Post
Topic
Board Hardware
Re: ANTMINER S3 Discussion and Support Thread.
by
bluebottle73
on 04/08/2014, 05:32:39 UTC
Since mine has the same probs as yours, what solution did Bitmain offer to you to rectify the faulty control board.

Nothing yet , waiting to hear back
Makes ya wonder why they constantly ship f'n lemons, also makes me wonder what I'll end up with out of the 4 units I ordered.

I'm in the same boat.  I ordered 3 units of batch 2 and the first one out of the box had a faulty controller.  I got the other 2 running, and they're hashing away at normal rate with no modifications.

I contacted their tech support about the faulty unit, did some troubleshooting that they advised (swapping it with a board from one of the working units, using different PSU, etc), and isolated it to the controller board on that unit.  This took only a few days of troubleshooting. 

Now I'm at over a week, and I finally get an email from their support with a shipping label.  I asked for clarification, and they expect me to ship the faulty board to them before they will ship me a replacement.  A process they say will take another week.  So I'll be over 2 weeks with a dead unit, and the next difficulty looming - basically at least .166 BTC lost because of their faulty hardware and slow response.

I asked about compensation, and they said they do not offer compensation.  Given that these units are priced so as to be barely profitable, I am now in a situation where I will most certainly lose money on the deal, while Bitmain has potentially made millions off of their customers.  I find it staggering to think they can't offer simple customer service solutions that are commonplace in other industries - especially with mission critical or time sensitive applications (which bitcoin miners undoubtedly are).  I mean, at least cross ship the replacement board or offer that as an option.  But they drag their feet, and insist on a time consuming return process basically ensuring I'm out any profit that unit could have delivered had I got it mining the moment I received it.

I have another 2 units on B5 and I've requested they cancel my order if they can't make this right. That might seem like an overreaction, but I have a simple approach to those I do business with - and if they don't treat me like I would treat a customer in the same situation then it's no deal.

Hopefully we can all make some noise here and get Bitmain to change their tune.