Has anyone actually received an email from Canaan in the last 2 weeks?
Digging out from the avalanche.
Sorry for having been gone so long but the response to re-opening orders was beyond anything I have seen in 20+ years of doing this sort of thing.
First the bad. When we re opened we got hit with an enormous amount of Spam. Some individual in China uploaded thousands of documents
to our site. That made it impossible to even open tickets until we cleaned away all the spam.
To make matters worse we got hundreds of spam orders. It would appear somebody doesnt want us to decentralize mining. Go figure. We will badger away.
So let me explain the process we go through and how and when orders will get filled.
Large Orders: These are pallet orders 60 units either with or without PSU. All large orders have always shipped from Beijing. In the past we have taken
wire transfer or BTC for these orders. Large orders will continue to ship from Beijing. The MOQ - minimum order quantity-- is 60 units
This is literally a pallet of machines. It gives the customer the cheapest shipping. All payments must be business to business. Wire transfer.
We are no longer able to take payments from individuals. We no longer take BTC for large orders. The plan to move away from BTC payments has
been in the process of a while, and now you guys probably understand why as the government has closed the exchanges.
The process for large orders works like this
A) You enter your order. You will get estimated shipping charges.
B) The Staff will get to your order in FIFO order. Once they get to your order they will
contact you. If they havent contacted you its because there are other orders ahead of you.
C) when they contact you they will ask you various questions, basically about importing. Some people
dont have importing companies so we work with you get an importing company-- this can add $500 or so to your order.
D) Then we make sure we have your stock and a place on a flight. Once we are sure we can ship your order, then we will ask for money.
We do this because there are a couple times when people just wired money before the product was ready and then complained
that it wasnt shipping fast enough.
If you have a large order the best advice is to wait for Lily to contact you. Now some people have been ordering pallets and then reselling miners.
I cannot stop them. The problem is some of these guys made promises to other people and so they tend to bombard us mail about shipping
quickly because they have made promises to other folks. The other piece of advice is try your hardest to do everything the staff ask you
to do. For example, we have to take wire transfer from another company. Dont waste huge amounts of time arguing this. Basically you are
holding up the next person in line. Also, please use 'reply all" on the emails. I basically include all the staff on every mail
1. silvia: She is the import export tax guru.
2. lily: HE does all the order processing, shipping etc.
3. Jasmine. After sales support. When Lily has 1000 mails she will worj to get the priority cases to the top of his list and she handles RMA
Depending on when you ordered your shipment could go out before Sept 30th. Then Golden week comes Oct1-8. Everyone is off.
More generally if you order now, you will be put in line and payment and shipping will happen after Oct 10.
So what takes so long? Given the volume of orders and all the questions people have when they order, the processing and answering
all the emails can take a long time. The other thing we have to contend with is fake orders, tire kickers, and multiple orders.
I'll give you one example. Customer complains and I ask for his order number: He sends me 60 order numbers. Orders ranging from
1 unit to several thousand. All with different names and addresses. So the process is terribly slow and manual. There is simply no
way to speed it up when customers have valid questions when they order.
Bootstrap plans: I am putting a lot of customers on what I call "boot strap" plans. These are guys who will over time order hundreds
or thousands of machines ( from all over the world which is really cool ) The boot strap plan means if you continue
to buy monthly I can give you increased discounts. I dont have this on the website yet. So I do most of these via email
These plans are individualized. They basically work for guys who want to mine a little and buy more, mine more, buy more..
The goal is to allow these guys to catch up with the folks who can buy 1000 on day one. Just ask me about Bootstrap Pricing.
Futures: Inside China miners buy Machine Futures. You pay today for Decemeber shipment. The discounts can be substantial.
I will bring "futures" purchasing to the website so the rest of the world can book machines before they are built.
This is one of the reasons why Miner supply is always so short. Almost all of the product is pre sold months in advance.
Bringing this advantage to the rest of the world I hope will help decentralize.
Small Orders: Small orders are for Units less than 60. A couple of months ago it became clear that the small orders would basically kill the staff. And
we also had to get on a path to end all BTC payments ( See above). Small orders all ship from Hong Kong. When we end BTC payments
The HK shipments will end. All of this is happening very rapidly and I'm a little bit lucky in that I could see it coming, but still it
is very disruptive. Especially since BTC Spiked right in the middle of our efforts to shift away from Hong Kong shipping. FML
The plan is to engage distributors in key geographies. The distributors will handle smaller orders. Two distributors are being setup. One in Korea
( I spent last week there ) and one in the US. The Korean Disty is not set up yet. The US distributor has just started ( and sold out )
Going forward I will probably set up a few more distributors, but the process takes a long time. We have to smooth out the supply and
make sure that things like RMA are accounted for.
When will I get my BTC address?: We will try to get to all the invidual orders. We get to them in FIFO fashion. When Stock arrives in fulfillment
in HK we then work through the orders. There is no stock in HK so we are having to make yet another
shipment there. Its getting hard since the fulfillment house knows we will end with them soon. When units
arrive in HK, then we know we can do a BTC transfer. We dont want to give you an address, have you transfer
funds and then have nothing in stock.
Should I just switch to the distributor: Good question. It is very hard to tell. The reason is simple. Say there are 1000 orders ahead of you.
Historically speaking 60% of all order cancel. Guys put in orders with no intention of buying
or just to see the shipping price ( So I tried moving to free shipping ) etc, For inventory planning
its very hard to know how many units to send to HK ( people will cancel the order, double the order, etc etc )
Given that Shipping from HK will end and BTC payment will End, it may be best to switch over to
the distributor: If you want to do this, send me an email. Include your order number.
I lost a lot of money and I hate you: I know a number of folks who really wanted to time their buy for the top of BTC pricing and also folks
who had to move money around. I can't make everyone whole, but I will try to do what I can for folks
who write to me. If not now in the future.
Distributors: A lot of people write to me and ask how to be a distributor. The key is understanding that is very hard getting an exclusive. Your best bet
is to write to me. Say you want to order 60 units for reselling and show me your website. Order the units and get started. I'm not going to
open multiple disty in the same region as long as the first guy is offering a fair price and working together with me to support the individual
miner.