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

[Pentax]

friggin amazing, i just got a email that my order 6## is ready to ship and they want the last 50%, even tho i asked for a refund months ago.
and i was told to wait til b1 was sent out before i got anything

clearly these guys don't have anything under control...

that's hilarious.  It's pretty hard to make me laugh on this topic, but that did it.

send us more money.  actually made me laugh out loud.




sure BA, that payment will go out NEXT WEEK.

[Pentax]

friggin amazing, i just got a email that my order 6## is ready to ship and they want the last 50%, even tho i asked for a refund months ago.
and i was told to wait til b1 was sent out before i got anything

clearly these guys don't have anything under control...

that's hilarious.  It's pretty hard to make me laugh on this topic, but that did it.

send us more money.  actually made me laugh out loud.




sure BA, that payment will go out NEXT WEEK.

lol next week, made me giggle.

this is the responce i got when i told them i wanted my refund and not the damn brick.

Dear Customer,

We apologize for inconvenience, however, unfortunately we are unable to provide refund at this moment. Reason for 50% in advance payment was receiving funds for your order assembly and purchase of the required parts. As money has already been invested in to production and your unit we are unable to issue the refund until we are able to sell unit to other customers.

Regards Alexey A.

Regards,
Black Arrow Team

i dont even... what??
i mean?!? huh???!!?

then where did the scrypt asic money come from? >.<
no other revenue or source of income from anything but miners to pay us back?
bullshit!

It is bullshit.  In fact, they said repeatedly that they were not getting the majority of the money from preorders.  Said it on this thread and said it in this article.

http://bitcoinexaminer.org/alex-berk-black-arrow-as-soon-as-14nm-is-available-well-release-a-new-asic-that-will-outperform-any-other-14nm-designs/

Chinese consumer law also apparently says that in terms of pre-orders this money has to be kept in a separate account.

And yes, their TOS indicate Hong Kong law FOR THE TOS.  The plant is in China.  It stands to reason that you cannot set up a factory in China, or any other country, and simply ignore the laws there so you can do whatever you please, and strip people of their legal rights.  

Or maybe the Chinese are just fine with people throwing up factories and just doing whatever the hell they want.  From what I've seen they're totally fine with that type of loose cannon behavior.  /sarcasm

[Pentax]

https://www.blackarrowsoftware.com/store/scrypt-asic-tape-out.html

"Black Arrow has completed the design of a energy efficient 28nm Scrypt ASIC and it is ready for tape-out. ASICs can be received in early December should we tape-out in the following few days.
We are currently looking for partners. Depending on investment we can offer wafer price.
At this point it is possible to manufacture ASICs to double the whole LTC network (1 Petahash) with a reasonable price. Please contact us if you are interested.
The efficiency of this chip is better than 3Watt / Megahash."



That's ^^^^ where our money went, obviously.  And yay for them.  Who couldn't root for a company with a keen sense of humour and with spare capacity to learn, as indicated on their site?  

They are learning on the job, with our money, and their sense of humour seems a bit lacking, from what I've seen.  More like a bunch of spoiled children that are shocked that their customers are pissed after being bilked out of thousands of dollars.


What are the qualifications for 'partners' I wonder?  willingness to defraud consumers and shatter consumer laws of various countries a plus, I would imagine.

Maybe these partners can form a shell company to act as face of this new scrypt miner operation.  Then we'll have registration in Hong Kong, operations in Shenzhen, some entity in the Virgin Islands, all run by a front company registered somewhere in the Amazon jungle, chaired by a monkey.  

Line for pre-orders forms to the left.  no pushing.  And yes there will be price matching, we'll deliver on time, blah, blah, blah.  Our miners will be profitable or all scrypt mining will stop.

no more questions, just get your checkbooks out, drop your pants and bend over for insertion of the 'receipt'.

[Pentax]

I noticed BA deleted the entire REFUNDS thread on eCoinTalk.

yep.   good thing someone already printed much of it out to pdf.....

[/quote]

[notbatman]

Order #400 says (on ECT) that he finally got his order of X1s. Says he got 26 units and that only 14 of them worked out of the box.

Not only is the product now obsolete but it's garbage that doesn't even work. Can we all get refunds instead of being ripped off?

[notbatman]

...and BFL is offering refunds.

[notbatman]

BFL is over 9 months late. BA is only 6 months late. You can't outdo BFL. They are masters of overpriced late hardware.

But my X3 won't mine me a single Satoshi; BA has indicated that they'll ship it only after it uses more power than it mines in coins. BA is also refusing refunds.

At least with BFL I would have the option of a power efficient miner that actually works or a full refund.

[breakingcode]

What is the path of least damage at this point?

A. Take the comp ASICs and sell them (where the hell would I sell them, who would buy them?)
B. Wait and pray for BA to do something like ship the X3 and give a good scrypt miner as comp (hoping they used the x-1 x-3 to learn to do this and now at least have some clue and won't be a year late on that)
C. Ask for a refund, never get miner, never get refund (I'm assuming this is what happens if you ask for one) Any case of anyone getting a refund? I have plenty of free hours with an attorney that I can use but I don't want to blow them if "them being in china" means I'll still never get my money back.


And to think, I can remember a time when I was worried about letting BA do the 5 day hosting because the extra shipping delay might cut into my ability for ROI.

I didn't need that $5k so much then, but with things that happened since, that profit (fuck,..breaking even) and having that money would be a life changer.

(sigh)

Hope you'll get atleast something this year..

I opted for option C, bought from MS. their product was/is delayed way to far past the original communicated shipment date minersource and blackarrow is obliged to send customers a refund. They even agreed to send me a refund months ago and I'm still waiting. How both companies still exist and no one is jailed is beyond me.  

Minersource do the right thing and send those refunds ASAP! You can't just keep playing with peoples money and get away with it.

Same here, waiting on a cheque Dan Murtha promised to sent on 22th of July, asked for an update after 3 weeks (now 2 weeks ago), and they will not even respond anymore besides the automated "your request has been received". Disgusting, this minersource company. Guess there's nothing left but filing at the FTC an their local attorney's office.

If you really want to start ruffling Minersoures feathers, anyone with a legitimate complaint against them should start also talking to Mircocenter General Managers. If hey want to protect that deal then the less complaints against them the better, just explain how they're (Mirocenter) is in bed with a business that handles their customers poorly and explain your situation.

Hmm,..
My friend works at MC's distribution center, everything that they order/test/fulfill etc.. goes through his doors in Ohio, I may just have to see what his opinion is on all this.

I'm one of those idiots that held out to the end,.. thought , hey I'll just buy my additional CPU from minersource as they'll probably have a few extras and can ship immediately,.. That was over a month ago so.. now they have skin in the game on my buy too.

[Pentax]

Pentax, add your comment AFTER the quote, rather than inside it. Thanks.

  oh, ok.   

fyi.  those were simply reposts of posts that had been deleted by our friends at Black Arrow, so the formatting was wacky. 

[Pentax]

What is the path of least damage at this point?

A. Take the comp ASICs and sell them (where the hell would I sell them, who would buy them?)
B. Wait and pray for BA to do something like ship the X3 and give a good scrypt miner as comp (hoping they used the x-1 x-3 to learn to do this and now at least have some clue and won't be a year late on that)
C. Ask for a refund, never get miner, never get refund (I'm assuming this is what happens if you ask for one) Any case of anyone getting a refund? I have plenty of free hours with an attorney that I can use but I don't want to blow them if "them being in china" means I'll still never get my money back.


And to think, I can remember a time when I was worried about letting BA do the 5 day hosting because the extra shipping delay might cut into my ability for ROI.

I didn't need that $5k so much then, but with things that happened since, that profit (fuck,..breaking even) and having that money would be a life changer.

(sigh)

Hope you'll get atleast something this year..

I opted for option C, bought from MS. their product was/is delayed way to far past the original communicated shipment date minersource and blackarrow is obliged to send customers a refund. They even agreed to send me a refund months ago and I'm still waiting. How both companies still exist and no one is jailed is beyond me.  

Minersource do the right thing and send those refunds ASAP! You can't just keep playing with peoples money and get away with it.

Same here, waiting on a cheque Dan Murtha promised to sent on 22th of July, asked for an update after 3 weeks (now 2 weeks ago), and they will not even respond anymore besides the automated "your request has been received". Disgusting, this minersource company. Guess there's nothing left but filing at the FTC an their local attorney's office.

If you really want to start ruffling Minersoures feathers, anyone with a legitimate complaint against them should start also talking to Mircocenter General Managers. If hey want to protect that deal then the less complaints against them the better, just explain how they're (Mirocenter) is in bed with a business that handles their customers poorly and explain your situation.

Hmm,..
My friend works at MC's distribution center, everything that they order/test/fulfill etc.. goes through his doors in Ohio, I may just have to see what his opinion is on all this.

I'm one of those idiots that held out to the end,.. thought , hey I'll just buy my additional CPU from minersource as they'll probably have a few extras and can ship immediately,.. That was over a month ago so.. now they have skin in the game on my buy too.

Let us know, maybe in a new thread linked to from this one so it won't be deleted. People just want their money back from Minersource after not delivering on time as promised.

yep.  a bunch of ftc complaints would not look good either.

people can file on both companies.  easy peasy.

people should also realize that there is strength in numbers when it comes to these sorts of complaints.  small numbers will likely go unnoticed.  larger numbers with damages to consumers in the hundreds of thousands/millions have a better chance of getting someone to act in these agencies, but they have to know something is going on in order to actually do anything.

don't wait for 'someone else'.  


https://www.ftccomplaintassistant.gov/#crnt&panel1-1

[btcminer84]

When is shipping of Prospero X3?
I paid at the end of 11/2013
and got NOTHING!

[notbatman]

Who would've known that wanting to ask some questions after getting taken for thousands of dollars makes you Hitler?

Have you seen this?

"Hitler Finds out about the Butterfly Labs Monarch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jYNMKdv36w"

[notbatman]

Bitcoin Difficulty:   27,428,630,902
Estimated Next Difficulty:   31,837,232,396 (+16.07%)
Adjust time:   After 1989 Blocks, About 13.0 days
Hashrate(?):   212,813,326 GH/s

The X3 now makes $12 a day and the X1 makes 63¢ a day. Only a month left before they make $0 a day.

Also how is compensation suppose to work, WTF am I suppose to do with a worthless miner that has no PSU?

I've got an idea, since we're all Nazis and we've been bad you should just ship all the miners without PSUs! It's not like we need PSUs by the time they arrive anyway. Also if by chance the X3 still makes a dollar or two a day when it arrives this will ensure that the customer won't be able to mine any of it.

[notbatman]

After power cost ($4.80) at 10¢/kWh the X3 (2Th/s) makes $12.84 a day at $481.08@Bitstamp.

THIS IS THE FUCKING TRUTH ASSHOLE!

[Pentax]

I'm sure the Hong Kong CC will be very interested in this manner of dealing with the most simple customer inquiry possible.

I'm not sure what universe this guy lives in, but apparently over there when somebody simply asks what time their company is there to pick up the phone, it somehow makes sense to not give an answer and just make a Nazi joke.

A question for the posters here, does the below sound like A) the representative of a real company; or B) a deranged con-man? 

Giff me ze odor numbah!



The old give me your order number routine, complete with the phony 'who me' and a childish comment when he doesn't get what he wants.  yep, that's our boy.

[notbatman]

Hey Captain it's September. I was promised delivery at the end of February where's my hardware?

You've broken your end of the contract Captain.

[Pentax]

https://www.ftccomplaintassistant.gov/GettingStarted?NextQID=203&Url=%23%26panel1-6#crnt

[Pentax]

After power cost ($4.80) at 10¢/kWh the X3 (2Th/s) makes $12.84 a day at $481.08@Bitstamp.

they made millions and we'll make nothing
how do you call that ?

in a few months these will be making a couple of bucks a day, if that.  and that's if they're not pieces of junk that crap out.

and who knows when they'll actually show up.  nothing on ebay right now in terms of X-3's.  if they were shipping in any kind of numbers, you would think people would be doing whatever they could to dump them.


People will never get their money out of these.  2K and you're lucky.

of course BA claimed otherwise.

If you are guaranteeing prices then what's the point of preorders?  Basically the people preordering now are giving you a free loan because come february everyone gets the same price anyways.  The only benefit of preordering now is if the buyer thinks that you won't have to lower prices and the current price will end up being less then market prices for similar devices at the time of shipping.

Customers who pre-order and pay now have 25% discount. Our promise is that we will ensure that customers who preorder now will always get a better deal than customers who order later.

At the same time we promise that our prices will be below market price at the time we ship.

This means that customers that preorder now will have considerable lower market prices by the time that we ship which puts them in advantage towards anybody else.

Unless Bitcoin mining stops because it becomes unprofitable for everybody else in February, our customers WILL make profit.

[Pentax]

Received an email last night from BA requesting a BTC address for rent-a-minion. I had requested a refund for the rent-a-minion portion a while ago.

Paid 7 BTC and will be lucky to get two out of it. That BTC is still in the wallet I sent it to.

The email said they are planning to deploy rent a minion in a few days.

Information offered without editorial.

I still have not received a DHL tracking number from their email last week that my shipment should go out later today.

I'd love to hear the logic for not refunding on the rent a minion program.

utterly unconscionable. 

[nosferatujeff]

Thank you Greenlion, that is an interesting observation.

If true, it complicates decisions.

I never knew the Fuehrer could be so helpful.