Final update to my situation; I finally got my refund a couple days ago. Amber once again came through so I would like to say that as of this point THE ONLY PERSON WORTH DEALING WITH IS AMBER.

Now the bad. My support ticket was closed well before it was resolved, emails to Amber, Amanda and Amaris were never responded to; yes Amber did not answer my emails to her, it took me coming here and sending her a personal message but she was on top of things as soon as I sent the PM. I called every option in the GAW automated phone system and left messages, all of which were never answered.  I tried the chat on their website with no answer and I tried to open a new support ticket yet could not find where to do so since once again their support site layout had changed. I'm not saying there is no way to create a new ticket but at the time I was on the road using my phone and clicked through every menu option I could find with no luck. Either way it was extremely ridiculous.

To recap, I contacted GAW about starting the refund process somewhere around the 11th of July and didn't actually get my refund until around the 21st of August.

The assumptions are not very far at all considering what has been said and their actions. I made 2 assumptions: 1 that Amber was able to instigate getting the refund process going and 2 that they have pissed off quite a few people based on being told that they have a lot of refund requests right now and also seeing that their return policy magically disappeared. I made one step logical assumptions so if you want to see that as 'really going far' then that's on you but not a single person that I've personally talked to has not come to the exact same assumptions. Everything I have brought up is based on actual experience with them and I never go further than one step past what has happened to try and understand why things have happened. I'm not going to try to please them when I feel they have done wrong just because I want my money back. Regardless of whether I lay claim to my money as my money or not the fact is I lost control over that money as soon as I spent it and I'm not stupid, once I give that control up I don't expect to get it back. If they do the right thing and honor the refund that I purchased under then great, I will acknowledge them positively for that but it still won't make up for the bad or give reason to hide the bad from others.

This is not a smear campaign where I put all the complaints and dirt in one place in an easy to read and search for format so don't start to make it out like that's what it is. I have been honest and fair with GAW and will continue to do so. Whether you realize it or not I have spent quite a bit of time trying to resolve things internally with them before I got to the point where I felt it was necessary for me to post. I am glad that the refund process is moving along but my motivation and expectation wasn't for that, it was to illustrate to other potential buyers what kind of experience they MIGHT be in for because I would have appreciated something like this before I purchased; because I wouldn't have after reading this.

Either way the update thus far is kudos to Amber because she seems to have been able to get things moving along and in less time than the standard channels were taking by a huge margin. At this point the returns are approved, Amber has contacted me to assure me there won't be any issues with the refund and has provided me with a pre-paid shipping label for FedEx.

Amber - good job and thank you, I will be making arrangements with FedEx tomorrow. Please provide me with the best method to communicate effectively to who ever is in charge that your method of customer service should at the very least be the standard minimum at your company. While most people I have dealt with at GAW were pleasant enough to speak to, you are the first one who has followed through in a timely fashion with more than one step at a time. There is still some room for improvement but had GAW dealt with me the entire time at the same level you have, I wouldn't be this frustrated and I'm sure things would have gone much differently.

Just an update - Amber apparently from GAW got in touch here on the forums on the 21st and the 22nd which magically that day all of my refund requests went from 'pending' to approved - good job to Amber if she was the instigator. Unfortunately as soon as I saw this I emailed her and while she was good about the initial few contacts being timely, I haven't heard back from her since early yesterday. I received an email from GAW immediately:

"...Your returns are authorized. Please send the units back to:

GAW Miners RMA Dept
34 East Dudley Town Road
Bloomfield, CT 06002

Once we receive the units I will refund you.
..."

Call be crazy but after all of the problems I've had I'm waiting for some sort of assurance from Amber that there won't be any funny business with the return such as claiming I caused the damage to the fan wires, saying they didn't receive the package (yes I will be sending it with insurance, tracking, delivery and signature confirmation) or any number of other issues. Part of my concern is coming from the fact that their return policy was (I'm not sure when it changed but I have a screenshot on the 13th of this month):

"...
Generation A - GAW Miners products:

Generation A miners (The Fury, The Black Widow, The Falcon & The War Machine) may be returned for a full refund within 14 days of date delivered.

The warranty period for Generation A miners is 1 year from date of delivery. GAW Miners honors manufacturer defects and will offer a replacement product free of charge."

http://i.imgur.com/godIhKm.png

So basically they've removed the first line, hmmm. This is pulled from my support ticket with them I believe on the 20th (it says '3 days ago'):

"...Typically it takes a few business days to process a return but we have received a surplus amount of them so it will take longer.
..."

Hmmm, so if this is correct then that means my process has taken at about 3 times as long as usual and who knows how long had I not come here. Also from this statement and the apparently resulting action of changing the return policy to completely eliminate returns/refunds except for manufacturer defects it's pretty safe to say that they have been doing a fine job pissing off their customers as of late. Either the return requests are too many for them to handle efficiently or it's in danger of seriously hurting them financially and that's why they removed this part.

I can't stress this enough, actions speak louder than words, don't try to sell me a bill of goods, not honor it and then drag your feet when I want out using the return policy which was a big part of the reason I even bothered to give you a chance after all of the hiccups. I gave GAW the benefit of the doubt a couple times wanting to chalk it up to them being a new, small company but apparently I was wrong for that.  In the real world you're lucky if you get any understanding or extra chances but you still need to play ball on the pro level to survive.

I should also mention that I have heard from Amber here on the forums so we'll see where that goes, maybe she can get my refund process moving along instead of being stuck at 'pending' for the better part of a week. I'm starting to get the impression that this company is stalling so that the 14 day return period is up and they can claim that I don't qualify but who knows?! If they don't like that interpretation then maybe they shouldn't let idle minds have too much time to think about what they might really be doing since they clearly aren't doing the right thing. It's rather ironic that up to the point of creating the refund requests there was communication daily, sometimes several times a day albeit not very informative at times and then hardly anything after the requests or the fact that I get a faster response from a 'GAW rep' here than through their own support channels.

I wonder how it makes sense to pay someone to dig through threads on sites not associated with their company instead of having them deal directly with their own support infrastructure where they don't have to dig to find the problems; they are already neatly packaged into a support ticket. I'm being facetious as I know coming here has a benefit but there is something fundamentally wrong when the more reactive support comes external to their own internal support, especially considering this is a new company that shouldn't be so back-logged and compartmentalized that their interior has lost it's functionality.

EvilPanda - I wasn't talking about the 'normal' price deviation which is why I thought I specifically stated that my investment was devalued by their pricing by 50+% and not the usual 5-10% which I've seen to be fairly common on later production batches.  A week 3 Fury at $140, a week 4 at $125, a week 5 at $94.50 then $99 then $109 in less than 6 hours, a week 6 at $105, more or less all make sense. Getting 13mhs worth of week 6 products at $1049.50 and by the time I receive them a 27mhs War Machine is $850, that doesn't make sense as far as doing right by the customer goes and that I won't be a part of.

As for the damage, yes I can fix it as most people could but that's besides the point. Again I am not going to pay for a 'new' product and be happy with one that has damage but I do agree that damage is not something really worth sending it in for, hell they could ask for pictures to verify the damage and then just send me new fans. Then again that only deals with the fan wire damage and not any potential real damage done to the bent connectors. They could do something where they charge me for 3 more at the slightly lower week 7 or week 8 price, send them to me, I send back the damaged ones once the new ones are hooked up and then refund me for the 3 damaged week 6's. The loss in revenue for basically swapping out damaged week 6's for week 7's or 8's is on them because they provided a damaged product which would in that scenario require me to shell out more money that I shouldn't have to and deal with swapping them out and sending units back, none of which I bought into when I made my purchase. Then again that doesn't provide a solution to those who don't have the extra money to just cough up and put on hold or those whole at that point aren't willing to trust GAW with another cent of their money.

You'll have to excuse my harshness if you see it that way towards money but I do construction which means that I'm literally wearing down my own body to make a paycheck so I expect my money's worth.

Hardy49r - I wish you the best of luck. Amazingly enough what I wrote is more or less a cliff-notes version and would be much longer if I detailed out every part of each issue to give more clarity to the headache this has been.  You are absolutely correct in your possible assumptions; this company has bitten off more than they can chew and the deceptive thing is that some of the reps, when you do get a hold of them, actually seem like they care and want to help. Hell maybe they really do but the company provides constraints that they sometimes can't get around. The bottom line - you're going to end up doing more work than you should have to in order to get the service from them that should already be a given but as I said, I wish you the best.

Yea I was trying to say that for now that secondary portion's value would be so small that it didn't really count for much but once the network effect stops being so accurate then that's when the other portion would have a noticeable effect in the equation. Like a transition from one to the other but in-between they too would have some kind of relationship.

Hey gbianchi - I haven't read through the entire thread but earlier in the thread it was pointed out that the model would eventually predict an infinite value for bitcoins. What about adding a secondary function into the original that represents price influences other than addresses so that the final equation is a ratio of the two added together. Basically I'm saying that for now the addresses thing you've figured out might be the largest controlling factor but as we approach using up the addresses that the influence of the secondary equation becomes the stronger of the two and eventually becomes the equation.

Also I was curious to see if the dates where the price spikes and then levels out over the long run such as April 13' and then again at December 13' are related to asics. I know the second spike I mentioned was around the time that the silk road shut down and I took that to be increased popularity at the time because of the negative association with the silk road ending but still wonder if the spikes relate to 1st gen vs 2nd gen asics. Anyway, sorry if this has been discussed already!

TLDR - GAWs customer service is time consuming, not dependable and doesn't seem to care too much about actually doing right, only doing right by enough people so that those people will argue for them against those they didn't do right by.

Just thought I'd drop in and share my experience with GAW. From day one their communication has been hit or miss for me. The first time the communication was broken I was credited $60 towards a purchase for the inconvenience of being ready to order week 3's and by the time I could get a hold of anyone to find out why the questions I asked initially and were told I would have answers within a day were still not answered or even responded to in 4 days. It was over a week before my questions were mostly answered at which point week 4's were taken down and week 5's were up. That started the second issue because initially week 5's were at a substantially lower price ($94.49) which made week 5's a better deal than the week 4's I had just missed out on like the week 3's because of crappy communication. Unfortunately when I called in as soon as I saw the week 5's, no one was there to answer my questions about missing products in their lineup for week 5. Within a couple hours of that call I had decided I wasn't going to wait to see about the rest of their product line, I was just going to order Furys and literally as I was adjusting the quantity in my basket, they increased to $109.95.

At that point I waited until I could talk to someone and they would not honor the $94.49 price point but offered to honor a $96/unit price point although by the time this whole thing go straightened out we were onto week 6's.  After talking to a live person I finally settled on several orders broken up to use different coupon codes and I did explain to them exactly what I wanted to do with the orders, coupons and store credit before doing it so I would know if any part of it was something they didn't like.  At this point after talking to a live person I felt comfortable enough to make my purchase but that apparently was made with 2 incorrect assumptions.

The next set of problems started once I received my order.  Several of the Furys had their fan wires sliced through the insulation as if they had been pressed too hard against the heatsink fins. Also several of the fan connectors on the boards were bent away from the board, some quite a bit. The power supplies were in individual boxes, the power and usb cords were loose and the Furys were wrapped in a single layer of ~1/8" foam with no protection on the ends, all of this in a giant box with peanuts. 

Literally as I was unpacking them I emailed GAW regarding the damage I was seeing on the wires and connectors. I emailed them again 2-3 days later since I hadn't heard back from them. After giving them a little more time I decided that clearly the communication that I was assured would be better was not so I took the time to figure out that they have a new site for service related issues and created a ticket.

I received a response the same day stating they would escalate my ticket to a specialist. The next day I heard from their specialist who was the person I had initially sent emails to regarding the damage and in the ticket she said she hadn't received either of my emails. She also told me I needed to do a formal request for a refund at which point I had to ask her to direct me to where I could do this. I then left a message on the ticket which was the copied email chain regarding the damage but going back to previous emails between the 2 of us. Later that same day she responded with instructions on where to file a formal return request. I followed the instructions but saw no option for a refund so I posted that to the ticket.

She got back to me the next day (day 3 of the ticket) stating that if there was no option to just put it in the notes so I did and posted to the ticket that I created the requests. I heard nothing back so the next day (day 4 of the ticket) I asked for further instructions on this process with no response. The next day (day 5 of the ticket) I asked again with no response. Same thing the next day (day 6), it had been 3 days since I followed the latest instructions with no response, no idea what needs to happen next, the time frame, nothing in the way of what to expect. I was able to get a hold of a different person whom I had dealt with previously through their sites chat box. This person said she would do her best to expedite the process because she was already aware of all of the crappy communication issues previously and said I should have a response the following day hopefully. At the end of day 7 I posted to the ticket that it had been 9 days since my initial email regarding the damage and 6 days since I created the ticket with still no resolution. Then today I got a response letting me know that it was out of the support agents hands and that it was basically up to their head of shipping. It was also 'explained' that they have a lot of refund requests right now which is part of why it's taking so long...

So my 2 incorrect assumptions were that the communication would be better and that their pricing would not devalue my investment by 50+% by the time I received it.  The lady through chat did offer me more store credit but it didn't come close to making up for their price cuts. The difficulty is the risk miners take and it's also been fairly standard practice that prices will drop to account for the difficulty some but I did not expect to be able to re-purchase the hashing power I bought for half the cost or less if you factor in store credit that was on my account.  No the Furys were not half the price compared to when I bought, but I bought 10 and at the time they were $104.95 = $1049.50 which was more than what a War Machine ($849.99) was priced at by the time I received my order and that machine is twice the hashing power. And actually you could consider that if you receive their emails they have been offering $50 Furys several times since I've received my order which is less than half price...

I have 8 cards coming in the mail each with an AMD Never Settle Forever Gold game code. If interested PM me and make an offer.

http://sites.amd.com/us/promo/never-settle/Pages/nsreloadedforever.aspx

Gold tier gets 3 games although you have to pick them at the same time. The promotion is good until December 31st this year and the games offered may change.

Does anyone have power consumption for these cards when running 400+ KHash/s?

Understood but I want to find out why that is not recommended, what the actual rational reasons are as opposed to conjecture and speculation.

https://forum.litecoin.net/index.php/topic,2870.0.html

I put this together to compare different cards. It's taken from the Github user reported stats.  Personally from what I've read and calculated the only 2 cards to even consider are the 7850 and 7950, no way the 7970. It has a decent KHash/s to cost ratio but one of the worst KHash/s to watt ratios.  Also as has been mentioned in this thread, the 7970's seem to have more issues as compared to the 7950's which plug and play better.  I would go for the 7950's instead of the 7850's simply because they have the better efficiency ratios per dollar and watt.  The only exception is the 7850's KHash/s per watt in 5-7 card setups but considering most people don't seem to go above 4 card setups and we're talking between .02-.08 watts per KHash/s difference.  When you factor in the fact that with 7950's you get more total hashing power from one physical setup ie more density it is a no-brainer. Just my 2 cents.

I can't find it right now but I read an article recently on Physorg.com that talked about the cost of purchase and installation in Germany compared to the US.  The cost of materials didn't differ much, the extra cost for us comes from all the bureaucratic red tape - licensing, permits, approvals and on and on.  As I stated, the estimate is right inline with the national averages for that size of a system.  Yes you can go out and buy the parts yourself but what are you going to do when you tie it in to your house? Are you going to run all new, dedicated electrical wiring so that you have 2 outlets where you used to have 1 and label one for your grid and the other for the power company? Last time I checked you have to get the power company to sign off on your installation if you're just tying it to your current electrical system which is consequently tied to their system. 

On top of that, what are you going to do if you ever have an issue with your house and your home owners insurance finds out and drops you for not having a licensed professional install the system, have the necessary permits approved etc.?  You can mikey mouse your system all day long, even if you know what you're doing but just be aware that you might be setting yourself up for a lot more costs than just a professional installation and possibly even fines, fees etc. from your city or county.

$.60/watt is on the extreme low end, I only found prices that low when you bought enough panels to equate to 5-7kw of power so thinking that you're going to buy a quality (read quality AND good warranty) panel for that price is probably unrealistic.  Finding them for $1/watt is still probably a stretch for quality and low quantity.  If you want a good price, install a 40kw system which can drop your cost per watt down to $2/watt but for small installations you're going to pay more per watt.

For anyone thinking of even attempting to do this completely DIY as in buy the solar cells, the tabbing wire, solder them together, build the frames, encapsulate them etc. GOOD LUCK! You can do it but by the time you get done it will probably be more expensive just for the materials not to mention your time spent, losses from the learning curve, losses from picking the wrong materials, the headache of learning on your own dime and the worry that your product won't last even 5 years.  Even if you only screw up one panel and then only have one more panel that screws up in 5 years, you've already brought your cost per watt up significantly even without counting your "free" labor.  I'm not sure anyone here was contemplating it but I just thought I'd share, I've looked into it, researched the different encapsulation materials and methods which is where your longevity come from and there is no cut and dry answer as to what's the best to use and it's still more expensive than pre-made panels. 

If you want solar but can't stomach the retail installation cost, find yourself a local electrician or general contractor who might be able to do it cheaper than the main guys but do it RIGHT (read permitting, power co sign off's etc.)  Don't risk your house, don't risk your install, the bureaucracy sucks here but you're not going to beat it by being super cheap. 

One alternative you DIYers might consider is buying the stuff and installing it yourself if you think you're capable but run dedicated electrical lines to a particular room for your mining and that way you bypass the power co sign off and possibly some permitting. I would also advise a free standing installation in the yard as opposed to the roof to try and avoid some serious permits.  Depending on how much of a liberal nazi loving area you live in you might get issues about "unsightliness"...

Check for federal, state and local rebates and incentives as Cochese suggested, this can offset a large portion of the cost and also check with your power company about them buying your extra electricity. They don't do that where I live but some places do which might be an incentive to over-size your install to get a faster ROI. Sorry for the rambling

I kinda figured that's the safe bet but if you read Boozer's post he mentions his second PSU powering the 3 powered risers but only 2 cards with regular 6 pin or 8 pin connectors meaning that the card attached to the 3rd powered riser is getting power from 2 PSU's. Maybe I read that wrong...

I'll keep digging as I really would like a definitive answer about this. I know that using different models etc. would probably be an issue but if/when I build a mining rig it would be using the same model GPU's and PSU's which means their variance is whatever the manufacturing process allows and hopefully everything would be similar enough that it wouldn't be an issue, even a small one that takes a year to actually cause a real problem.

https://forum.litecoin.net/index.php/topic,2641.0.html

Apparently the Gigabyte Windforce's do well, the guy who started that thread also mentioned in a different thread that he was able to get up to about 670 or 680 with his and that someone else on a different forum had broken 700 KHash/s.  Even though they are voltage locked apparently you can flash a different bios to unlock them.

Also wanted to point out that a lot of Power utility companies will start charging a higher cost per Kw/hr once you go over a certain amount for the month or they have a tiered system. A 1,000watt/hr load 24/7 will put you at 720kw/hr's per month which generally is much more than a typical residential account uses and will probably put you into a more expensive rate bracket for part of that.

You might want to look into federal and state rebates and/or incentives to attract more customers seeing as how the average cost of installations are between $4-$5/watt.  When buying that much power you're cost per watt for the panels can get under $1/watt which makes it 1/4th of your total and a lot of people probably find that hard to stomach regardless of how you try to justify it.  That's like buying a $150 subwoofer, a $300 amp and then having a total install cost of $2,000 including the sub and amp... From what I read there are federal rebates up to 30% which would effectively lower your charge from ~$30,000 to ~$20,000.

Anyway your cost is inline with the national average, at a minimum the panels at $7,000 and an inverter for $3,000-$5,000 leaves $18,000-$20,000 for the rest of the materials and installation. Personally I'm an electrician so I'd just buy the stuff and install it myself.  Even if I wasn't, I'd rather buy the materials and pay a local electrician say $4,000 and be done for half of your cost. If I paid an electrician to do it their payment would require passing an electrical inspection by the county or city and the power company and they would have to guarantee their workmanship in writing for some length of time which I would have a lawyer draw up.

Honestly I don't think you or your company should decide to accept bitcoins as payment only if you think you can get people to sign on for installations or purchases. You have to look at the number of people actually interested in solar, then the people who actually have the money for solar, then the people who have the means for solar ie a place they can actually install it, then you have to factor in the number of those people who use bitcoin and then those who would be willing to pay with it.  All of that within your installation area and you are probably talking about a very small group of people and that's only looking at it from a potential which still leaves the actual finding of these people!  If you and your company think bitcoin is a good idea, set it up so you can accept payment, advertise that you accept it as payment and go from there.  Is it a lot of work to set things up to accept them?  The flip side is that you'll probably generate more interest in bitcoin from customers wanting to know what it is once you tell them you accept bitcoin, maybe offer them an incentive to pay with bitcoin.

Ryu - I wouldn't be eliminating the PCIe slot power from the GPU, just from the mobo.  The DIY powered riser tutorial has you take the power wires from the riser and add a 6 pin PCIe power connector to it which means your other supplemental power connectors don't have to pick up the extra load, you would now have 3 cables from the PSU to the GPU, assuming you already had 2!

Q1 - One of the DIY articles for powered risers - http://blog.zorinaq.com/?e=44 - has the power wires from the riser cable disconnected from the mobo side and directly connected to a power connector, what I'm wondering is if there is any problems with doing this for all cards so the mobo only handles communication.

Q2 - The PCIe slot has to supply power to more than just the memory because there are cards that don't require supplemental power connections.  I'm trying to figure out if all power connections are drawn from at the same time or if they might kick on as needed ie from 0-75 watts of consumption, power only comes through the PCIe slot, 75-150 comes from supplemental 6 pin connector #1 and 150+ comes from supplemental 6 pin connector #2.  I would assume that power draw comes from all 3 and not in stages but some clarification from someone who knows would be better than my assumptions.  If all else fails, when I get a GPU I can just test it.

Am I not getting any responses because no one has any answers or what? I figured this would be the right forum to ask these things in, hoping I'm not left to my best guess it would be nice for someone who has experience with this to chime in.