Cointerra Class-Action Lawsuit

[bloodxus30]

Hello all,

After reading all of the customer's nightmares on the Cointerra forum about the Terraminer IV, we've decided to take action. We've also received sub-par machines and/or non functioning Terraminer IV's from Cointerra along with, it seems, 50%+ of the customers. If you have been a victim in this false advertising, non-responsive customer/technical service etc.. send me a message and we can include you. We'll keep you posted along the way. Our lawyers have been on this since last week. Feel free to message or email me. We'll be gathering everyone's specifics and getting down to business. What they are doing/have done is illegal and they will not be getting away with it.


Thank you,


J.R.M.
C.E.O
LKC Services, Inc.
web: lkcservicesinc.com
web: locksmithkeycodes.com
web: lkcsupplies.com
web: replacemyremote.com
web: etownshop.com
email: jmorrison at locksmithkeycodes dot com

[brontosaurus]

Just came across your post, you have my sympathies for the way have been treated, and what you perhaps should know is that Cointerra seem to have very 'special' relationships with volume buyers, ie the ones who got their systems and chips quicker than low volume customers even though they ordered later; oh yes, it does happen. So your legal team might want to explore this aspect in more detail.

Sadly, I think your chances of success in this lawsuit are low. I don't know a lot about the US legal system, but unless they have actually committed a fraud - which they haven't - then it's just another example of a company with poor products and bad customer service. I also think that unless you get some very robust, verifiable and above all objective evidence from pursuers in the class action then you run the risk of a judge viewing this as some kind of high tech circus and taking the soft option by throwing it out of court. A further point to consider is the recent IRS 'ruling' on Bitcoins being property - you can be sure that they will be going through the lists of pursuers with considerable interest.

Good luck, though.

[gagalady]

I heard of cointerra, never used their service, but what are you saying that they are not worth using, is that right?

[brontosaurus]

There are hundreds of posts on the forum if you are inclined to find out more about what has happened. Just remember that there are often two side to every story.

[RoadStress]

I heard of cointerra, never used their service, but what are you saying that they are not worth using, is that right?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=269093.0 this is their official thread. Read it backwards from last page. After that come and join my Group Buy.

[aerobatic]

There are hundreds of posts on the forum if you are inclined to find out more about what has happened. Just remember that there are often two side to every story.

agreed Bronto -

for every person who has a problem and then resolves it themselves, or reaches cointerra support and are helped out.. i dont think many of them come back and say whether their problems were solved, or indeed, what the fix is, to help others in similar situations.

ct said recently theyve sold their 5,000'th unit... and if we believed everything we heard in these forums, none of them are performing well.. whereas im pretty sure the tens of units im running are mostly running to spec, and the few problem boxes i had, were fixed either with a firmware update, or at worse were rma'd and resolved... and i bet thats the case with most people's issues.

it may also be possible some folks are posting here expecting cointerra's support team to be manning the forums (they arent).. and anyone with a problem would be much better off contacting cointerra's support team directly.  theyre not on the forums and theyre not psychic... but i bet if given the chance, they will try to help when asked.

[GigaWave]

ct said recently theyve sold their 5,000'th unit... and if we believed everything we heard in these forums, none of them are performing well.. whereas im pretty sure the tens of units im running are mostly running to spec, and the few problem boxes i had, were fixed either with a firmware update, or at worse were rma'd and resolved... and i bet thats the case with most people's issues.

Show me one performing to spec.  You can't, because none are. Maybe the redesigned hardware will, but even if it does, it's a moot point as they have already delivered the below spec units, and those where even late. They charged some serious prices and didn't deliver what was advertised.

[gallery2000]

How do I join the class action lawsuit?

[asnghost]

Finally some action! Im in.

[sebastien1234]

Just came across your post, you have my sympathies for the way have been treated, and what you perhaps should know is that Cointerra seem to have very 'special' relationships with volume buyers, ie the ones who got their systems and chips quicker than low volume customers even though they ordered later; oh yes, it does happen. So your legal team might want to explore this aspect in more detail.

Sadly, I think your chances of success in this lawsuit are low. I don't know a lot about the US legal system, but unless they have actually committed a fraud - which they haven't - then it's just another example of a company with poor products and bad customer service. I also think that unless you get some very robust, verifiable and above all objective evidence from pursuers in the class action then you run the risk of a judge viewing this as some kind of high tech circus and taking the soft option by throwing it out of court. A further point to consider is the recent IRS 'ruling' on Bitcoins being property - you can be sure that they will be going through the lists of pursuers with considerable interest.

Good luck, though.

I really do not think you are correct in this. Promising a minimum of 2TH/s per machine is misrepresentation and false advertising, this is criminal and considered fraudulent; same thing about their claim about their low-power consumption, they specified a number and never delivered for that number. Delivery dates is not misrepresentation because they specified "December batch", not december delivery as far as I remember.

[CurcO]

I also have filed a class action against CT, where did you file ?  (last week)

[solarion]

Cointerra will retain a bunch of professional liars(lawyers) to argue the meaning of the word "is" and attack the plaintiffs, but I hope cointerra goes down. Lessee.

Cointerra sued, bfl sued, hashfast sued, vmc sued. Guess that about covers all the American manufacturers. Obviously US laws haven't been much of a fraud deterrent to this point.

[aerobatic]

Cointerra will retain a bunch of professional liars(lawyers) to argue the meaning of the word "is" and attack the plaintiffs, but I hope cointerra goes down. Lessee.

Cointerra sued, bfl sued, hashfast sued, vmc sued. Guess that about covers all the American manufacturers. Obviously US laws haven't been much of a fraud deterrent to this point.

ok, i find this argument a little surreal.

let me play devil's advocate here.. and put forward an opposing viewpoint just for a moment.  I'm going to go for the extreme opposing viewpoint and show you what it can look like from another point of view.  indulge me please...   i will also use the devil theme a lot in these thoughts...

there's one striking difference in that list.  cointerra did.. actually ship!  and they shipped within a few weeks (not months) of the promised date.  and caught up their backlog very quickly (in weeks) and now ship from stock and shipped the may and june batches early (who even does that!?).

you can't say that bfl shipped anything ever, on time (monarch was promised in november, and we're now may and its still not shipping - even 6 months later.. and many people only ordered the monarch as a conversion because their original order for the 65nm single or mini rigs was taking more than 6 (and in some cases 12 months!!) and us suckers thought we could catch up on hash rate by letting bfl play the shell game one more time.  I'm one of the suckers - i ordered my bfl single in feb and received it in november after its value had diminished to almost zero!) - and bfl fight to the death to avoid giving any refunds - really pulling out all the stops to prevent anyone getting a refund...

hashfast promised october.. and we're now may and they're still not shipping and they're now talking june onwards (and not refunding either), vmc, er lost track of when they promised.. but they're still not shipping.   so whats your beef?  that they didn't accurately predict the performance and power consumption?  thats it?   and yet, they may be one of only very few bitcoin mining hardware companies to actually ship nearly on time?  and nearly to spec?

heck, even the golden boys kncminer have fallen out of favour. go read their forums.  they could do no wrong, with the first couple of jupiter batches... but when they started building out their huge data center instead of allowing customers to buy any more, under the pre tense of 'network protection' they started offending customers.. and now that they've delayed the neptune and offered everyone some poor second fiddle options that turned out to be less than acceptable (frankenjups arriving in pieces) and no longer allowing refunds.

And what about avalon?  oh yea, they also delayed and failed to ship most of batch 2 and all of batch 3.  and made people wait months while they hashed with it themselves.

you missed out a few.. how about bitmine?  promised october, and still not shipping to this day.  and no refunds.   blackarrowsoftware?  and a whole slew of others I've forgotten to mention...  

and you claim cointerra overcharged?  you think so?  they were and still are one of the cheapest thats actually shipping.  their price per gigahash back when they took the orders was way less than anyone else's at the time - way less than what hashfast charged ($14/gh), and kncminer charged ($17.5/gh).. and what did cointerra charge most of the customers?   most of them paid a little over $3/gh, except the first batch, that paid a little more (and were compensated by getting two machines instead of one, AND front of line delivery).   at the time of sales, and yes, even at the time of delivery.. cointerra was one of the lowest cost miners - per gigahash - on the market so you can't possibly argue they overcharged when compared with everyone else they were much much less expensive.

So go take a look at the bitcoin mining hardware companies out there - and make a list - and lets pretend the awful ones are in hell and the perfect ones are in heaven, and you tell me where cointerra is on that scale.  they sure aren't the devil.  maybe they're not a saint either, but they're nowhere near the bottom of the pile compared to most of the company they keep.   whose in heaven?  spondoolies maybe (but they're very recent and weren't shipping until recently).  what about asicminer?  sure, they're good.. but they've been uncompetitive for awhile and their prices per gigahash and power consumption made cointerra's look like the biggest bargain ever.

then there's the refund policy.  sure, they didn't encourage refunds.. but everyone who took delivery of their underperforming miner was offered a refund, or had the chance to get a refund instead of a delivery of the miner.  AND everyone who took delivery was offered compensation in the form of discount on a future order.   So, you really think you can sue them even though your ultimate recourse was to ask for a refund and you wouldve got one (as several customers did)- cointerra is one of the only companies i know of who allowed refunds (not encouraged them, mind, but allowed them)...   then there's the sales contract and terms and conditions?  if you ordered something from cointerra, then you agreed to their t's & c's when you placed the order.  it specified that if you have a beef with them, you work it out in arbitration.  that doesn't allow you to do a class action.  you have no grounds to do it.  or are you going to lie in court and say you ordered it from their online store without agreeing to their terms and conditions of sale?

ok, there's my devils advocate thoughts.  i hope i could show that there's two sides to every story.

[AMT_miners]

Cointerra will retain a bunch of professional liars(lawyers) to argue the meaning of the word "is" and attack the plaintiffs, but I hope cointerra goes down. Lessee.

Cointerra sued, bfl sued, hashfast sued, vmc sued. Guess that about covers all the American manufacturers. Obviously US laws haven't been much of a fraud deterrent to this point.

ok, i find this argument a little surreal.

let me play devil's advocate here.. and put forward an opposing viewpoint just for a moment.  I'm going to go for the extreme opposing viewpoint and show you what it can look like from another point of view.  indulge me please...   i will also use the devil theme a lot in these thoughts...

there's one striking difference in that list.  cointerra did.. actually ship!  and they shipped within a few weeks (not months) of the promised date.  and caught up their backlog very quickly (in weeks) and now ship from stock and shipped the may and june batches early (who even does that!?).

you can't say that bfl shipped anything ever, on time (monarch was promised in november, and we're now may and its still not shipping - even 6 months later.. and many people only ordered the monarch as a conversion because their original order for the 65nm single or mini rigs was taking more than 6 (and in some cases 12 months!!) and us suckers thought we could catch up on hash rate by letting bfl play the shell game one more time.  I'm one of the suckers - i ordered my bfl single in feb and received it in november after its value had diminished to almost zero!) - and bfl fight to the death to avoid giving any refunds - really pulling out all the stops to prevent anyone getting a refund...

hashfast promised october.. and we're now may and they're still not shipping and they're now talking june onwards (and not refunding either), vmc, er lost track of when they promised.. but they're still not shipping.   so whats your beef?  that they didn't accurately predict the performance and power consumption?  thats it?   and yet, they may be one of only very few bitcoin mining hardware companies to actually ship nearly on time?  and nearly to spec?

heck, even the golden boys kncminer have fallen out of favour. go read their forums.  they could do no wrong, with the first couple of jupiter batches... but when they started building out their huge data center instead of allowing customers to buy any more, under the pre tense of 'network protection' they started offending customers.. and now that they've delayed the neptune and offered everyone some poor second fiddle options that turned out to be less than acceptable (frankenjups arriving in pieces) and no longer allowing refunds.

And what about avalon?  oh yea, they also delayed and failed to ship most of batch 2 and all of batch 3.  and made people wait months while they hashed with it themselves.

you missed out a few.. how about bitmine?  promised october, and still not shipping to this day.  and no refunds.   blackarrowsoftware?  and a whole slew of others I've forgotten to mention...  

and you claim cointerra overcharged?  you think so?  they were and still are one of the cheapest thats actually shipping.  their price per gigahash back when they took the orders was way less than anyone else's at the time - way less than what hashfast charged ($14/gh), and kncminer charged ($17.5/gh).. and what did cointerra charge most of the customers?   most of them paid a little over $3/gh, except the first batch, that paid a little more (and were compensated by getting two machines instead of one, AND front of line delivery).   at the time of sales, and yes, even at the time of delivery.. cointerra was one of the lowest cost miners - per gigahash - on the market so you can't possibly argue they overcharged when compared with everyone else they were much much less expensive.

So go take a look at the bitcoin mining hardware companies out there - and make a list - and lets pretend the awful ones are in hell and the perfect ones are in heaven, and you tell me where cointerra is on that scale.  they sure aren't the devil.  maybe they're not a saint either, but they're nowhere near the bottom of the pile compared to most of the company they keep.   whose in heaven?  spondoolies maybe (but they're very recent and weren't shipping until recently).  what about asicminer?  sure, they're good.. but they've been uncompetitive for awhile and their prices per gigahash and power consumption made cointerra's look like the biggest bargain ever.

then there's the refund policy.  sure, they didn't encourage refunds.. but everyone who took delivery of their underperforming miner was offered a refund, or had the chance to get a refund instead of a delivery of the miner.  AND everyone who took delivery was offered compensation in the form of discount on a future order.   So, you really think you can sue them even though your ultimate recourse was to ask for a refund and you wouldve got one (as several customers did)- cointerra is one of the only companies i know of who allowed refunds (not encouraged them, mind, but allowed them)...   then there's the sales contract and terms and conditions?  if you ordered something from cointerra, then you agreed to their t's & c's when you placed the order.  it specified that if you have a beef with them, you work it out in arbitration.  that doesn't allow you to do a class action.  you have no grounds to do it.  or are you going to lie in court and say you ordered it from their online store without agreeing to their terms and conditions of sale?

ok, there's my devils advocate thoughts.  i hope i could show that there's two sides to every story.

+1  Cointerra has it together. They are the best of us, granted they had funding where others didn't but they continue to deliver and ship their miners. Out of all the companies cointerra is thus far the best and a big brother/role model for the little guys to look up to. And a class action will never fly in their case because everyone already got their machine.

In our case a class action is interesting, especially from a PR standpoint, so the lawyers next door to us had something to gain from it all. But Cointerra is a legitimate organization of guys that know what they're doing, their not in over their heads and they were upfront and direct with everyone every step of the way, something we should have done from day 1.

Where others failed, cointerra succeeded and success should never be punished.

[aerobatic]

i googled and found this old chart that compared bitcoin mining hardware of a few months ago... interesting to see which ones shipped, and which ones were well priced...

20/20 hindsight is a wonderful thing.

1.  go through the list and see how many of them still have yet to ship (many months late).  cointerra is a notable exception!

2.  go through the list, and even allowing for cointerra's disappointing under achievement of hash rate, their 1.6 TH miner was still extremely good value at the time, compared to the other options that were available.   there's no way you can say they were overpriced.

[solarion]

Cointerra sucks crap. Pointing at bigger frauds and saying "look at what those guys stole!" is a non-starter as an argument. Cointerra knew their 2Th miners didn't do 2Th when they shipped them. Proving as much in a room full of people overpaid to spew bs for a living is the challenge.

aerobatic is on ignore. His posts are complete trash imo and always pro cointerra. No reason to waste time on mindless fanbois & paid propagandists.

[aerobatic]

Cointerra sucks crap. Pointing at bigger frauds and saying "look at what those guys stole!" is a non-starter as an argument. Cointerra knew their 2Th miners didn't do 2Th when they shipped them. Proving as much in a room full of people overpaid to spew bs for a living is the challenge.

aerobatic is on ignore. His posts are complete trash imo and always pro cointerra. No reason to waste time on mindless fanbois & paid propagandists.

since I'm on ignore, you won't see this.

cointerra knew their 2 TH miner was only 1.6 TH before they shipped it and they updated all their customers to the ongoing situation, and they offered their customers the chance to refund, or take delivery with some compensation from a future order.  those were the two choices, and if a customer didn't want a 1.6 th miner (itself, still timely delivered and still the fastest miner in town), then they could've opted for the refund.  there's no beef.   it was take it, as it was, or, have a refund.   

[AMT_miners]

Cointerra sucks crap. Pointing at bigger frauds and saying "look at what those guys stole!" is a non-starter as an argument. Cointerra knew their 2Th miners didn't do 2Th when they shipped them. Proving as much in a room full of people overpaid to spew bs for a living is the challenge.

aerobatic is on ignore. His posts are complete trash imo and always pro cointerra. No reason to waste time on mindless fanbois & paid propagandists.

since I'm on ignore, you won't see this.

cointerra knew their 2 TH miner was only 1.6 TH before they shipped it and they updated all their customers to the ongoing situation, and they offered their customers the chance to refund, or take delivery with some compensation from a future order.  those were the two choices, and if a customer didn't want a 1.6 th miner (itself, still timely delivered and still the fastest miner in town), then they could've opted for the refund.  there's no beef.   it was take it, as it was, or, have a refund.   

+1 yep they did. And it was the smartest thing they ever did.

[solarion]

Cointerra sucks crap. Pointing at bigger frauds and saying "look at what those guys stole!" is a non-starter as an argument. Cointerra knew their 2Th miners didn't do 2Th when they shipped them. Proving as much in a room full of people overpaid to spew bs for a living is the challenge.

aerobatic is on ignore. His posts are complete trash imo and always pro cointerra. No reason to waste time on mindless fanbois & paid propagandists.

since I'm on ignore, you won't see this.

cointerra knew their 2 TH miner was only 1.6 TH before they shipped it and they updated all their customers to the ongoing situation, and they offered their customers the chance to refund, or take delivery with some compensation from a future order.  those were the two choices, and if a customer didn't want a 1.6 th miner (itself, still timely delivered and still the fastest miner in town), then they could've opted for the refund.  there's no beef.   it was take it, as it was, or, have a refund.   

+1 yep they did. And it was the smartest thing they ever did.

Sweet. So it's like texas holdem poker then. Force your opponent to make tough decisions to win.

Only in this case the opponents are the people foolish enough to pre-order from cointerra, and "winning" is forcing them to take a lesser product for the same funds or lose months of time they wasted while cointerra held onto their pre-order funds. Sound about right?

Many victims would take the late product @ 20% under spec rather than a refund. The correct thing to do would be to simply make up the difference in hashrate, but that would've hurt cointerra's bottom line. Why do that when you can "win". Good lawyers came up with a good way to force customers into a tight spot,  but it doesn't make for less of a crappy company. Bfl and hashfast employ similar tactics to force customers to take a bath. Request a refund and magically you're bumped in the shipping queue, but only if the gear is worth less than the refund.

[gallery2000]

Cointerra offered to ship the second unit for $1400.  I accepted.  They only shipped one unit and did not get back to me regarding the second unit.  Up until now, nobody emailed me back.