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

[suchmoon]

At 0.0006 BTC per MH/s on CM today, the Fury/Blizzard will make ~$0.49 with free electricity. Down to ~$0.37 per day if your electric rate is $0.10/kWh, or down to ~$0.25 if it's $0.20/kWh (power consumption ~1.2 kWh per day).

$178.85 in a year with free electric.
$135.05 in a year @ $0.10/kWh
$91.25 in a year @ $0.20/kWh

Think I got it right.

Nope. What spiceminer15 said. Which is why I was very careful to state "today" and not multiply these numbers by anything.

For a quick diff estimate assume it will double every month. So you'd be getting half the revenue (before the electric bill) in a month from now. Which makes $0.20/kWh rate unprofitable at that time, and at $0.10/kWh you'd be making $0.13 per day or so. A month after that it's unprofitable even at $0.10/kWh. Of course there are other factors like exchange rates. Use this calculator and change the values around to get a feel for it: https://bitcoinwisdom.com/litecoin/calculator

[MinersAnonymous]

edit

thats too bad. your truthfull review of the company got taken away because they contacted you probably and scared you or offered more hush money

That's a naive yet childish response to an "edit" comment.


I realized I should post my issue on hashtrader instead of here because I will have people like you respond with inept comments. Non constructive posts that yield no results.


I was calling GAW for multiple days and it's the automated message that no agents are available. Also, there were multiple emails and support tickets for the issue.
I posted on hashtrader because there is actual GAW staff on that forum responding. Since I was looking for support, and not ranting about unresolved situations, I removed my post here and used "edit". I would rather let the situation unfold/resolve instead of post constant updates that look as if I am ranting or bashing their business. I've said before and say it again, they have some great staff there, the problem is being understaffed and moving locations.

[Halofire]

At 0.0006 BTC per MH/s on CM today, the Fury/Blizzard will make ~$0.49 with free electricity. Down to ~$0.37 per day if your electric rate is $0.10/kWh, or down to ~$0.25 if it's $0.20/kWh (power consumption ~1.2 kWh per day).

$178.85 in a year with free electric.
$135.05 in a year @ $0.10/kWh
$91.25 in a year @ $0.20/kWh

Think I got it right.

Nope. What spiceminer15 said. Which is why I was very careful to state "today" and not multiply these numbers by anything.

For a quick diff estimate assume it will double every month. So you'd be getting half the revenue (before the electric bill) in a month from now. Which makes $0.20/kWh rate unprofitable at that time, and at $0.10/kWh you'd be making $0.13 per day or so. A month after that it's unprofitable even at $0.10/kWh. Of course there are other factors like exchange rates. Use this calculator and change the values around to get a feel for it: https://bitcoinwisdom.com/litecoin/calculator

And everyone forgets to include the taxes they will pay if they claim their earnings, another 30% off the top, then minus the electric. If you mine as a company, it's better because you can claim your expenses.

[suchmoon]

And everyone forgets to include the taxes they will pay if they claim their earnings, another 30% off the top, then minus the electric. If you mine as a company, it's better because you can claim your expenses.

That might be because it's not true or not the same for many miners.

[lynn_402]

And everyone forgets to include the taxes they will pay if they claim their earnings, another 30% off the top, then minus the electric. If you mine as a company, it's better because you can claim your expenses.

That might be because it's not true or not the same for many miners.

Yeah, and it would be simple for any relatively small miner to simply not report their gains.

[MeltManBob]

TLDR - GAWs customer service is time consuming, not dependable and doesn't seem to care too much about actually doing right, only doing right by enough people so that those people will argue for them against those they didn't do right by.

Just thought I'd drop in and share my experience with GAW. From day one their communication has been hit or miss for me. The first time the communication was broken I was credited $60 towards a purchase for the inconvenience of being ready to order week 3's and by the time I could get a hold of anyone to find out why the questions I asked initially and were told I would have answers within a day were still not answered or even responded to in 4 days. It was over a week before my questions were mostly answered at which point week 4's were taken down and week 5's were up. That started the second issue because initially week 5's were at a substantially lower price ($94.49) which made week 5's a better deal than the week 4's I had just missed out on like the week 3's because of crappy communication. Unfortunately when I called in as soon as I saw the week 5's, no one was there to answer my questions about missing products in their lineup for week 5. Within a couple hours of that call I had decided I wasn't going to wait to see about the rest of their product line, I was just going to order Furys and literally as I was adjusting the quantity in my basket, they increased to $109.95.

At that point I waited until I could talk to someone and they would not honor the $94.49 price point but offered to honor a $96/unit price point although by the time this whole thing go straightened out we were onto week 6's.  After talking to a live person I finally settled on several orders broken up to use different coupon codes and I did explain to them exactly what I wanted to do with the orders, coupons and store credit before doing it so I would know if any part of it was something they didn't like.  At this point after talking to a live person I felt comfortable enough to make my purchase but that apparently was made with 2 incorrect assumptions.

The next set of problems started once I received my order.  Several of the Furys had their fan wires sliced through the insulation as if they had been pressed too hard against the heatsink fins. Also several of the fan connectors on the boards were bent away from the board, some quite a bit. The power supplies were in individual boxes, the power and usb cords were loose and the Furys were wrapped in a single layer of ~1/8" foam with no protection on the ends, all of this in a giant box with peanuts. 

Literally as I was unpacking them I emailed GAW regarding the damage I was seeing on the wires and connectors. I emailed them again 2-3 days later since I hadn't heard back from them. After giving them a little more time I decided that clearly the communication that I was assured would be better was not so I took the time to figure out that they have a new site for service related issues and created a ticket.

I received a response the same day stating they would escalate my ticket to a specialist. The next day I heard from their specialist who was the person I had initially sent emails to regarding the damage and in the ticket she said she hadn't received either of my emails. She also told me I needed to do a formal request for a refund at which point I had to ask her to direct me to where I could do this. I then left a message on the ticket which was the copied email chain regarding the damage but going back to previous emails between the 2 of us. Later that same day she responded with instructions on where to file a formal return request. I followed the instructions but saw no option for a refund so I posted that to the ticket.

She got back to me the next day (day 3 of the ticket) stating that if there was no option to just put it in the notes so I did and posted to the ticket that I created the requests. I heard nothing back so the next day (day 4 of the ticket) I asked for further instructions on this process with no response. The next day (day 5 of the ticket) I asked again with no response. Same thing the next day (day 6), it had been 3 days since I followed the latest instructions with no response, no idea what needs to happen next, the time frame, nothing in the way of what to expect. I was able to get a hold of a different person whom I had dealt with previously through their sites chat box. This person said she would do her best to expedite the process because she was already aware of all of the crappy communication issues previously and said I should have a response the following day hopefully. At the end of day 7 I posted to the ticket that it had been 9 days since my initial email regarding the damage and 6 days since I created the ticket with still no resolution. Then today I got a response letting me know that it was out of the support agents hands and that it was basically up to their head of shipping. It was also 'explained' that they have a lot of refund requests right now which is part of why it's taking so long...

So my 2 incorrect assumptions were that the communication would be better and that their pricing would not devalue my investment by 50+% by the time I received it.  The lady through chat did offer me more store credit but it didn't come close to making up for their price cuts. The difficulty is the risk miners take and it's also been fairly standard practice that prices will drop to account for the difficulty some but I did not expect to be able to re-purchase the hashing power I bought for half the cost or less if you factor in store credit that was on my account.  No the Furys were not half the price compared to when I bought, but I bought 10 and at the time they were $104.95 = $1049.50 which was more than what a War Machine ($849.99) was priced at by the time I received my order and that machine is twice the hashing power. And actually you could consider that if you receive their emails they have been offering $50 Furys several times since I've received my order which is less than half price...

[reactor]

TLDR - GAWs customer service is time consuming, not dependable and doesn't seem to care too much about actually doing right, only doing right by enough people so that those people will argue for them against those they didn't do right by.

Just thought I'd drop in and share my experience with GAW. From day one their communication has been hit or miss for me. The first time the communication was broken I was credited $60 towards a purchase for the inconvenience of being ready to order week 3's and by the time I could get a hold of anyone to find out why the questions I asked initially and were told I would have answers within a day were still not answered or even responded to in 4 days. It was over a week before my questions were mostly answered at which point week 4's were taken down and week 5's were up. That started the second issue because initially week 5's were at a substantially lower price ($94.49) which made week 5's a better deal than the week 4's I had just missed out on like the week 3's because of crappy communication. Unfortunately when I called in as soon as I saw the week 5's, no one was there to answer my questions about missing products in their lineup for week 5. Within a couple hours of that call I had decided I wasn't going to wait to see about the rest of their product line, I was just going to order Furys and literally as I was adjusting the quantity in my basket, they increased to $109.95.

At that point I waited until I could talk to someone and they would not honor the $94.49 price point but offered to honor a $96/unit price point although by the time this whole thing go straightened out we were onto week 6's.  After talking to a live person I finally settled on several orders broken up to use different coupon codes and I did explain to them exactly what I wanted to do with the orders, coupons and store credit before doing it so I would know if any part of it was something they didn't like.  At this point after talking to a live person I felt comfortable enough to make my purchase but that apparently was made with 2 incorrect assumptions.

The next set of problems started once I received my order.  Several of the Furys had their fan wires sliced through the insulation as if they had been pressed too hard against the heatsink fins. Also several of the fan connectors on the boards were bent away from the board, some quite a bit. The power supplies were in individual boxes, the power and usb cords were loose and the Furys were wrapped in a single layer of ~1/8" foam with no protection on the ends, all of this in a giant box with peanuts.  

Literally as I was unpacking them I emailed GAW regarding the damage I was seeing on the wires and connectors. I emailed them again 2-3 days later since I hadn't heard back from them. After giving them a little more time I decided that clearly the communication that I was assured would be better was not so I took the time to figure out that they have a new site for service related issues and created a ticket.

I received a response the same day stating they would escalate my ticket to a specialist. The next day I heard from their specialist who was the person I had initially sent emails to regarding the damage and in the ticket she said she hadn't received either of my emails. She also told me I needed to do a formal request for a refund at which point I had to ask her to direct me to where I could do this. I then left a message on the ticket which was the copied email chain regarding the damage but going back to previous emails between the 2 of us. Later that same day she responded with instructions on where to file a formal return request. I followed the instructions but saw no option for a refund so I posted that to the ticket.

She got back to me the next day (day 3 of the ticket) stating that if there was no option to just put it in the notes so I did and posted to the ticket that I created the requests. I heard nothing back so the next day (day 4 of the ticket) I asked for further instructions on this process with no response. The next day (day 5 of the ticket) I asked again with no response. Same thing the next day (day 6), it had been 3 days since I followed the latest instructions with no response, no idea what needs to happen next, the time frame, nothing in the way of what to expect. I was able to get a hold of a different person whom I had dealt with previously through their sites chat box. This person said she would do her best to expedite the process because she was already aware of all of the crappy communication issues previously and said I should have a response the following day hopefully. At the end of day 7 I posted to the ticket that it had been 9 days since my initial email regarding the damage and 6 days since I created the ticket with still no resolution. Then today I got a response letting me know that it was out of the support agents hands and that it was basically up to their head of shipping. It was also 'explained' that they have a lot of refund requests right now which is part of why it's taking so long...

So my 2 incorrect assumptions were that the communication would be better and that their pricing would not devalue my investment by 50+% by the time I received it.  The lady through chat did offer me more store credit but it didn't come close to making up for their price cuts. The difficulty is the risk miners take and it's also been fairly standard practice that prices will drop to account for the difficulty some but I did not expect to be able to re-purchase the hashing power I bought for half the cost or less if you factor in store credit that was on my account.  No the Furys were not half the price compared to when I bought, but I bought 10 and at the time they were $104.95 = $1049.50 which was more than what a War Machine ($849.99) was priced at by the time I received my order and that machine is twice the hashing power. And actually you could consider that if you receive their emails they have been offering $50 Furys several times since I've received my order which is less than half price...

Thank you for the detailed feedback.  We need more of this on bitcointalk.

[EvilPanda]

The difficulty is the risk miners take and it's also been fairly standard practice that prices will drop to account for the difficulty some but I did not expect to be able to re-purchase the hashing power I bought for half the cost or less if you factor in store credit that was on my account.  No the Furys were not half the price compared to when I bought, but I bought 10 and at the time they were $104.95 = $1049.50 which was more than what a War Machine ($849.99) was priced at by the time I received my order and that machine is twice the hashing power. And actually you could consider that if you receive their emails they have been offering $50 Furys several times since I've received my order which is less than half price...

This is a common practice in the industry. GAW is only one of many resellers, so their prices depend on the manufacturer. If you go to the Zeusminer store you'll see they have a different batch scheduled for every week and each has its own price. It's not only GAW that dropped prices, others did the same. And yes the big miners are usually more efficient and cheaper than multiple small units
As for the damaged insulation, it must have been damaged in the factory.  I'd just take a piece of electric tape and get it ready to run within minutes instead of wasting time and money to send it back.

[Hardy49r]

I was both sorry and re-leaved to find this forum and thread.  My experience to date with GAW Miners has been mute.  I contacted them several times, left "tickets", voice mails, etc. 

I hope my experience does no turn out to be bad, because I have placed an order with them, but I believe the item name changed during the process, which was weird enough, but when I looked at my browser history the original page for this item I order 3 of no longer existed ("page deleted or moved" message).

Someone named Brian did respond to my ticket saying they would be interested in helping me place volume orders and that a sales person would contact me.  Still waiting.

So being new to GAW Miners and the company/products/services in general I was lost until I found this thread on this forum and read this months posts.  Looks hit or miss from what I read. I pray that my experience a hit and not a miss.

Is this a case of a company that's seeing too much growth, too fast, and the management and systems are not able to keep up with the load?

[MeltManBob]

EvilPanda - I wasn't talking about the 'normal' price deviation which is why I thought I specifically stated that my investment was devalued by their pricing by 50+% and not the usual 5-10% which I've seen to be fairly common on later production batches.  A week 3 Fury at $140, a week 4 at $125, a week 5 at $94.50 then $99 then $109 in less than 6 hours, a week 6 at $105, more or less all make sense. Getting 13mhs worth of week 6 products at $1049.50 and by the time I receive them a 27mhs War Machine is $850, that doesn't make sense as far as doing right by the customer goes and that I won't be a part of.

As for the damage, yes I can fix it as most people could but that's besides the point. Again I am not going to pay for a 'new' product and be happy with one that has damage but I do agree that damage is not something really worth sending it in for, hell they could ask for pictures to verify the damage and then just send me new fans. Then again that only deals with the fan wire damage and not any potential real damage done to the bent connectors. They could do something where they charge me for 3 more at the slightly lower week 7 or week 8 price, send them to me, I send back the damaged ones once the new ones are hooked up and then refund me for the 3 damaged week 6's. The loss in revenue for basically swapping out damaged week 6's for week 7's or 8's is on them because they provided a damaged product which would in that scenario require me to shell out more money that I shouldn't have to and deal with swapping them out and sending units back, none of which I bought into when I made my purchase. Then again that doesn't provide a solution to those who don't have the extra money to just cough up and put on hold or those whole at that point aren't willing to trust GAW with another cent of their money.

You'll have to excuse my harshness if you see it that way towards money but I do construction which means that I'm literally wearing down my own body to make a paycheck so I expect my money's worth.

Hardy49r - I wish you the best of luck. Amazingly enough what I wrote is more or less a cliff-notes version and would be much longer if I detailed out every part of each issue to give more clarity to the headache this has been.  You are absolutely correct in your possible assumptions; this company has bitten off more than they can chew and the deceptive thing is that some of the reps, when you do get a hold of them, actually seem like they care and want to help. Hell maybe they really do but the company provides constraints that they sometimes can't get around. The bottom line - you're going to end up doing more work than you should have to in order to get the service from them that should already be a given but as I said, I wish you the best.

[MeltManBob]

I should also mention that I have heard from Amber here on the forums so we'll see where that goes, maybe she can get my refund process moving along instead of being stuck at 'pending' for the better part of a week. I'm starting to get the impression that this company is stalling so that the 14 day return period is up and they can claim that I don't qualify but who knows?! If they don't like that interpretation then maybe they shouldn't let idle minds have too much time to think about what they might really be doing since they clearly aren't doing the right thing. It's rather ironic that up to the point of creating the refund requests there was communication daily, sometimes several times a day albeit not very informative at times and then hardly anything after the requests or the fact that I get a faster response from a 'GAW rep' here than through their own support channels.

I wonder how it makes sense to pay someone to dig through threads on sites not associated with their company instead of having them deal directly with their own support infrastructure where they don't have to dig to find the problems; they are already neatly packaged into a support ticket. I'm being facetious as I know coming here has a benefit but there is something fundamentally wrong when the more reactive support comes external to their own internal support, especially considering this is a new company that shouldn't be so back-logged and compartmentalized that their interior has lost it's functionality.

[Hardy49r]

Is this a case of a company that's seeing too much growth, too fast, and the management and systems are not able to keep up with the load?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4zyjLyBp64

Can anyone please answer the question above?  Is this really a great company, that is just working through growing pains?  Or... is there something wrong at the company now? 

I just placed the first round of a planned sizable order with GAW, and some of these posts are making me a little nervous in regards to delivery and ongoing support.   There are also other resources  (power conditioning, air conditioning, facility and associated electrical power) are being sourced from other providers. 

Is there anyone one here on this forum from GAW Miners that can address these concerns?  If so, please provide some insight. Thanks.

[spiceminer15]

Hope you are not buying scrypt asic machines

[EvilPanda]

Is this a case of a company that's seeing too much growth, too fast, and the management and systems are not able to keep up with the load?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4zyjLyBp64

Can anyone please answer the question above?  Is this really a great company, that is just working through growing pains?  Or... is there something wrong at the company now?  

I just placed the first round of a planned sizable order with GAW, and some of these posts are making me a little nervous in regards to delivery and ongoing support.   There are also other resources  (power conditioning, air conditioning, facility and associated electrical power) are being sourced from other providers.  

Is there anyone one here on this forum from GAW Miners that can address these concerns?  If so, please provide some insight. Thanks.

You're wasting time asking GAW employees for an opinion here. They don't use this forum and have their own.
The reason they contact you here is that sometimes GAW clients see someone asking for help and forward it to the staff at hashtrader.
There was a question like this in one of the above posts "why do they employ someone to scan the forums" - they don't that's why you won't reach them here.

They recently moved to a new office and were remodeling. You can see the pictures here https://hashtrader.com/t/lets-take-a-tour-of-gaws-new-digs/3181/10

As far as I know there's nothing wrong. They just have a small crew involved in a number of projects at the same time. If you want to contact them just go to Hashtrader and PM one of the customer service ladies

[Hardy49r]

Thanks. Peace.

[MeltManBob]

Just an update - Amber apparently from GAW got in touch here on the forums on the 21st and the 22nd which magically that day all of my refund requests went from 'pending' to approved - good job to Amber if she was the instigator. Unfortunately as soon as I saw this I emailed her and while she was good about the initial few contacts being timely, I haven't heard back from her since early yesterday. I received an email from GAW immediately:

"...Your returns are authorized. Please send the units back to:

GAW Miners RMA Dept
34 East Dudley Town Road
Bloomfield, CT 06002

Once we receive the units I will refund you.
..."

Call be crazy but after all of the problems I've had I'm waiting for some sort of assurance from Amber that there won't be any funny business with the return such as claiming I caused the damage to the fan wires, saying they didn't receive the package (yes I will be sending it with insurance, tracking, delivery and signature confirmation) or any number of other issues. Part of my concern is coming from the fact that their return policy was (I'm not sure when it changed but I have a screenshot on the 13th of this month):

"...
Generation A - GAW Miners products:

Generation A miners (The Fury, The Black Widow, The Falcon & The War Machine) may be returned for a full refund within 14 days of date delivered.

The warranty period for Generation A miners is 1 year from date of delivery. GAW Miners honors manufacturer defects and will offer a replacement product free of charge."

https://i.imgur.com/godIhKm.png

So basically they've removed the first line, hmmm. This is pulled from my support ticket with them I believe on the 20th (it says '3 days ago'):

"...Typically it takes a few business days to process a return but we have received a surplus amount of them so it will take longer.
..."

Hmmm, so if this is correct then that means my process has taken at about 3 times as long as usual and who knows how long had I not come here. Also from this statement and the apparently resulting action of changing the return policy to completely eliminate returns/refunds except for manufacturer defects it's pretty safe to say that they have been doing a fine job pissing off their customers as of late. Either the return requests are too many for them to handle efficiently or it's in danger of seriously hurting them financially and that's why they removed this part.

I can't stress this enough, actions speak louder than words, don't try to sell me a bill of goods, not honor it and then drag your feet when I want out using the return policy which was a big part of the reason I even bothered to give you a chance after all of the hiccups. I gave GAW the benefit of the doubt a couple times wanting to chalk it up to them being a new, small company but apparently I was wrong for that.  In the real world you're lucky if you get any understanding or extra chances but you still need to play ball on the pro level to survive.

[bitgeek]

You're really going far with these assumptions and suspicions. Defaming people who are willing to return your money is not a good idea.
Wait and see if you get the refund and let us know.

[MeltManBob]

The assumptions are not very far at all considering what has been said and their actions. I made 2 assumptions: 1 that Amber was able to instigate getting the refund process going and 2 that they have pissed off quite a few people based on being told that they have a lot of refund requests right now and also seeing that their return policy magically disappeared. I made one step logical assumptions so if you want to see that as 'really going far' then that's on you but not a single person that I've personally talked to has not come to the exact same assumptions. Everything I have brought up is based on actual experience with them and I never go further than one step past what has happened to try and understand why things have happened. I'm not going to try to please them when I feel they have done wrong just because I want my money back. Regardless of whether I lay claim to my money as my money or not the fact is I lost control over that money as soon as I spent it and I'm not stupid, once I give that control up I don't expect to get it back. If they do the right thing and honor the refund that I purchased under then great, I will acknowledge them positively for that but it still won't make up for the bad or give reason to hide the bad from others.

This is not a smear campaign where I put all the complaints and dirt in one place in an easy to read and search for format so don't start to make it out like that's what it is. I have been honest and fair with GAW and will continue to do so. Whether you realize it or not I have spent quite a bit of time trying to resolve things internally with them before I got to the point where I felt it was necessary for me to post. I am glad that the refund process is moving along but my motivation and expectation wasn't for that, it was to illustrate to other potential buyers what kind of experience they MIGHT be in for because I would have appreciated something like this before I purchased; because I wouldn't have after reading this.

Either way the update thus far is kudos to Amber because she seems to have been able to get things moving along and in less time than the standard channels were taking by a huge margin. At this point the returns are approved, Amber has contacted me to assure me there won't be any issues with the refund and has provided me with a pre-paid shipping label for FedEx.

Amber - good job and thank you, I will be making arrangements with FedEx tomorrow. Please provide me with the best method to communicate effectively to who ever is in charge that your method of customer service should at the very least be the standard minimum at your company. While most people I have dealt with at GAW were pleasant enough to speak to, you are the first one who has followed through in a timely fashion with more than one step at a time. There is still some room for improvement but had GAW dealt with me the entire time at the same level you have, I wouldn't be this frustrated and I'm sure things would have gone much differently.

[jayen]

MeltManBob, I feel your pain.

It took me FIVE weeks to get a refund on a vaultbreaker pre-order. They held 9000 USD for 5 weeks, for a product that does not exist, and finally issued a refund 2 days before my credit card company was going to issue a charge-back.

I also have a Blackwidow that I've been trying to return for 17 days and counting. I am COMPLETELY ignored. My support ticket is a chain me asking questions to myself apparently. And as MeltManBob has pointed out, in that time, they have conveniently removed the line about their return policy from their pages. Fortunately, my creditcard company already has a copy of the original statement, and is currently investigating. I came here to see if anyone has just randomly sent a miner to their office and actually gotten their money back. But for now, I'm going to hold onto it until my CC company says otherwise.

[EvilPanda]

MeltManBob, I feel your pain.

It took me FIVE weeks to get a refund on a vaultbreaker pre-order. They held 9000 USD for 5 weeks, for a product that does not exist, and finally issued a refund 2 days before my credit card company was going to issue a charge-back.

So you received a pre-order refund but are unhappy it took long? Maybe you should have gone with KNC, they never refund pre-orders, and rarely return money at all.
GAW is probably the only scrypt seller that does it.