I'm pretty sure most customers don't pay $0,10 a KWh, but likely around $0,30 in Europe...
You will pay 10K to lose $500 (and rising each day) a month over here.
Now that's what I call a great ROI 

The only thing that went 10 fold on the miners is the power consumption.
Now estimated around 3,500 Watts.
Great for European buyers.
If you would receive your Viper today, you will mine $10 of Litecoins each day, costing only $25 in electricity...
Way to invest your money, Spend $9,000 to lose $15 (and rising each day) a day.
The inventor of cryptocurrencies was probably a relative of Bernard Madoff...

So even the Dutch will lose money mining LTC, even if AT would deliver today and give all their miners away for free and without import duties...
Not strange all ASIC companies will go bankrupt, selling shit for 10K that makes you lose money each day...

In Europe it's even worse, since we pay around $0,35 per KWh of electricity.
Mining Litecoin after power costs will lose you over $4 a day.
And due to more difficulty that amount rises each day...
I still don't understand how it's possible that people are still mining coins, even with free power, you would make more money working at McDonalds than spending time on mining....

AT won't collect a penny of fresh money anymore.
If their miners will ever finish production and make 250MH without setting on fire, the won't even ROI the import tax.
So even if you paid in full it's smarter to write off your entire amount.
New people will also only buy a 250MH unit under a $1,000, so the current miners are completely worthless on the open market.
Will AT ever be successful, the have to desgin a new miner with aleast a 90% lower price per MH if it can be currently delivered, or 99% lower if it takes another 6 months and so on.
Also they will never sell any pre orders again...
I think the whole mining ponzi scheme is long over anyway.

Finally my CC company refunded my €6,000.00 downpayment on 3 Vipers...
AT first disputed the chargeback, but they didn't give any more bullshit, as it became more and more clear over time that there will be no deliveries this year.
Took a while, paid in January and March, asked chargeback in July and 5 months later it was granted.
Luckily I was smart enough not to pay a single penny by wire transfer, and I will never pre order any crap again.
However, even if current miners would drop 90% in price, they still won't ROI, so I stay out of the mining business altogether and stick to real currency...

Any decent economic model would state that the price of miners should drop accordingly to the difficulty rise and the price drop.
But as long as there are enough suckers out there that can't calculate, the equipment builders are the only guys making any money.

If you paid through bank transfer or with bitcoin that would have been the way out.
With CC ist's easier and faster to file a chargeback.
If that doesn't work you can still resort to claiming, but I don't think you will be able to collect your winning claim ticket...

Same case here.
AT replyed to the CC company that they provide regular development updates and that the customer is aware of this, just like their cancellation policy. If customer e-mails AT, AT will provide the customer a refund...
They can refund my CC directly now, if they are so earger to give back refunds.

I didn't buy a subscription to their development updates. I ordered a miner in January, which should have been delivered last July.
Now it's December and they even haven't got a working prototype ready.

Mastercard will now decide who's right, AT or the customer.
Loser will have to pay the GBP 5.000 order amount + a fine to Mastercard.
CC company told them they weren't afraid of losing and will go for Mastercard's binding judgement if AT still disputes the chargeback.

Just send me $250 in Bitcoin and I will get your money back from retro72
Sick thing you got scammed twice, hope you'll at least recoup the $500 and manage to file a claim directly against AT to get the rest back also.
www.fightalpha.net has all the instructions (for free!).

These miners won't even pay back VAT and import duties (around 32% total for most EU countries) by the time they will be delivered.
So it's cheaper to write off your investment than to have these miners deliverd to your home address.
Even if you already paid in full...
Had AT delivered on July 15, you could have made at least half your investment back.

I'm really getting curious now when they will have their first test miner built.
And the real stats like hashing power and Watts will be a big question till then.
Not to mention the heat problem, I'm afraid these Vipers will catch fire within an hour or make more noise than a Boeing 747 taking off...

Update: https://alpha-t.net/news/viper-chip/

Greetings Miners!

We would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has supported us throughout this journey. We know there has been some speculation about us and our project and we are now glad to finally put that to rest, and show you proof of our fabricated and packaged Viper chips that are now in hand.

https://alpha-t.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/image-2.jpeg

https://alpha-t.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/image.jpeg

https://alpha-t.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/20141010135457.jpg

This is a major milestone and hurdle we have overcome in terms of risk, time and money. Now that we have working chips all we need to do is assemble these and ship; we are of course currently assembling the devices and shipping will follow once this is complete. All fully paid orders should be ‘processing’ and will change to ‘completed’ once the order has shipped. We will also be quickly releasing a video demonstrating our chips hashing as an update to the community.

Where many new ASIC companies have failed to tape-out and produce working chips we have succeeded. While we are regrettably late in our shipping schedule please note our hash rates are still 10 times originally promised and with our profit sharing scheme not to mention the batch 1 loyalty bonuses we believe we have done our best to make up for this. Generally speaking most if not all ASIC manufacturers have never delivered on time and with batch 1 soon behind we have every intention of taking what we have learned and overcoming this in our next generation product.

Best Regards,
Mohammed Akram
Director

If these Vipers could cure Ebola, they would still be worth anything, despite the fat delays.
Those victem numbers rise faster than LTC diffculty...

Update: https://alpha-t.net/news/developmental-update-06102014/


Greetings Miners!

The assembly of the Viper dies from ASE in Taiwan is progressing very well. In fact, it is several days ahead of the planned schedule. The wafers are currently being processed into packaged devices on a fast track turn-around. The first image shows a wafer after the dies have been separated (sawn) and the other image shows a die after it has been attached to the custom HSBGA substrate and subsequently wire bonded.

https://alpha-t.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/viper_wafer_image.jpg

https://alpha-t.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Viper_die_attached_bonded_image.jpg

The present status is that all parts are at the epoxy over-mould stage which includes fixing the heat slug as a preliminary step. After this, the remaining steps are ball attach, plating, laser marking, device singulation and final visual inspection. The committed ship-out date for the Viper chips has been brought forward to 9th October. Once the chips are delivered a video demonstration will follow and shipment will commence.  On a side note we would like to apologise again for the slow response from our payments team, we are still extremely busy but we are working our hardest to deal with your requests as fast as possible.

Best Regards,
Mohammed Akram
Director

After disputing the transaction with CC company, I received and E-mail from PayPal they reopend 1 case that was first closed directly because outside the 45 days period.
So people keep pushing PP and your CC company.
It's simple: You ordered and paid for a Viper to arrive by July 2014 and you received 0 (and will probably never receive anything).
Act now while there still might be a chance to recover funds...

It's always easy to ask for a refund.
However getting a refund is another thing...

New A-T update: https://alpha-t.net/news/developmental-update-27092014/


Dear valued customers,

With much regret, we unfortunately have to announce that despite our biggest efforts, it is unlikely that we are able to meet our target shipping date for September. Instead, it will slip into October.

Nonetheless, there is also very good news: we are very pleased to announce to you that the tape-out process has successfully finished. This means that we have arrived at the last phases of development, which is the testing phase. Once these tests have ensured that the hardware passes our strict quality demands, mass production of the devices will commence and shipping will start accordingly. This is a big achievement for our company, as the pressure from all the competition that has cropped up since we started has forced us to make changes in our designs to bring you an on-par product that matches or exceeds the performance of competitor products.

As far as batch one is concerned, our miner products will be some of, if not the, most power efficient devices on the market today, and will beat even our own originally quoted performance targets. We expect to have more details about that shortly.

Our chips have come out of the fab as wafers, and they are currently at the assembly house to be sawn (sliced) and packaged.

Without further ado, we proudly present our fabricated Scrypt boards. Please see the pictures of their front and back:On a different matter:

As you’re well aware, our customers are an extremely important part of our business and for that reason we have been doing our utmost best to increase the value of your order as much as reasonably possible, such as raising the hash rates whilst maintaining a good, or even better, power ratio.

We cannot express how grateful we are to you for making our work possible, and we are very delighted that you have joined us for batch one. It’s absolutely thrilling for us that we are going to be able to ship you your miners at any moment now. However, we do realize that making batch one happen has not turned out exactly as we all had hoped and planned, and just like you: we are very disappointed with that.

We really want to give back to those of you who have stuck with us through this difficult period, and reward you in the best way we can. As a result, we have designed a special loyalty scheme for all of you have completed your batch one orders. Whilst we orginally had hoped that we would be able to realize this in the form of shares, after carefull exploration of that option we have determined there are simply far too many legal ramifications for everyone, which makes it next to impossible to do it this way. Our legal and accounting team has therefore come up with another method for rewards.

All customers whom have placed an order for a 50Mh/s and/or 250Mh/s batch one Viper on or before 31 August 2014 are eligible to participate in the scheme, subject to compliance with some limited conditions which sare set out in the Scheme Rules which can be found on this page: https://alpha-t.net/loyalty-scheme-rules/

Customers willing to participate must opt in to the scheme by 31 October 2014 by completing an application form, which can be found on https://alpha-t.net/loyalty_scheme_membership_form.doc. The completed form must be e-mailed to us no later than 31 October 2014 5:00PM UK Time (GMT) on loyalty@alpha-t.net. The application form will be removed from our website after this deadline, and no further applications can be accepted.

The scheme will run for five financial years, commencing with the financial year ending 31 August 2015 and ending with the financial year ended 31 august 2020. Payment of a bonus is condititional on the Company declaring a shareholder dividend following any particular financial year end.

If a dividend is declared, a special bonus pool will be created for our scheme members which will amount to 3/7 of the value of the shareholder dividend. This pratically means the following: should the shareholder dividend amount to £70,000, the value of the bonus pool will be £30,000. The bonus pool will be shared between all members of the loyalty scheme.

The bonus pool shall be distributed amongst the eligible customers in proportion to the value of orders placed and paid for by customers. We’ve described how this work in more detail in the Scheme Rules. However, in a short explanation: essentially, if your order amounted to 1% of the value of orders received from scheme members: you will be entitled to 1% of the bonues pool. Please understand that this is a very short explanation that has no contractual effect. We urge you to read the Scheme Rules for full details on the exact working of this program.

We are very excited about giving you this option, as it demonstrates our gratitude to our customers, and our determination to make sure that our customers see a real return from their investment in Alpha Technology’s products. We have full confidence that our valued customers will be very pleased with their decision to stick by Alpha as we grow over the coming years. We hope as many of our customers as possible sign up for the loyalty bonus scheme, and we look forward to receiving your completed application forms within the shortest notice possible.

We believe that not many other start-ups that would find themselves in our shoes would have continued their business, and would have given up a long time ago without any future prospects. We hope that we have proven to you that we are more than willing to adapt to the demanding market and evolve. We have ambitious plans for the future that will be shared in due course, and as always: if we have more news for you, we will send another announcement.

Thank you for your time and patience!

Kind regards,
Mohammed Akram
Director

I Think we vastly underestimate the amounts of money they've collected with their (now widely suspected) scam.
People complaining about losing $700, others $2500, I'm in for 10K alone.
These guys have cashed in a lot of money, witch is probable gone for 6 months now to some secret accounts in China/India/Caymans.
I doubt the people behind AT are still living in Europe sinds half of July, when it became pretty clear there would never be any miner produced.
I still hope my CC company can offer me a refund, but I hope the police will get them when it turns out te be a scam.
Within a week they will give some sort of bullshit update about missing their deadline again, or just take down the website and give us all the finger...
 

The sad thruth is that even people who paid in full, are asking AT now to keer the Vipers.
The import duties and VAT alone won't even ROI anymore...
Not that AT will probably ever deliver anything.
If they would have kept their word and shipped July 15th, I would have considered not making ROI my own bad judgement, but the lies AT used when asking people for the remaining 70%, while knowing there would not be a ready product for probably 6 months, made me clear it's turned out into a scam.