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

[Alpharisc]

I've initiated a return of my hosted blade and asked for a refund back to the credit card that I used to order it. I'm just done with the worry and screwing around. I've had some decent responses to the support tickets, but it seems I need to put in a new one at least twice a day. None of the technical upgrades they have talked about adding have done anything to offer any consistent uptime.

They talk about how they were a hosting company prior to this, well, no regular hosting company could get away with this downtime and still expect customers so not sure why they should.

It's a shame, I was really excited about this purchase.

[unimatrixzer0]

An alternative.

https://litecointalk.org/index.php?topic=2702.0

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?

The shifty thing is they are hyping the hosting deal with Zeus - yet they can't keep hardware online now.  WTFingF?  That makes no sense.  GAW was nobody a while back and now they paint themselves as the altruistic leaders of the industry taking mining where it hasn't been before, however at every step of the way GAW pinches profit. 

[Mithril1977]

Of course they make profit. Isn't any business model supposed to do that? margins are what keeps businesses running. I've had decent success with them.

[suchmoon]

GAW came up with a "solution" for hosting issues:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=529093.msg6729162#msg6729162

tl;dr for $500 they will take the blade offline and will ship you a 13 MH/s miner next month.

$500 and 4 weeks of downtime in exchange for 7 MH/s increase (more than 100%).

Might be worth it ASSUMING they will deliver as promised.

[jayen]

I just found this thread and it is so disheartening to find out the "other" GAW thread was so moderated.

I've been getting the run-around on my gridseed blades (which are getting outdated every passing day), and am nearing the point where I just want out of the ASICs game (so much for their CEO's talk of wanting to turn the industry around).

I'm curious, has anyone successfully processed a return with GAW and not be out of pocket? Has anyone had to resort to paypal dispute resolution yet?

[PeaMine]

I just found this thread and it is so disheartening to find out the "other" GAW thread was so moderated.

I've been getting the run-around on my gridseed blades (which are getting outdated every passing day), and am nearing the point where I just want out of the ASICs game (so much for their CEO's talk of wanting to turn the industry around).

I'm curious, has anyone successfully processed a return with GAW and not be out of pocket? Has anyone had to resort to paypal dispute resolution yet?

The CEO seems to really care if you PM them about the issue on here, I have had issues and where tickets failed, a PM fixed things quick.
I'd let him know about the issue first, see if they can fix it, then mention putting in the order dispute if you can't resolve this(I think its a 60 day cut off?)
Paypal needs you to do this anyway for "attempt to resolve issue with other party first" if I recall right.

[suchmoon]

PayPal has a 45-day deadline, don't miss it no matter what, otherwise you're screwed (unless you paid with a credit card, which may give you extra protection if PayPal fails). Even if the merchant (GAW) promises to fix things, START THE DISPUTE anyway if it is not actually fixed by day ~40 after payment. I can't stress that enough, don't get suckered into missing the deadline by promises.

[jayen]

Thanks for the replies so far -- both their CMO and CEO have reached out to me via PM. I'm not a fan of the thread moderation -- but them reaching out directly is certainly encouraging and appreciated, and I'd certainly give them points for that.

[Fiyasko]

Thanks for the replies so far -- both their CMO and CEO have reached out to me via PM. I'm not a fan of the thread moderation -- but them reaching out directly is certainly encouraging and appreciated, and I'd certainly give them points for that.

Yeah... I really hate such extreme moderation... It's just not right... Muffling peoples free speech....
On the silver lining side of things, it seems that they contact the people they censor, so atleast they appear to be reasonable

[bitlind]

Just wanted to throw some feedback out there on GAW and share my experience so people can remain informed.  I placed an order with them late night May 21st and received my miners two days past the 5 day door to door guarantee.  There was also a small mishap with my order, I was missing a USB cable and a power dongle.  To me it was not a very big deal but I figured I would test their sincerity and see if they really would hold up to their guaranteed customer service.  I sent a pmsg to the CEO account on btctalk and sent an email into support.  The CEO account responded immediately, said they wanted to make it right.  After a short period he sent me a $50 BTC credit.  Now, I paid in USD, but I value BTC much higher than USD... that is to say I value USD very little.  Getting BTC was unexpected and a warm welcome, overall I lost about $50 worth of BTC on a Multipool, and he recouped it for me.

I know the market for scrypt ASICs is a tight race, but if GAW stays competitive within a few dollars at each tier level, I will continue to purchase from them alone.

[jayen]

On the silver lining side of things, it seems that they contact the people they censor, so atleast they appear to be reasonable

Yes, and so far, they are very civil and fair about the situation. They have offered a fair agreement on how to move forward and resolve the issue. They do seem genuine in their attempt to help, so I'll try to be optimistic that everything will come through as promised by next week.

[Edser]

Jayen, in the same boat. awaiting the made up parts to show up at my door and put this beast together.

will update on resolution

[GAWMiners_RamiA]

Jayen, in the same boat. awaiting the made up parts to show up at my door and put this beast together.

will update on resolution

You should be getting them tomorrow Edser. I got confirmation of everything being shipped out today (since I wasn't in the offices myself).

I hope you all saw my post on the main thread, but if not, here it is again:

Hey Everyone,

We truly enjoy doing business with you all and we have been working rigorously to bring you the utmost quality in service - whether through our delivery, hosting, customer service or our awesome, one-of-a-kind promotions!

We have been heavily staffing up in all our customer service based departments - from shipping to phone/email to tech support - to keep up with the growing demand and to be able to reach that level of service we've been striving for.

With that said, sometimes we make mistakes. We've been getting much better at what we're doing, but still not 100% and when we make a mistake, we let you down. Whether it's a delay in shipping or a delay in ticket response, we know it is our duty to make it right and if you give us the opportunity, we will!

I want you all to know this:

If you haven't gotten a response through our support center within 24 hours, you may directly private message me here or email me at:

rami@gawminers.com

I may not be able to directly help you with your issue, but I will make sure you are being taken care of immediately by the right person in the right department.

Regarding our post moderation: We don't like to delete posts, but if they are about an issue you are having and you don't provide a name, order # or ticket # - there is no way we can help you and it just creates clutter and conversations which sometimes get aggressive between users, and we definitely don't tolerate or want that in our community. (When you reach out to me, just throw any 1 of those 3 pieces of info in and I'll be able to find you - please don't post in the thread with that info either - at least not in the main thread.).

It makes me sad when I find out that we've let one of our customers down. Please give me the chance to help you if you feel like you've been wronged or mistreated. I've worked with many of you personally before (you know who you are  ) and I've always had a pleasant experience whether we spoke on the phone or through email.

Thank you all again for being a part of the GAW family.

Rami - CMO

[suchmoon]

I have to quote this in case the nice folks at GAW get happy with the delete button again

Any chances of GAW Miners reimbursing me whatsoever for the help I gave during their startup?

It really rubs me the wrong way that GAW is exploding like this. Before they were mining, I was contacted directly by them. I was told specifically that:

• They had started their hosted mining business using MultiMiner, as it was the easiest way to get going and divide mining between customers
• They needed GridSeed support ASAP and wanted to do whatever they could to speed that up
• They specifically offered both $ and hardware
• I told them that what I needed was hardware, both current and future, to develop the drivers
• I told then I also needed remote instances I could remote into to confirm bugs

They never delivered on anything. Once the GridSeed driver (for BFGMiner) was up and working, I started contacting them asking about sample hardware to continue development. At this point GAW fell silent.

Later they started contacting me again, directly, asking for more help in setting up their service. I told them directly that they had promised hardware in the past for my development and consulting and had not delivered on that. Then they fell completely silent again.

Note that these conversations have been with both their CEO and CTO.

I'm glad they hare making customers happy, but they are not making developers happy.

[suchmoon]

Rami, don't get me wrong, it's great of you to offer personal help, HOWEVER - as I've told to some of the GAW accounts here in the forums (seriously, how many of you are there?  ) it does not speak well for your customer service if customers need to e-mail or pm or call to escalate their issues. How is this private messaging going to affect your customers who are not on bitcointalk? Are their tickets going to be pushed even further because you are prioritizing those who escalate? I'm sorry if I missed the explanation of this bizarre system, but I'm not getting why you can't take care of ALL open tickets.

Jayen, in the same boat. awaiting the made up parts to show up at my door and put this beast together.

will update on resolution

You should be getting them tomorrow Edser. I got confirmation of everything being shipped out today (since I wasn't in the offices myself).

I hope you all saw my post on the main thread, but if not, here it is again:

Hey Everyone,

We truly enjoy doing business with you all and we have been working rigorously to bring you the utmost quality in service - whether through our delivery, hosting, customer service or our awesome, one-of-a-kind promotions!

We have been heavily staffing up in all our customer service based departments - from shipping to phone/email to tech support - to keep up with the growing demand and to be able to reach that level of service we've been striving for.

With that said, sometimes we make mistakes. We've been getting much better at what we're doing, but still not 100% and when we make a mistake, we let you down. Whether it's a delay in shipping or a delay in ticket response, we know it is our duty to make it right and if you give us the opportunity, we will!

I want you all to know this:

If you haven't gotten a response through our support center within 24 hours, you may directly private message me here or email me at:

rami@gawminers.com

I may not be able to directly help you with your issue, but I will make sure you are being taken care of immediately by the right person in the right department.

Regarding our post moderation: We don't like to delete posts, but if they are about an issue you are having and you don't provide a name, order # or ticket # - there is no way we can help you and it just creates clutter and conversations which sometimes get aggressive between users, and we definitely don't tolerate or want that in our community. (When you reach out to me, just throw any 1 of those 3 pieces of info in and I'll be able to find you - please don't post in the thread with that info either - at least not in the main thread.).

It makes me sad when I find out that we've let one of our customers down. Please give me the chance to help you if you feel like you've been wronged or mistreated. I've worked with many of you personally before (you know who you are  ) and I've always had a pleasant experience whether we spoke on the phone or through email.

Thank you all again for being a part of the GAW family.

Rami - CMO

[BitcoinGeekBoy]

So GAW Miners doesn't have an option anymore for existing customers or new customers to have hosted miners?

BUT you can BUY a ZEUS MINER and GAW Miners will Host it?

Search for GAW in the link ==> http://zeusminer.com/2014/05/07/progress-update-20140507/

I guess we all need to head over to ==> http://zeusminer.com/ to buy our miner if we want it hosted by GAW Miners!

Really??!!

[BitcoinGeekBoy]

Rami, don't get me wrong, it's great of you to offer personal help, HOWEVER - as I've told to some of the GAW accounts here in the forums (seriously, how many of you are there?  ) it does not speak well for your customer service if customers need to e-mail or pm or call to escalate their issues. How is this private messaging going to affect your customers who are not on bitcointalk? Are their tickets going to be pushed even further because you are prioritizing those who escalate? I'm sorry if I missed the explanation of this bizarre system, but I'm not getting why you can't take care of ALL open tickets.

^^^^^^^^ to the moon

The problem is that the boasting doesn't match the service complaints, the shipping complaints, the claim from GAW_CEO that USPS messes up/loses "20-30% of packages" (which is just freaking absurd), etc.  Multiple forum accounts don't make up for the fact that the appearance of the operation doesn't match the claims and many legit questions get cleared from the other thread while nonsense crap like people commenting on a power plant picture remains.  

Self-moderation is a killer - if you have nothing to hide, you can publicly silence the naysayers by either answering their questions or proving them wrong.  That's what I want my bro Josh to do, stop boasting, start delivering.  

I read that GAW is handling the hosting for Zeus (which worries me, I have Zeus hardware on order along with GAW, Hashra, and ZoomHash for the end-of-may generation), but I see people posting about lots of hosting problems and you folks admit you took on more than you could handle which is why service has suffered.  You put your own success ahead of your current paying customers, you are constantly price-warring with other vendors over a few bucks here and there, yet Josh posts a brilliant plan based on price fixing (straight-up illegal, yo), and now the next great plan revolves around bumping people up to your branded hardware, their hosted hardware going offline (helping you folks with infrastructure problems), and them paying a difference for the privilege of losing hosted mining (the main draw of GAW) since y'all couldn't plan properly.

The amount of hardware in my group is changing almost daily, with the orders my colleagues made from <a vendor> yesterday we're going to be sitting on around 140MH when all is said and done and our current uptime as well as acceptance from all hardware is just now bordering on 99%.  We aren't little bit players who are pissed off because our usb miner is running hot, we've devoted serious time, effort, research, and cash into this operation and expect vendors to put in the same effort.  GAW lacks the polish of folks who have run several businesses for years.

Took a while to post this, but what BitcoinGeekBoy said makes a ton of sense.  So, please clarify, you'll host for Zeus customers but not for GAW customers?

Don't get me wrong I have hosted blades with GAW Miners and they up and running now without any issues recently.  GAW support has been very responsive in getting any past issues resolved quickly.

I am just frustrated that they are offering hosted options for other vendors now and no hosted options to their own customers.  Seems like priorities are getting reversed now.

 

[suchmoon]

USPS messes up/loses "20-30% of packages" (which is just freaking absurd)

Yeah, that was my favorite "fun fact" from yesterday

Kind of puts into perspective everything else GAW says or does.

[GAW Miners_CEO]

Rami, don't get me wrong, it's great of you to offer personal help, HOWEVER - as I've told to some of the GAW accounts here in the forums (seriously, how many of you are there?   ) it does not speak well for your customer service if customers need to e-mail or pm or call to escalate their issues. How is this private messaging going to affect your customers who are not on bitcointalk? Are their tickets going to be pushed even further because you are prioritizing those who escalate? I'm sorry if I missed the explanation of this bizarre system, but I'm not getting why you can't take care of ALL open tickets.

^^^^^^^^ to the moon

The problem is that the boasting doesn't match the service complaints, the shipping complaints, the claim from GAW_CEO that USPS messes up/loses "20-30% of packages" (which is just freaking absurd), etc.  Multiple forum accounts don't make up for the fact that the appearance of the operation doesn't match the claims and many legit questions get cleared from the other thread while nonsense crap like people commenting on a power plant picture remains.  

Self-moderation is a killer - if you have nothing to hide, you can publicly silence the naysayers by either answering their questions or proving them wrong.  That's what I want my bro Josh to do, stop boasting, start delivering.  

I read that GAW is handling the hosting for Zeus (which worries me, I have Zeus hardware on order along with GAW, Hashra, and ZoomHash for the end-of-may generation), but I see people posting about lots of hosting problems and you folks admit you took on more than you could handle which is why service has suffered.  You put your own success ahead of your current paying customers, you are constantly price-warring with other vendors over a few bucks here and there, yet Josh posts a brilliant plan based on price fixing (straight-up illegal, yo), and now the next great plan revolves around bumping people up to your branded hardware, their hosted hardware going offline (helping you folks with infrastructure problems), and them paying a difference for the privilege of losing hosted mining (the main draw of GAW) since y'all couldn't plan properly.

The amount of hardware in my group is changing almost daily, with the orders my colleagues made from <a vendor> yesterday we're going to be sitting on around 140MH when all is said and done and our current uptime as well as acceptance from all hardware is just now bordering on 99%.  We aren't little bit players who are pissed off because our usb miner is running hot, we've devoted serious time, effort, research, and cash into this operation and expect vendors to put in the same effort.  GAW lacks the polish of folks who have run several businesses for years.

Took a while to post this, but what BitcoinGeekBoy said makes a ton of sense.  So, please clarify, you'll host for Zeus customers but not for GAW customers?

I got to tell you, I have been watching you for a while, and its getting out of control.

You claim that you want to be 'fair' but you have no interest in that, at all. No matter how many of your concerns I addressed privately, you just came up with new ones. I am starting to wonder if your planted here by one of our competitors. I have never seen someone spend so much time continuing to create an issues and so unwilling to listen. And, outside of the pre-order you placed the other day, your not even a current customer. I hope when people read your comments, they go to your profile to get an idea of all the comments you make about us. There is nothing objective about them.

I have heard you say over and over again 'boasting doesn't match the service complaints' How is this statement true or validated?

There is NO company in the world that does not piss off customers. The mark of a great company is not one that has no complaints, its on where the complaint level is in the lowest percentage, and they fix the mistakes they make. EVERY single customer that has contacted me (that I know of) has walked away happy.

Since you have no idea of how many customers we have, how can you possibly say we have too many complaints? If we had 30 customers, we would be a terrible company. As we would have 100% of our customers upset. But if we had 1,000,000 customers, we would have the best customer feedback in the world (no company has that kind of ratio). If you counted every complaint ever made on this forum, and even doubled the number, it would be less then 1% of our customers.

In a PM I told you:

'Try to remember one thing. In business, you typically only hear from upset customers. Its rare, someone takes the time to go out of their way to tell you they are happy. But, most of the time, people will not think twice before making a negative comment.'

you then said:

'If it is rare people will comment on good service then that speaks to the suspect repeated posts from new folks.'

I did not call you out on this, but I never said it was rare that people pay us positive feedback. But more importantly, ITS ALWAYS true that customers spend more time complaining when they are upset.

This thread is a perfect example. Every person who has complained here could reach out to me and I would resolve their issues (just like I already did with some) and make it right, no matter what it took. But instead, they post here to complain, which does nothing to help them get their issue resolved.

suchmoon, to your question. YES sometimes it takes customers contacting us/me directly get to the support they need. Sometimes the issue is too custom for the CSR to handle, or sometimes the CSR just did a bad job and the leadership teams needs to know about it to fix it. Having run MANY 100m plus companies in my years. I can tell you that people will always get pissed off (whether its our fault or not). And there will be always a need to contact people at a higher level in the company. Thats why I put myself out there, so customers can get directly to me.

Neither of you guys have an interest in being objective about our company. You go out of your way to hi-light the issues, and never take the same energy to put in the all the positive things that have come from us, or that we have cause other companies to do.

Go on and continue to do you do and complain. And we will continue to do what we do, which is make more and more people happy, and help grow this industry.

[GAW Miners_CEO]

Sup!

So, about the hosting, is GAW eliminating hosting for GAW customers and only running hosting for Zeus customers?  

You can write a lot but little questions like these aren't being answered.  This is why I keep blabbering on here.  

"We are having trouble hosting the products we sold" vs. press info saying you're hosting for Zeus, fo' real?

What about your proposal to do an industry-wide price fix?  Fo' real?  That's illegal, for anyone in business as long as the GAW companies you should know that.  There's a reason we have laws against that type of activity in this country.

Thanks for making my point