GAW Miners (Scrypt/SHA256 miners and Hashlet cloud) independent feedback thread

[Chronikka]

I am actually really disturbed by what I am reading here and what I've observed in the moderated GAW thread.  While shameless self-promotion is generally an accepted practice, I see next to no senior/hero members commenting on good experiences with GAW and mainly people complaining about shipping delays, incorrect orders, hosting issues, etc.  This leads me to believe GAW is very good at convincing people to come to the forum to post "good experiences" but is lacking on actually providing those experiences (i.e., I have had fantastic interactions with one of their rival vendors, who I won't name, but never once have they asked me to come spam for them on the forums).

Can anyone with hosting provide a good update on what the situation has been?  Personally I oversee my own mini-farm (4 blades, 3 5-chips) and one for a colleague (now at 6 blades and I don't even know how many 5-chips) and they run 100% uptime with around 99% accepted using RPi + Raspbian + Sandor111's CPUMiner, in fact, blades average 5.6MH @ 838 freq with no other interaction required.  There is no reason for hosted miners to be down so often, with a few days of tweaking and professional employees everyone who purchased hosting should see similar uptime and acceptance rates since this is what the average joe can throw together with a blade and a rpi.

I don't want to slander anyone, but the general sentiment regarding GAW combined with deleted posts on the WARMINER thread, and the general unprofessional/over-hubrisy tone when their CEO posts (spell check?) don't paint a picture of a major player but someone who is presenting themselves as bigger than they are.  When questioned in regards to the Zeus chips connection the response was that the chips were GAW's, while we know all the vendors are either straight-selling Zeus hardware or just getting branded versions.

These things just don't sit right, I'm happy there is an unmoderated thread to discuss this because I don't like slamming someone on their own sales thread.

I believe they are vastly misleading their customer base. All negative posts are deleted. The only ones that aren't, are the people who actually had problems solved and edited their posts to say so. But even still the number of issues being reported should be alarming to anybody.

The gridseed debacle was their own fault and they are just pointing the finger at gridseed. Now they are selling "their own" scrypt miner and currently accepting pre-order money for it. But go ahead and ask about them like I did (after several deleted posts it took a PM). GAW will tell you they're in house and hashing. But still no pics or information about them anywhere. Just some auto cad drawings. They don't want the customers to know because they are just re-branded miners (probably from Zeus). My next thought was, if these are already hashing but they're currently accepting pre-orders...does that mean they're hashing on customers' hardware? They didn't respond to that one...

[Halofire]

Sorry, little off topic, what are the exact requirements to become jr, mem, full, sr, hero members? is it time and posts, or just posts? I keep getting upgraded, like now I'm full member, yesterday I wasn't.

[cryptofunk]

Sorry, little off topic, what are the exact requirements to become jr, mem, full, sr, hero members? is it time and posts, or just posts? I keep getting upgraded, like now I'm full member, yesterday I wasn't.

It's based on your activity score, have a look here https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=178608.0

[Halofire]

Sorry, little off topic, what are the exact requirements to become jr, mem, full, sr, hero members? is it time and posts, or just posts? I keep getting upgraded, like now I'm full member, yesterday I wasn't.

It's based on your activity score, have a look here https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=178608.0

Thanks! So I gathered its both time and posts.

[suchmoon]

That thread is not meant for us to be posting in to begin with, meant for new info about their products and is there for help for people to read to aid them. GAW is only a few months old, how do you expect them to have hero members when they only post in a few threads?

That's as far as my defense goes for them though for now. I'm waiting to see outcome of this zeus/generation A thing and Project Prime before I go any farther with comments, since zeus is giving out free miners...

If that was the case they should be deleting ALL off-topic posts from their thread including shameless ass-licking ones

[suchmoon]

I am actually really disturbed by what I am reading here and what I've observed in the moderated GAW thread.  While shameless self-promotion is generally an accepted practice, I see next to no senior/hero members commenting on good experiences with GAW and mainly people complaining about shipping delays, incorrect orders, hosting issues, etc.  This leads me to believe GAW is very good at convincing people to come to the forum to post "good experiences" but is lacking on actually providing those experiences (i.e., I have had fantastic interactions with one of their rival vendors, who I won't name, but never once have they asked me to come spam for them on the forums).

Can anyone with hosting provide a good update on what the situation has been?  Personally I oversee my own mini-farm (4 blades, 3 5-chips) and one for a colleague (now at 6 blades and I don't even know how many 5-chips) and they run 100% uptime with around 99% accepted using RPi + Raspbian + Sandor111's CPUMiner, in fact, blades average 5.6MH @ 838 freq with no other interaction required.  There is no reason for hosted miners to be down so often, with a few days of tweaking and professional employees everyone who purchased hosting should see similar uptime and acceptance rates since this is what the average joe can throw together with a blade and a rpi.

I don't want to slander anyone, but the general sentiment regarding GAW combined with deleted posts on the WARMINER thread, and the general unprofessional/over-hubrisy tone when their CEO posts (spell check?) don't paint a picture of a major player but someone who is presenting themselves as bigger than they are.  When questioned in regards to the Zeus chips connection the response was that the chips were GAW's, while we know all the vendors are either straight-selling Zeus hardware or just getting branded versions.

These things just don't sit right, I'm happy there is an unmoderated thread to discuss this because I don't like slamming someone on their own sales thread.

You know what they say - a picture is worth a thousand hashes (or something like that):



As you can see it's down for the last ~12+ hours now. Last update I got was: "Customers on this controller may experience 1-2 hr downtime while we now begin to redistribute the power on this cluster." That was 17 hours ago.

Edit: sorry, there is another one 14 hours ago: "If you are receiving this email we had to move some of your units and are in the process of spinning them back up. Some are already online the rest will be up shortly."

[suchmoon]

Sorry for spamming with multiple consecutive posts, but I found this to be quite hilarious:

Zeus has created some confusion about this. I spoke to Terry (CEO), about a week ago, and the cloud hosting is only for a limited time (one month or less). I am speaking with him again later today to gain some clarity so we match our pricing properly. In any case, you can expect we will exceed their offering.

Didn't they already get in trouble with Gridseed for a similar reason, i.e. waving their dirty knickers in public and not keeping their big mouths shut? Should be fun to watch if this blowhard can piss off Zeus the same way

[Halofire]

That thread is not meant for us to be posting in to begin with, meant for new info about their products and is there for help for people to read to aid them. GAW is only a few months old, how do you expect them to have hero members when they only post in a few threads?

That's as far as my defense goes for them though for now. I'm waiting to see outcome of this zeus/generation A thing and Project Prime before I go any farther with comments, since zeus is giving out free miners...

If that was the case they should be deleting ALL off-topic posts from their thread including shameless ass-licking ones

maybe so, they didn't delete my power rating typo(?) I found on the Gen A's. Is it possible to have a comment-by-permission-only style thread? That would solve that problem of them deleting, if no one could post, and thread would be dedicated to the intent.

[suchmoon]

That thread is not meant for us to be posting in to begin with, meant for new info about their products and is there for help for people to read to aid them. GAW is only a few months old, how do you expect them to have hero members when they only post in a few threads?

That's as far as my defense goes for them though for now. I'm waiting to see outcome of this zeus/generation A thing and Project Prime before I go any farther with comments, since zeus is giving out free miners...

If that was the case they should be deleting ALL off-topic posts from their thread including shameless ass-licking ones

maybe so, they didn't delete my power rating typo(?) I found on the Gen A's. Is it possible to have a comment-by-permission-only style thread? That would solve that problem of them deleting, if no one could post, and thread would be dedicated to the intent.

They could lock it, which would prevent anyone from posting. But the problem isn't that. Most of the negative posts were made by desperate customers who couldn't get help by any other available means of communication. The thread is the last resort option to get GAW's attention, and it actually works to some extent... it's just backwards and stupid to neglect their paying customers to the point where they need to vent in public. But it's their business, they can run (or ruin) it any way they want.

[Halofire]

I believe their next step will be a combined Merchant + Hash power pool at semi static rates, much like all the leaserigs and such based on the CEO post.  That is what I would do to fix the current issues.

The way the uptime currently works, it feels like they have 80% of the hardware spread over 100% of the paid clients, and just swapping the hash power around causing downtime for some, and cheers from others.
I say this as I have had around 20% downtime or very low hashing speed the past 2 weeks, right after all the new orders came online from the promotion I ordered too quick for.  After around 10 tickets/emails/posts it was all fixed by Jeff.  All of the customers I sent to them report exactly the same.

A system where they simply rent out 5.2MH a year instead of the actual device, will solve issues on both sides, so it's a logical move.  
Now I'm dreaming, but maybe they will ship home the old blades to make room for the new miners, and give us a free year of 5.2MH hashing.
I can dream, right?

For the ASIC market, none of this surprises me too much, I knew there were risks, but GAW specifically stated their price protection and buyback policy, which now seems to be nothing and that's where most my frustration is.

problem is 5.2MH is not going to be able to mine efficiently for a year.

[kcheel]

Below is my thread which was deleted from their moderated thread.  I did receive a PM from GAW stating they will look into the order and will update it as it goes.



I have been a little frustrated with GAW so far.  I decided to get me a Blade and figured with the good things I had heard about GAW, would order from them.  When I saw the promo to get a Blade and get a free mini, figured it was good time to order.

4/22 - Placed order.  Got shipping notice with USPS tracking # later that day.  Was really impressed they were that quick.  Was happy that I would have it running by the weekend.

4/23 and 4/24 - No history showing still on tracking #, so was obviously not shipped yet.  Sent support ticket asking when it would actually ship.  

4/25 - Received response from support ticket saying it was USPS's fault, that they reuse tracking #'s.  Which isn't the problem, there was no activity showing on it, not old activity.  Then turned around and said it would be shipping that day (4/25).  On this day, I also receive another tracking email notification saying that my order has shipped via DHL, so now I am really confused.  I check the DHL tracking # and it shows a package that is in Hong Kong and is being delivered to Austin, TX.  Which is even more confusing since I am in NC.

Which brings me to today (4/28) and I still have no clue where my order is coming from and who is actually delivering it.  USPS tracking # still shows no activity and the DHL tracking # shows it out for delivery in Austin, TX.



4/28 Afternoon Update:  DHL just delivered the Blade and PSU/Cables.  Why DHL tracking showed the order in Austin, TX, I have no clue but that is not GAW's fault.  So it is here, just waiting on the Gridseed Mini and power adapter.  Going to guess that is what is supposed to be coming from USPS, just hasn't been shipped yet (even though I received tracking number on the 22nd).  So overall delivery time for the Blade is within the 5 business day time GAW promises.  They caused a lot of confusion though by saying the entire order has shipped via USPS, when actually most of it came via DHL.  The whole "Process it as shipped and provide tracking #, even though it has not shipped and will not for days" routine, hopefully they will stop doing that.  I am not so impatient that I can not wait a couple of days for shipping but don't tell me it has shipped when it hasn't.  Hopefully the rest of it shows up soon.  I had been debating ordering another blade from them but this has definitely not pushed me towards it.

5/13 update:  Was given a small store credit back on 4/29 for all the confusion regarding the shipping details being off from what I was emailed, which was appreciated, especially considering the Blades dropped $500 right after I ordered.  As for the rest of my order, I still have never received it.  Have emailed support several times and other than getting a reply they are looking into it, have heard nothing back since last week.  Today is 3 weeks since order was placed.

[aumusxou]

GAW specifically stated their price protection and buyback policy, which now seems to be nothing and that's where most my frustration is.

This was a HUGE reason I (as part of the Founder's Club) bought some blades.  Price protection and buy back were huge promises, that they have now backed out on.

Up till that point, they had kept all their promises.

To say "oh, that's only for the gridseeds, and gridseed screwed us over, so there's nothing we can do going forward", now defines them for me.

They will make promises to get you to buy, then change the program when it doesn't work out for them.

Which again is a shame, because all their other great promos and promises (double has reward, quick uptime to getting hosted), they followed through on, where no other company was offering those services on Gridseeds.  And it was impressive for them to make those big promises, and actually deliver.  But now there is doubt for me going forward.

[alienesb]

We'll see how the free Grid or Fury works because that's better than I'm getting from anyone else (like ZoomHash...)

[cilution]

My blade is hashing away, but not on any of the 3 pools I have configured. Confused. Been doing that for a while. It is either a problem with CleverMining's reporting, or it really is pointing to something else. Trying a restart, I guess.

Anyone else run into this sort of issue?

Edit: Looks like everything is getting discarded. What could cause that?

[suchmoon]

My blade is hashing away, but not on any of the 3 pools I have configured. Confused. Been doing that for a while. It is either a problem with CleverMining's reporting, or it really is pointing to something else. Trying a restart, I guess.

Anyone else run into this sort of issue?

Edit: Looks like everything is getting discarded. What could cause that?

Which pool is your primary? Have you tried to move another one to the primary position?

[suchmoon]

My blades just went down, at least they properly show as down with a red down arrow.

I think they gave your blades to me, because mine are up now 

[Fiyasko]

I'm currently waiting on an order to arrive and i've noticed a few things
Ground shipping ($0) gave an extremely simmilar shipping path, and expected ETA as USPS (Priority Mail International) for $31.60, GAW miners emailed recipt says that this is "same day" shipping, yet USPS tells me that there is no difference in the shipping methods for the packages I'm tracking

In other words, paying for priority shipping seems to have done Nothing. The package I paid extra to have arrive faster, is not moving faster, is taking the same route, and USPS says there is no difference in the package's shipping method...

So what was my money spent on?
The GAW team contacted me and were quite professional about my concerns.
They apologised for the mixup and refunded me the extra funds I had spent, Normally i'd be a little annoyed that my request for priority shipping was uhh Mishandled?
However I'm not since according to USPS, all the packages are likely to arrive at the same time. *shrugs* All is well!

[suchmoon]

Did yours go down suchmoon mine are back up, and getting a smooth 5.6 MH each currently.
I'll be monitoring it as close as ever, as I'm curious to see what a full day of 5.2MH+ can earn now and not just on paper.

I have noticed downtime has happened to myself and some forum members/referrals right when Orangecoin, Silkcoin, and now Vericoin reached over .012 BTC per MH day(though didn't last all day, it did peak at over .022 BTC MH).
The first two I figured were coincidence, but missing out on 3 hot coin launches with my blade that I bought just for this reason, is getting questionable?  I ordered it right after Whitecoin had it's own .02+ BTC MH spike and have now missed out on 3 equally profitable coins.
Then the blades coming back online right when Scrypt goes back to being baseline .005 and less?
Yeah, I am getting frustrated now sorry.

I should never brag like that again - they did go down a few minutes after I posted that

And still down 10 hours later. I have submitted a ticket asking to ship the blades to me, no response of course. I'm contemplating a credit card chargeback...

[unimatrixzer0]

The one thing I wish the GAW Miner CEO would address is their hosting issues with downtime. Just seems to overlook those questions. At least acknowledge them you know?

[suchmoon]

I'm currently waiting on an order to arrive and i've noticed a few things
Ground shipping ($0) gave an extremely simmilar shipping path, and expected ETA as USPS (Priority Mail International) for $31.60, GAW miners emailed recipt says that this is "same day" shipping, yet USPS tells me that there is no difference in the shipping methods for the packages I'm tracking

In other words, paying for priority shipping seems to have done Nothing. The package I paid extra to have arrive faster, is not moving faster, is taking the same route, and USPS says there is no difference in the package's shipping method...

So what was my money spent on?

It's not necessarily something intentional. Free shipping is whatever is cheapest, and in your case it probably happened to be the same cost as Priority. They could make it clear on the website though, I would be pissed too if I paid extra for nothing.