Re: Black Arrow 28nm 100Ghash Bitcoin ASIC from $0.49/GH/s

[greenlion]

Very curious post on Matt Carson's Facebook from Oct 2013...

"my company"...

[goozman96]

Very curious post on Matt Carson's Facebook from Oct 2013...

"my company"...

He's linking to the now nonexistent official resellers page. I had the same thought but then took a closer look.

[notbatman]

...

Actions speak louder than words. Your actions to date have been to take my money without providing anything in exchange and your words nothing but lies.

[jobelz]

Hey people!

Never woudl have thought they'd actually take the time to answer, but seems the letter the HK CC sent did make it to BA offices. This is what they sent back:

Dear Sir/Madam,

We confirm that we have acknowledged your letter on 24/11/2014

   For your further reference to the text below, please find attached:
1.   The terms and conditions read, approved and signed by our customers
2.   The news was made available to our customers on our website at this link: https://www.blackarrowsoftware.com/support/index.php?/News/List

I would like to highlight that we have informed our customers very clearly at the moment of order that:

1.   X1, X3 and Rent-A-Minion is a pre-order for an equipment made-to-order
2.   No refunds can be issued.

11.3 The Purchaser understands and agrees that we will use his payment in order to purchase the necessary materials or pay workmanship required to fulfil his pre-order which will be non-refundable if cancelled. For this reason, the purchaser hereby gives us the right and agrees with our decision to decline any requests from him or third parties to cancel his pre-order.

3.   Delivery date is for informational purposes. The reason was only because delays are possible because, the product is in development and unfortunately, problems sometime appear during this process:

9.1 The Products are delivered to the delivery address specified by the Purchaser, unless otherwise agreed. The delivery date is provided for information purposes only and shall not be binding on Us. The Purchaser is not entitled to refuse acceptance of the Products, withdraw, cancel or revoke the order or make claims for compensation due to any delayed delivery.

The customers have read and agreed with this contract at the moment of placing the order.

We have never made false publicity nor provided false information. The date supplied was based on our best estimation at that time. We have informed the customers very clearly that this is a pre-order, the date is for information purposes only and we will be spending their money to manufacture their order and no refund can be issued after the order is put into production.
The contract was very reasonable and we have merely passed on the contract conditions from our vendors to the customer. Without these conditions it would have been impossible for us to put their order into production because no Silicon Foundry and no ASIC designer would have manufactured the Bitcoin ASIC required for this miner. No Foundry refunds a wafer already started. No engineer or engineering company will refund for the work that they have already done especially if it is up to the specifications. We offered our customers a reasonable interval (15 days) to cancel their pre-order, and we have kept the customers updated all the time with our progress through the website ( http://www.blackarrowsoftware.com/store/index.php?dispatch=news.list ).  Due to NDA we cannot quote the exact terms of our suppliers but we assure you that they were harsher than the terms that we have passed onto our customers: Our vendor’s terms stated that if we cancel the contract we would have had to pay fines for wasting their time. Note that all the other vendors (other chips, power supply, heat sinks, case, fans etc) required at least of 50% payment in advance and the rest on deliver and they are non-refundable.

The reason why we stopped shipping in Nov is that it been brought to our attention by few customers that the miners failed during hashing. We have organized the PCB manufacturers, SMT factories, IC suppliers and assembly factories to review and analyse the problem. In early Dec we found out the reason and immediately started with testing. After verifying the improvement, we began to replace the hash boards for the delivered miners. On 08/12/2014, we sent notices to all customers who have not received the Products to push for the confirmation on address, telephone number for shipment purpose. And in the end of Dec, we finished all the productions for pending orders. Considering the freight fee and power fee in different countries, we have proposed 2 options to customer, i.e, shipment or hosting. Now every day we check the replies from the tickets and arrange shipment once if any confirmation from the customer is received.

We believe that most of the customers are looking for a refund because now they see no profit in a miner. However, please note that we have never sold our miners as an investment service. We have sold them as Bitcoin miners which can hash at a certain speed. We have exceeded those specifications therefore we are delivering a better product than promised.

Regarding all complaints, we believe that we have explained above the reason of the delay and why we cannot provide a refund.

Regarding customer’s comments on order 2901:

We sent mail to all the customers who have not received the Products for confirmation on address, telephone number on 08/12/2014, yet no reply has been received up to now. We will continue with the efforts to push for the customer’s reply.



Black Arrow Information Technology (Shenzhen) Limited
  Room 03, 5A Floor,  Building A, HuangduguangchangYitian Road, Futian District
  Shenzhen, Guangdong, P. R. China
  Postcode: 518048

I know this will probably turn into a game of walls-of-text pingpong but I'm currently working an answer to send back to the HKCC. If you have any things you'd suggest including, feel free to post or pm them!

Cheers,
J

[DebitMe]

I will not quote your post to save on walls of texts, but I think the best thing to send back is that it is ILLEGAL TO NOT REFUND MONEY. lol.  Regardless of what terms or what not the company writes on their website, the FEDERAL LAW, which takes precedence over scamming companies, says that it is illegal.

Refer to the BFL case where the FTC ordered BFL to start immediately refunding everyone in their queue who asked for it.

[jobelz]

Does anyone have the timeline of their shenanigans that someone compiled? I remember seeing a post some time ago but I can't seem to find it anywhere (maybe it was on ecointalk, not sure any more). With all the deleting that's been going on it could have been anywhere...

[notbatman]

Does anyone have the timeline of their shenanigans that someone compiled? I remember seeing a post some time ago but I can't seem to find it anywhere (maybe it was on ecointalk, not sure any more). With all the deleting that's been going on it could have been anywhere...

This timeline I posted is far from complete but perhaps it's what you're referring to. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=774278.msg10582841#msg10582841

[jobelz]

Yes, exactly that (and in this thread even, I'm ashamed). Thank you, I'll add some things and include it in my reply to the HK CC

[Pentax]

What happened to the trust rating for these people.  All trusted feedback left for them seems to have been taken down.

[greenlion]

What happened to the trust rating for these people.  All trusted feedback left for them seems to have been taken down.

I vaguely remember there was one user on the default trust list who left them negative feedback, but that user appears to no longer be. I think it was the guy that Blackarrow doxxed through the system.

[Pentax]

What happened to the trust rating for these people.  All trusted feedback left for them seems to have been taken down.

I vaguely remember there was one user on the default trust list who left them negative feedback, but that user appears to no longer be. I think it was the guy that Blackarrow doxxed through the system.

There were a couple of users at least I'm fairly sure.   I still see their feedback in their accounts and in the 'untrusted' for blackarrow....

[notbatman]

A quote from Black Arrow's ToS as they love to quote it as the reason they get to keep customers money without providing anything of value in exchange: "16.2 1 This Agreement shall be interpreted and applied in accordance with the law of Hong Kong S.A.R. of PRC."

Lets revisit how BA is complying with consumer protection law:

Law of the People's Republic of China on the Protection of Consumer Rights and InterestsChapter VII Legal Responsibility

Article 40 Business operators shall, if the commodities and services they supply involve any of the following circumstances, bear civil liability in accordance
with the provisions of the Law of the People's Republic of China on Product Quality and other relevant laws and regulations, except as otherwise provided in the present Law:

(1) there existing defects in the commodities;

(2) not possessing the properties for use they should possess and no declaration thereabout is made at the time of sale;

(3) not conforming to the standards indicated on the commodities or on the packaging thereof;

(4) not conforming to the state of quality indicated by the product description or by physical samples;

(5) producing commodities that have been formally declared by the State to be eliminated or selling commodities that are no longer effective or deteriorated;

(6) commodities sold being short of weight or quantity;

(7) contents and costs of services being not in conformity with the agreements;

(8) deliberately delaying or unreasonably refusing consumers requests for repair, remanufacture, replacement, return of goods, makeup for the short commodities, return of payment for goods or services, or compensation for losses;

1. Numerous reports of fires, explosions, electrical leakage and DoA units. ✔

2. Promised to deliver product within a time-frame that would allow the consumer to mine profitably; units delivered between 6 months to a year late or not at all. ✔

3. Falsified CE certification by placing "Chinese Export" labeling in order to deceive customers and customs officials. ✔

4. Claimed customers would be able to mine reliably yet numerous reports from customers claim the machines malfunction on a regular basis. ✔

5. No machines were shipped until the cost of electricity made them ineffective and obsolete for the purposes of mining digital-currency. ✔

6. Machines shipped to customers if they were lucky enough to receive a unit at all were decreased in value by at least 90%. ✔

7. Customers who ordered rent-a-minion service instead of hardware have yet to receive any service other than a few cases where a small fraction of the Bitcoins used to pay for their order were sent back with the claim they were mined. ✔

8. Deliberately delayed shipment of machines to mine digital-currency into their own wallets, refused to provide promised compensation, made customers pay S&H costs on RMA and have refused all refunds. ✔

[Gleb Gamow]

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=481079

That's fuckin' interesting!

Theymos, may I suggest you change BA's thread to non-self-moderated, for it's now quite obvious that he's abusing the privileges, recently doing another clean sweep of posts.

[Gleb Gamow]

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=481079

That's fuckin' interesting!

Theymos, may I suggest you change BA's thread to non-self-moderated, for it's now quite obvious that he's abusing the privileges, recently doing another clean sweep of posts.

Why the fuck is blackarrow so obsess with this user account?

[notbatman]

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=481079

That's fuckin' interesting!

Theymos, may I suggest you change BA's thread to non-self-moderated, for it's now quite obvious that he's abusing the privileges, recently doing another clean sweep of posts.

Why the fuck is blackarrow so obsess with this user account?

According to Google's cache he's made 1 post that's apparently since been deleted. Based on your comments it's more than likely it was to a blackarrow self-moderated thread and that it was deleted by captain blackarrow himself. I'm not sure how you're able to see other users current activity but if the captain is spending all his time watching this user I suspect he's posted something that's got him worried...

Perhaps the mods could enlighten us as to the contents of the deleted message.

EDIT:

Found the who section.  

EDIT 2:

blackarrow now viewing Bitfinderson's profile, another new user with 0 posts...

[Bicknellski]

You would think that the mainland authorities in China would be interested in arresting people like this using cover to hide their fraud. Have they been reported to the authorities in China? Provincially?

[Gleb Gamow]

They first sent me a mail yesterday after almost one year and told me that they will ship me tha miner and if i don't reply by the end of march they will "destroy" the miner. In the last mail in May I asked for a refund and they told me they will send my money back, but no money. Look at the last mail after i told them i want the refund i asked for and not their useless miner

Dear Customer

I'm sorry to have to inform you that at this point in time all refund requests are declined as per paragraph 11.3 of our agreed terms and conditions (http://www.blackarrowsoftware.com/store/legal.html). The money that we have received from you and other customers have been used to pay for parts and labour, as agreed in our contract. More than this we cannot unmake a product that has been completed and we cannot sell it for you due to low demand of this product.

Please note that:

All pre-order equipment has been in stock since end of December / beginning of January. Since then we have been contacting every pre-order customer via email to confirm their addresses in order to ship their merchandise. As we cannot store the miners indefinitely, back then we have set a 3 months storage deadline after which we would dispose of customer's equipment.

As we get closer to the 3 months deadline, we are urging all pre-order customers that have yet to receive their order to contact us via email so we can ship their merchandise.

Warning: Failure to contact us by end of March 2015, will result in destruction of your equipment!

We are really sorry that the things did not went as we planned. We have been struggling to get this contract to an end due to some mistakes we've made in development, various third parties failures and because we have rushed a huge number of orders into production which have failed due to insufficient testing, resulting in way higher costs that we've anticipated. At this point we have already put in our own money in order to complete the orders and all we can do is to honor your order as placed. We are developing a cheaper product to honor the promised compensation and try to offer you a cheaper hosting that you might have at home. Please accept our sincere apologies for the delay. Rest assured that we are and have been doing everything humanly possible to get this contract completed. Should we ever recover we'll try to give back to our valued customers as much as we can.

Understanding your dismay due to the various causes of delay, but your refusal to receive your order will either lead to the destruction of your goods, or we might accept it as gift to us and send it to other customer. In any case, we will NOT issue you with any refund and our contract will be deemed as fulfilled. Please note, that we will refuse DHL to return your package. Should you choose to let DHL destroy it, that is your option; it is your merchandise, you can do whatever you want with it (as long it is for legal purposes only). If you want to give it to us as a gift, please let us know and we'll inform DHL to deliver to another customer. Warning: If you choose to take no action and your package will stay with DHL until they will destroy it.

This ticket will now close and will reopen when you reply to it. Please do not open new tickets in our system

Regards,
Black Arrow Team

Please note that all our sales, services and communications are subject to our terms and conditions and your reply to this email will be considered an agreement to our terms and conditions from this webpage: http://www.blackarrowsoftware.com/store/legal.html

Confidentiality Notice:
This communication, its content and any file attachments transmitted with it are intended solely for the addressee(s) and may contain confidential proprietary information. Access by any other party without the express written permission of the sender is unauthorised. If you have received this communication in error you may not copy, distribute or use the contents, attachments or information in any way. Please destroy it and contact the sender.

Variants of the above letter have been making the round since early December, 2014, if not sooner.

One thing that stands out is that an American penned it and not Dr. Sovu. That said, which one of you fuckin' Americans is helping Black Arrow in this obvious scam of theirs?

Rest assured that we are and have been doing everything humanly possible to get this contract completed. Should we ever recover we'll try to give back to our valued customers as much as we can, predicated upon how long we can keep our dicks hard while we continue to fuck them in their asses.

[Bicknellski]

They first sent me a mail yesterday after almost one year and told me that they will ship me tha miner and if i don't reply by the end of march they will "destroy" the miner. In the last mail in May I asked for a refund and they told me they will send my money back, but no money. Look at the last mail after i told them i want the refund i asked for and not their useless miner

Dear Customer

I'm sorry to have to inform you that at this point in time all refund requests are declined as per paragraph 11.3 of our agreed terms and conditions (http://www.blackarrowsoftware.com/store/legal.html). The money that we have received from you and other customers have been used to pay for parts and labour, as agreed in our contract. More than this we cannot unmake a product that has been completed and we cannot sell it for you due to low demand of this product.

Please note that:

All pre-order equipment has been in stock since end of December / beginning of January. Since then we have been contacting every pre-order customer via email to confirm their addresses in order to ship their merchandise. As we cannot store the miners indefinitely, back then we have set a 3 months storage deadline after which we would dispose of customer's equipment.

As we get closer to the 3 months deadline, we are urging all pre-order customers that have yet to receive their order to contact us via email so we can ship their merchandise.

Warning: Failure to contact us by end of March 2015, will result in destruction of your equipment!

We are really sorry that the things did not went as we planned. We have been struggling to get this contract to an end due to some mistakes we've made in development, various third parties failures and because we have rushed a huge number of orders into production which have failed due to insufficient testing, resulting in way higher costs that we've anticipated. At this point we have already put in our own money in order to complete the orders and all we can do is to honor your order as placed. We are developing a cheaper product to honor the promised compensation and try to offer you a cheaper hosting that you might have at home. Please accept our sincere apologies for the delay. Rest assured that we are and have been doing everything humanly possible to get this contract completed. Should we ever recover we'll try to give back to our valued customers as much as we can.

Understanding your dismay due to the various causes of delay, but your refusal to receive your order will either lead to the destruction of your goods, or we might accept it as gift to us and send it to other customer. In any case, we will NOT issue you with any refund and our contract will be deemed as fulfilled. Please note, that we will refuse DHL to return your package. Should you choose to let DHL destroy it, that is your option; it is your merchandise, you can do whatever you want with it (as long it is for legal purposes only). If you want to give it to us as a gift, please let us know and we'll inform DHL to deliver to another customer. Warning: If you choose to take no action and your package will stay with DHL until they will destroy it.

This ticket will now close and will reopen when you reply to it. Please do not open new tickets in our system

Regards,
Black Arrow Team

Please note that all our sales, services and communications are subject to our terms and conditions and your reply to this email will be considered an agreement to our terms and conditions from this webpage: http://www.blackarrowsoftware.com/store/legal.html

Confidentiality Notice:
This communication, its content and any file attachments transmitted with it are intended solely for the addressee(s) and may contain confidential proprietary information. Access by any other party without the express written permission of the sender is unauthorised. If you have received this communication in error you may not copy, distribute or use the contents, attachments or information in any way. Please destroy it and contact the sender.

Variants of the above letter have been making the round since early December, 2014, if not sooner.

One thing that stands out is that an American penned it and not Dr. Sovu. That said, which one of you fuckin' Americans is helping Black Arrow in this obvious scam of theirs?

Rest assured that we are and have been doing everything humanly possible to get this contract completed. Should we ever recover we'll try to give back to our valued customers as much as we can, predicated upon how long we can keep our dicks hard while we continue to fuck them in their asses.

Are they in the WESTERN US?

That be my guess.

[greenlion]

An oldie but a goodie, deleted from the main thread, showing what kind of deranged fuck we're dealing with here.

[ElGrandJefe]

I'd call these people unmitigated cunts, but it would give unmitigated cunts a bad name.

They are a flea on a pimple on a wart on an abscess on the anal sphincter of the Internet.