Quote from: headswim on September 24, 2014, 03:55:57 AM

Quote from: colinistheman on September 24, 2014, 03:24:28 AM

Amazing. I used to think like you. I was so forgiving and so patient.

Until I finally woke up. It took me about 10 months to wake up.

I ordered on August 17, 2013 (day 1). And a year later, they still had not delivered. Sure they started offering refunds... 10 months later. They REFUSED me a refund no matter how politely I asked after month 6. I asked 3 times and got declined each time. So, no, they were not honoring refunds always. They play by their own rules. You perhaps just didn't happen to get screwed by them, but defending them is not called for imo. Perhaps read what they've done to other people before sharing your blissful experience. I think you may not realize the magnitude of damage caused to others.

Then to top it all off to learn of the massive misappropriation of company funds for personal purchases, you begin to learn that there was unethical use of customer funds as well. I personally feel that there is a very good chance that the Monarch could have been completed WAY sooner had they actually spent the funds necessary to speed production to the point where the product was finished faster.

I'm not blaming anyone for my actions and as a self-actualized individual I accept fully the responsibility of my own decisions. I assure you I have no need to "wake up" because I am not asleep. Nobody forced me into this arrangement, and nobody did for you either.

I'm not saying I had a "blissful experience", but apart from basically giving a company a 9-month, 0% interest loan I wasn't materially damaged. At least, I had every indication that I *probably wouldn't* have been until the FTC stepped in. Now, who knows if I'll ever get the rest my money back. I already received a refund for one of my orders. There's no reason to suspect I wouldn't have for the others.

I'm not sure if you read the terms of your agreement to preorder, but mine did say there were no refunds. Even knowing this, I asked for a refund as well on the chance that I could have received one, but I can't fault them for saying no - I agreed to those terms when I sent them my money. I also never said they were honoring refunds always, but they did begin for all orders starting August 19th, and earlier orders before then.

If it turns out they broke the law then yes, I absolutely would like to see justice meted out. However everything that has happened so far seems like a new company failing at customer expectation management, not a scam. That was my point. Just because they're taking longer to deliver doesn't mean they're being dishonest. I didn't say they weren't, just that from my perspective a scam wouldn't have responded/partially refunded my order at all.

Quote from: zorke on September 24, 2014, 03:36:06 AM

Buying in april would also mean buying at the end of a large price spike. If you had purchased even a few weeks (or a month or two) earlier then you could have purchased a lot more (with BTC=20 you would have purchased 65 BTC = ~29k today, with BTC=13 you would have purchased 100 BTC = ~43k today).

Even though you paid in fiat for the machine you could have used that fiat to buy bitcoin

Good point. I didn't actually give Bitcoin serious thought until March 11, 2013 (the day of the chain fork on version .8, which happened minutes after I finished my all-day download of the core client!), so unfortunately those weren't options for me anyway, but you're right. At almost any point buying BTC would have been better than mining, except under CPU/GPU conditions. Again, didn't learn that until after my first experience with BFL, but I still made a profit, so I'm not upset at the lost opportunity because it's too late to do anything about it.

You are so gullible.
No wonder why they kept running for a quite long time.
It is either gross negligence or outright scam.
BFL is what is known as a selective scammer. It delivers some, and it scams the other half. And they leave the rest on the arena to leave all the satisfied customers to fight against the scammed ones. It is quite an effective method to build blind fanatics supporting the company.

Those who are scammed sometimes also defend the company in what in psychology is known as Cognitive Dissonance. It is the symptom of fanaticism and blind faith, also the denial is a powerful defense mechanism. And they exploited it.

I've been warning about BFL since day one, Vleisedes was extradited from Italy for fraud. I even posted here the official Italian documents stating it.