Quote from: TrevorS on March 17, 2015, 10:30:50 PM

Quote from: Xian01 on March 17, 2015, 05:31:34 PM

emoticons ↮ professional

Especially when you're being bent over a barrel with pricing shenanigans, and ineffective responses to support tickets.

I don't care about emoticons, but I do care about jacking the price around and then refusing to refund the difference resulting from my BTC order being the day before the ensuing price drop. If I accepted biting the bullet on paying the $419, then Bitmain has no business refusing to refund the difference at $369. What good are two coupons that require another dual S5 purchase given:

1) My plans include no further S5 purchases (have four including the two just ordered).
2) I have no more BTC at this time (I'm a fixed income home miner, not a data center).
3) The coupons are only good for about half a month.

What kind of reputable business doesn't honor its own pricing? Since when does a limited time/limited target coupon equal refund? If the price difference were even held in account, it would be something, but these damn coupons are useless to me. Bend over is right!

Caveat Emptor

I don't think BTC or Mining hardware is any less or more suspect than other businesses. Although there are certainly are plenty of examples of price gouging in BTC Hardware. Bitmain isn't going make more units a break even or small losses so it does make sense they raise the price and expect "pre-orders" given the long slide of price drops since the S1's was released.

I look it at this way. Why is anyone buying miners given the current BTC price knowing full well there is no return likely on these units even if you have lower power costs? It is like you want them to maintain prices so you can make a return on your investment. I see all the complaints as valid in this case with the rapid rise once there were no competitors providing viable alternatives. But the simple solution. Do no buy them.

Further to this there is no way an individual buying a few miners is going to compete with the farms not unless there is a rethink about pooling resources and the very nature of a "home" unit. At this point there is no reasonable argument for buying small miners with limited power availability. It was a bad investment at 369$ or even lower.