Bitmain extends warranty period on all new orders

[favebook]

Bitmain has finally decided to extended their warranty period from 180 days (6 months) to 360 days (12 months).

Since I've been buying from Bitmain only as far back as 2016, I am not sure what their warranty period was before that time. But ever since I bought my first Antminer S9 12T back in the days, warranty was always 6 months which was unusual for me and made me really scared of their quality. At that time, I started buying new units and then selling them after 5 months of use.

Later when I decided that I should have a stable mining farm (release of S17 Pro and later S17+) I found out the hard way how bad those units are. And since then I haven't order anything from them.

This might change my mind as 12 month warranty has a bit of impact when you order new units compared to 6 months, even though I'd like them to have at least 18 or 24 months warranty (which is unlikely to happen), this is a good step in the right direction after all the bad things they have done in previous few years.


Ref:
https://twitter.com/Antminer_main/status/1325634556301508608

Quote from sale of Antminer S19Pro from their official website:

1. A 365-day warranty is provided starting from the shipping date. To avail this warranty a repair ticket must be generated by the customer on Bitmain's website. Overclocking the miner will void the warranty immediately.

This is related to all new Bitmain Antminers. Therefore, instead of writing about this in every thread which is related to their new/old hardware releases, I decided to open a new thread. However, if mods decide this is not the place for it, feel free to move it.

[philipma1957]

If they provide repair/replacement without returning it to China.
If they do it quickly. Under 3 weeks
Then it would be really good.

[mikeywith]

If they provide repair/replacement without returning it to China.
If they do it quickly. Under 3 weeks
Then it would be really good.

I agree with phil, sending the gear to China cost a lot of money, takes a lot of time and it isn't something I want to do, however, since they now are providing 12 months instead of the regular 6 months warranty, this could be a good indication that the overall quality of their mining gears has improved, if you know your gears tend to fail after 7 months, you will give 6 months warranty, giving 12 months means you trust the quality of your mining gears to likely stand for a whole year, or at least this is how I think of it.

[SFR10]

since they now are providing 12 months instead of the regular 6 months warranty, this could be a good indication that the overall quality of their mining gears has improved,

https://twitter.com/Antminer_main/status/1325634556301508608

I strongly believe that this is only a marketing strategy and little to no improvement in terms of quality.

• Based on their tweet, it mentions covering "shipped" 19 series miners as well; therefore, there's a hidden agenda behind that tweet ^{[I hope I'm wrong but it's highly unlikely]}.

[mikeywith]

I strongly believe that this is only a marketing strategy and little to no improvement in terms of quality.

Not really, we know that the 19 series are much more robust than the 17 series, most of us had a very high failure rate on the 17 series with the S17 pro being a kind if expectation,  it has been a few months since the release of 19 series and there isn't any noticeable complains unlike how it was with the 17 series.

The question is, will they extend the warranty on the 17 series as well or not? if they do so, then it means they have fixed the bad solder paste or/and started using better robots/humans to solder those chips and heatsinks, if not - then not.

Or they increase the warranty duration because they know many people don't bother sending gear to china and they could delay the fix/replacement process.

That is a good point, but I don't think they are stupid enough to count on this, the majority of people do send their gears back to Bitmain for repair, 60-70% of these gears won't be leaving China in the first place, Bitmain offers large Chinese miners on-site repair services, it's just a minority of unfortunate miners (like my self) that can't send the gears back to China or any other nearby repair center.

[shield132]

If they provide repair/replacement without returning it to China.
If they do it quickly. Under 3 weeks
Then it would be really good.

How would they provide repair/replacement outside of China? One way is to open repair service centres in different countries and cities but I don't know how beneficial it can be to their business, even think that it will be a lot of expense for them. And replacement without returning it to China seems impossible right now. For these, they need to radically change their logistics, sales and at some point, business structure.
Btw returning it to China, especially right now, means that once your antminer needs repair, you are in stuck.

[Fatunad]

If they provide repair/replacement without returning it to China.
If they do it quickly. Under 3 weeks
Then it would be really good.

How would they provide repair/replacement outside of China? One way is to open repair service centres in different countries and cities but I don't know how beneficial it can be to their business, even think that it will be a lot of expense for them. And replacement without returning it to China seems impossible right now. For these, they need to radically change their logistics, sales and at some point, business structure.
Btw returning it to China, especially right now, means that once your antminer needs repair, you are in stuck.

One of the hindrance on why i do let myself skipped out on mining activity due to this kind of reason about warranty yet shipping cost would always
be not cheap specially if you are on a far country to China.If they do said about free shipping which had SFR mentioned above then thats quite still in doubt.
Extending the warranty period from 6 months to 12 months well its good for locals or nearby but for those on other countries then it wouldnt really be that something interesting.
Putting up service centers? possible but depending if they do saw that a particular country have lots of miners.

[shield132]

If they provide repair/replacement without returning it to China.
If they do it quickly. Under 3 weeks
Then it would be really good.

How would they provide repair/replacement outside of China? One way is to open repair service centres in different countries and cities but I don't know how beneficial it can be to their business, even think that it will be a lot of expense for them. And replacement without returning it to China seems impossible right now. For these, they need to radically change their logistics, sales and at some point, business structure.
Btw returning it to China, especially right now, means that once your antminer needs repair, you are in stuck.

One of the hindrance on why i do let myself skipped out on mining activity due to this kind of reason about warranty yet shipping cost would always
be not cheap specially if you are on a far country to China.If they do said about free shipping which had SFR mentioned above then thats quite still in doubt.
Extending the warranty period from 6 months to 12 months well its good for locals or nearby but for those on other countries then it wouldnt really be that something interesting.
Putting up service centers? possible but depending if they do saw that a particular country have lots of miners.

Extended warranty plays its psychological role among people that results in an increase in sales but comes with the possible risk of getting more expenses at the same time in this service. It makes people think like: Oh, if they offer me one year warranty over six months, then it means that their product is good and they are confident that it will work at least for one year. I agree with SFR10, it's marketing strategy, we all know how shady bitmain is.

They need statistics which countries buy their product the most, in what quantities, etc. It won't be correct to choose country according to higher mining rate because you can be mistaken in this case.

[Heisenberg_Hunter]

That is a good point, but I don't think they are stupid enough to count on this, the majority of people do send their gears back to Bitmain for repair, 60-70% of these gears won't be leaving China in the first place, Bitmain offers large Chinese miners on-site repair services, it's just a minority of unfortunate miners (like my self) that can't send the gears back to China or any other nearby repair center.

So what could happen if miners like you met with a serious repair problem? Do you just leave those gears aside? Isn't that a loss if the miners doesn't function properly? I don't mine nor I am technically strong in Mining, but going through the posts from Mining section urged me to ask a few questions to regular miners like you. AFAIK there are only repair centers in CA, Russia and Europe, so what happens to miners living in other geographical locations? Should they send back the gears to China and spend a hell lot of shipping charges again?

I hope some day my government legalize the importing of mining machines. Right at this moment, importing mining machines to India is highly frowned upon and if caught in customs we might end up losing our btc spent on buying these machines. 

[Lanatsa]

If they provide repair/replacement without returning it to China.
If they do it quickly. Under 3 weeks
Then it would be really good.

How would they provide repair/replacement outside of China? One way is to open repair service centres in different countries and cities but I don't know how beneficial it can be to their business, even think that it will be a lot of expense for them. And replacement without returning it to China seems impossible right now. For these, they need to radically change their logistics, sales and at some point, business structure.
Btw returning it to China, especially right now, means that once your antminer needs repair, you are in stuck.

One of the hindrance on why i do let myself skipped out on mining activity due to this kind of reason about warranty yet shipping cost would always
be not cheap specially if you are on a far country to China.If they do said about free shipping which had SFR mentioned above then thats quite still in doubt.
Extending the warranty period from 6 months to 12 months well its good for locals or nearby but for those on other countries then it wouldnt really be that something interesting.
Putting up service centers? possible but depending if they do saw that a particular country have lots of miners.

Extended warranty plays its psychological role among people that results in an increase in sales but comes with the possible risk of getting more expenses at the same time in this service. It makes people think like: Oh, if they offer me one year warranty over six months, then it means that their product is good and they are confident that it will work at least for one year. I agree with SFR10, it's marketing strategy, we all know how shady bitmain is.

They need statistics which countries buy their product the most, in what quantities, etc. It won't be correct to choose country according to higher mining rate because you can be mistaken in this case.

It would really be on quantities not on mining rate which is totally a different thing and yes its really a marketing strategy because the longer the warranty is the more confidence that it gives.Just take for example when we do buy a car which do usually gives warranty and if its a new brand then expect for less but for established ones then they have longer because this do really shows off that
theyre machines are reliable and this is no different but still it isn't really enough for most people to consider on whats their offering.

[mikeywith]

So what could happen if miners like you met with a serious repair problem? Do you just leave those gears aside?

Yes, sadly in most cases you just need to throw them away, some issues can be fixed, but it all depends on the cost and the level of expertise it requires, since sending the gears back to China was never an option I had to learn how to fix at least some of the issues, whatever I can't fix I simply get rid of.

Isn't that a loss if the miners doesn't function properly?

That is a part of the risk that miners need to take, many of them don't add this factor in their business plan, this is why I have always said that miners' main focus should be quick ROI rather than long-term profitability since these miners can fail at any given second, even if sending the gear back to bitmain was an option, by the time you get a replacement difficulty would have spiked or/and the price would have dropped and everything you planned for is out of the door.

I don't mine nor I am technically strong in Mining, but going through the posts from Mining section urged me to ask a few questions to regular miners like you. AFAIK there are only repair centers in CA, Russia and Europe, so what happens to miners living in other geographical locations? Should they send back the gears to China and spend a hell lot of shipping charges again?

Most miners will run the math when it comes to sending those gears to the repair centers of Bitmain, if it's worth the fees i,e the mining gear is new and worth a lot - they would ship it, if shipping costs $200 and you need to wait for 2 months when it's only 1 bad hash board out of 3, and the whole miner now worth $500, it makes no sense to send it back to Bitmain, they will just unplug the bad board and mine on.