Can you explain the BA BFLing. I had forgotten about the X3 problems, reversed it back to Major.
There are too many to list so here's just the main ones off the top of my head.
- Guaranteed price 25% less than the competition at time of shipping, which was later changed to match competition prices, then was completely thrown out the window because they couldn't afford to increase compensate due to their use of "premium quality parts".
- Completely lied in January about being on track for February delivery when they haven't even taped-out yet.
- Offered refunds but changed their mind and are now shipping hardware to those who requested them.
- Censoring negative posts on these and their own forums. Over 100 pages deleted on this forum alone. They even went as far as to make a moderating bot that automatically deletes certain users posts every 15 minutes. They are also claiming anyone with a negative opinion against BA is a paid shill from some competitor..
- Created a "naughtly list" like AMT so everyone critical of the company can receive special treatment. They even posted someones full name/address to "prove" they weren't a BA customer but in fact the person had purchased BA hardware from minersource (who gave BA the info).
- Apparently no money for refunds but enough money to make a scrypt asics as well as a 14nm bitcoin asic.
It's almost an exact repeat of BFL from a year ago.
i second this.
They indeed 'guaranteed' to match or beat the price of competitors, but kept coming up with excuses as to why they couldn't keep their promises. Some of the excuses include competitors miners being less energy efficient, and/or having no fancy additions like LCD, wifi, aluminium casing etc (stuff we didn't even ask for in the first place). And Blackarrow claiming 'military grade hardware' (which proved to be just another lie, since they called back their X-3's for, you guessed it, fire hazard.
Deleted most of the complains, not only in their own forum, but also in the official blackarrow thread on bitcointalk, which is of course self-moderated, and just short of 30% of the posts has been deleted. (the thread itself is just over 300 pages, the thread of deleted posts is over 100 pages)
up till the end of february they claimed not only to be on time, but actually 'ahead of schedule'. They kept silent until days prior to delivery date, when people started to ask for their log-in information (as they promised 5 days of hosted mining prior to shipping). Then, they send a mass-email delaying the shipment by about 1 month but offering a generous compensation. They also kept pretty silent during that month, and once it became clear they would miss yet another deadline, they 'upgraded' the compensation package and claimed it would take 'just a few more weeks'. They also asked for even more money by demanding us to pay extra for the PSUs of the compensation, as the PSU was not included in the new compensation plan. They also offered to ship just the ASIC chips rather than a complete miner.
They also blamed various suppliers for their failure, rather than taking the blame themselves.
They do not honor refunds, even though they claimed they would refund as soon as the first miners would ship. Which is obviously a lie, and the lie only served to delay the inevitable.
About a year ago i ordered a miner from BFL, and though, never again, this time i'll buy from a trustworthy company, and though BA would be different because they had a good reputation with FPGAs. But to be honest at least BFL delivered a miner that is still working (i gave it to my cousin though), and at least made me back some money (not sure if i broke even or not, but still), BA has yet to deliver anything and in fact i don't even want it anymore because it's outdated by now and it will cost more electricity than it will mine.
