Re: [Guide] Dogie's Comprehensive Manufacturer Trustworthiness Guide [12th Sept]

Its to represent that what they pulled with the 65nm delays, mis-selling, making potentially false/misleading claims, potentially misleading statements about tapeout etc, targeting new buyers with insanely old hardware and the repeated 'tradeups' with the second generation delays. Simply put, no other company has come close to what BFL did over the last 18-24 months - as highlighted by the FTC taking over the company. Blackarrow is getting close, but they're not at that level yet and still have an opportunity to fix it.

Blackarrow

- Repeatedly lied about shipping dates.
- Only 30% of hardware shipped 6 months late.
- Promised to be the best $/gh but decided screw it that would cost money.
- Several customers blackmailed/doxed by the company
- Shipping hardware to resellers before customers who ordered earlier
- Denied refunds even though they were promised after they began shipping.
- Compensation completely garbage for the huge delays.
- Heavy censorship of their thread/forum.
- Nearly every customer left feeling ripped off.

Ethics: 5/10

BTCGarden

- No delays
- No problem with RMAs/partial refunds.
- Great customer support which makes sure customers do not feel ripped off.
- MAY have told a lie about their DOA %.

Ethics: 5/10

You're right in some respects, the ethics category doesn't have much depth. The problem is the more criteria / sub-criteria I add, the more I'll be accused of being biased or gaming the system somehow. By leaving it more rigid it removes that ability for any one person [me] to have too much control - the criteria is the criteria and everything has to fit into them.

The way you're wrong though is BTCGarden: 73, Black Arrow: 35. Not everything fits into the ethics category.

True. There is a lot of weight placed on whether or not a company is running a mine. We don't know that Black Arrow isn't. Although there's no proof, they initially claimed their data center was ready to go online to begin their cloudhashing service and then some time later claimed they couldn't be mining because their data center wasn't ready. I obviously know they can't be dinged for something that is unproven but it remains unclear why they haven't delivered a larger number of X-3's and given their overall ethics that I've seen, if they can be, they are.

I do wonder where the assumption that Black Arrow is large comes from. They don't seem to be building much of anything themselves, have contracted out assembly and there is no clear indication of a large number of employees. So, we've got what, a handful of engineers (maybe) and a few customer service personnel (again, maybe) and whoever it is that's running this mess in terms of "management".