me who also hedged in KNC Neptune shares, you should recover some of your lost BA money there, as a large part of the future difficulty increase was attributable to BA shipping on time. Neptunes should be far more profitable (and likely to deliver).

I also consider myself very lucky, I came into some money, and very nearly ordered 2 of the units directly from BA, but have been burned by Chinese ethics before so didn't.

BA is owned by westerners, just like bfl and terrahash. The only two stand up operators i know of are knc and asicminer. Ethics all look the same to me, it has no colour. They are all human.

[Lloydie]

Well they don't have the money to honor it, unless I'm mistaken. So no point complaining further. Enforce it with a lawyer if you can. I have 16 shares in r17. I'll be lucky to get half back.

This community runs on reputation and trust first, legalities may come into it, but we will see. I personally don't have enough at stake here to pursue legal action on my own. I would consider joining with larger stake holders, however.

Trust and reputation are exactly why you are 100% wrong about there being no point in "complaining" further. This will be discussed and kept in the forefront as long as the issue is outstanding, which is as it should be.

You're just hurting your own reputation. The refund policy is here:

Refunds: Refunds are discouraged because of the chaos caused in Group Buys, but if necessary, you will be refunded before the miner is paid for, at a 1.5% restock fee.

Let's keep this thread clean and our fingers crossed that bobsag3 can get our money back or workout a deal with asicminer on their chips. BA should not have spent the money on a non competitive chip. They did wrong there by going ahead (or claiming to anyway) and not telling anyone until after the fact.

[smooth]

You're just hurting your own reputation. The refund policy is here:

False.

I quoted the refund policy from the OP and the refund policy from the web site (both of which are still there!). Refunds are available up until unit ships at 1.5% restock fee. They aren't even offering full refunds, they are offering a 1.5% restock fee, which could well add up to a lot of money (certainly a whole lot more than transaction costs on BTC payments).

What you quoted is from post #2. I have no idea when that was added, and it isn't referenced in the OP (i.e. nowhere does it say "see post #2 for the terms of this offer").  One can not be expected to read the entire thread before buying in, when the offer is made in post #1 and there is link right there to buy (and the link leads to a site with the very same refund policy).

Any "real-world" business, which in any case this is, that made these commitments in these places and then refused to honor them would be sued (and would lose) and could also be prosecuted for fraud (if the authorities felt in was a big enough deal to pursue). Attempting to rely on a different policy posted in another place that people buying in may well not have seen would and should fail.

Furthermore, the "refund until shipping" was a standing policy of DZMC (which is why it appears in the boilerplate part of the OP), which was cheerfully honored on R14 (and I trust rated them favorably for it). Nowhere was it ever clearly stated to those buying in that this standing policy was being changed.

You are on the wrong side of this one. Many people look to be in the process of being scammed (though I too hope it doesn't turn out that way) and you keep trying to defend the scammers on the basis of a series of several different but all bogus arguments that don't hold up. I have no idea what your agenda is, but you should really just stop.

[glongsword]

I'm really excited about the coop, and am already participating in GB R9 and R10.  I was ecstatic to see R9-12 are gonna make ROI in a few hours (in USD) despite being less than a month in, but am hesitant to buy shares in this particular group buy, since I have doubts about whether the X-3 will actually ship.

The company that makes it only has CAD renderings of the miner on their website, and a huge red flag is that they only accept wires or BTC for payment.  Do you guys have a contingency plan for if they run off with your money, and don't actually ship a product?  They're located in China, where I don't get the impression that consumer protection is any good.

Also, looking at their renderings it looks like the case is packed TIGHT.  I couldn't imagine stuffing 2 TH/s worth of chips in a tiny box like that with standard air cooling and not expecting it to melt.  What is your guys' opinion on this?

We can't go into details but yes we have a contingency plan, they are also the ones responsible for assembly of the 9-12 units, which was a test run of their assembly / boards.

Their minion chips operate at 100gh/s, the R9-12 boards hold 16 chips and aren't much bigger than your hand (it takes 20 chips to make the x-3)

Ugggggh so much for my unfounded concerns...

I bought in significantly to this group buy because of this reassurance.

[Lloydie]

I quoted the refund policy from the OP and the refund policy from the web site (both of which are still there!). Refunds are available up until unit ships at 1.5% restock fee.  They aren't even offering full refunds, they are offering a 1.5% restock fee, which could well add up to a lot of money (certainly a whole lot more than transaction costs on BTC payments).

What you quoted is from post #2. I have no idea when that was added, and it isn't referenced in the OP (i.e. nowhere does it say "see post #2 for the terms of this offer").  One can not be expected to read the entire  thread before buying in, when the offer is made in post #1 and there is link there to buy (and the link leads to a site with the very same refund policy).

Any real-world business that made these commitments in these places and then refused to honor them would be sued (and would lose) and could also be prosecuted for fraud (if the authorities felt in was a big enough deal to pursue). Attempting to rely on a different policy posted in another place that people buying in may well not have seen would and should fail.

Furthermore, the "refund until shipping" was a standing policy of DZMC (which is why it appears in the boilerplate part of the OP), which was cheerfully honored on R14 (and I trust rated them favorably for it). Nowhere was it ever clearly stated to those buying in that this standing policy was being changed.

You are on the wrong side of this one. Many people look to be in the process of being scammed (though I too hope it doesn't turn out that way) and you keep trying to defend the scammers on the basis of a series of several different but all bogus arguments that don't hold up. I have no idea what your agenda is, but you should really just stop.

I am an investor and nothing else. How many shares in r17 do you have? I have 16. If you think you can enforce the refund policy you cited, do so. Even if you succeed, the coop will have no money to reimburse you as they gave it to BA. R17 refund policy was clear to me because I'm an adult and did my own due diligence.  ATM, we are just spamming the thread. I have nothing more to say about this as I can see you will keep going on with this.