Quote from: Blazedout419 on November 03, 2014, 04:39:48 PM

Quote from: praeluceo on November 03, 2014, 04:37:22 PM

This is the email we sent Phasebird this morning. Including here to escalate greater transparency for all ASICMiner customers.

Quote

Good morning,
This is Ronald again, it has been nearly a month since our order was placed, and since that point we have not received any replies from you. Keeping tabs on your thread at Bitcointalk shows only one brief reply to the thread acknowledging the delay from Phasebird on October 25th. I had to go to ASICMiner's Facebook page to read friedcat's explanation of the issues with the BE200.

We are extremely disappointed in the lack of professionalism ASICMiner has demonstrated with this product launch, and the lack of communication that typically follows scam pre-orders, not legitimate sales. At nearly 15 BTC per order, you are not dealing with small home miners who have limited funds at risk, or who are only interested in small batches of hardware.

We fully expect an update today via email, and an update to your customers who you owe a response to on your Bitcointalk thread. We likewise fully expect compensation in the form of a partial refund and coupons -if- we decide to do business with you again, although from the irresponsible manner this launch has been handled, that is unlikely.

With a MOQ of 10 miners, and a minimum purchase price of 14.9 BTC, this level of delay is entirely unacceptable. If you are unable to respond to your customers' inquiries today, we will bring the matter up directly with friedcat in an attempt to arbitrate a solution, preferably one which does not attach ASICMiner's name to a product that, at present, entirely lacks customer support or feedback.

This has been a very disappointing experience for us in relation to ASICMiner, and future purchases will likely require the use of an escrow service to keep you honest and communicative, since apparently your priorities lie elsewhere from your hardware sales customers, and if that is the case, then I have to wonder if this is how ASICMiner will treat their investors after the IPO investments are raised.

To help improve our transparency in this exchange, I am going to make this an open letter and include it on the Bitcointalk thread verbatim to this email, but I still expect a reply via email today with regard to our hardware order.

Sincerely,
Ronald (Praeluceo)

This is why you NEVER pre order mining gear... Not sure how many times it needs to be posted for people to let it sink in...

I totally agree Blazedout419, and I do not participate in pre-orders. I have had great success with ASICMiner and Bitmain hardware in the past, both companies have been very straight forward with issuing refunds on delayed hardware, and coupons for loyal customers. The Prisma was not represented to be a pre-order however. The posted shipping date was October 8th, which was right around when we placed our order. The expectation being that this would be like my other purchases from ASICMiner, where the order is placed, and then shipped within the next few days.

Quote from: friedcat on September 22, 2014, 03:56:37 AM

Brief
...
Round 1 Sales

Shipping date: 8th October, 2014 to 27th October, 2014
...
General Policy
1. Payment before shipping. The shipping order follows the payment order.

2. No refunds after the generation of tracking numbers.

3. If the corresponding tracking number has not been generated, we provide full refund starting from 27th October.
(The nominal refund amount follows the actual payment method, for example, 1 BTC refund for 1 BTC payment, 4k
USD refund for 4k USD payment)
...
Purchasing Procedure
1. Contact customer service via forum, email, IM or phone.
2. Fill the order details in the form provided by the customer service. (name/address/zip code/phone/email)
3. Pay according to the Bitcoin address given by the customer service.
4. Check for the tracking number when we start shipping.
5. Ask for refunds starting from 27th October if the tracking number has not been generated at that time.

However their ship date is now almost a month past, with only one official word from Phasebird, and it didn't articulate what sort of issue they had with the BE200s and their hashing board solution. We sent multiple e-mails to Phasebird when our order didn't ship, we got a re-negotiated ship date (the 15th) which slipped without response, and when the 27th came and went, we requested a status update again, and still no reply. So now I've made our latest inquiry to phasebird public, and subsequent correspondence will be handled directly with ASICMiner.

In the future, it seems that we will have to use escrow services even with previously reputable companies unless they actually have hardware that has already shipped. Batch #1 always gets burned, but for one of 2 ASIC manufacturers that I trust, this has been a terrible experience.