$46k Spent on Mining Hardware: Who Will Deliver the Goods?
Manufacturers
of digital currency mining equipment have become notorious for their
long delays in shipments and poor customer service. But is this general
perception actually the case?
Dario Di Pardo
gives us his insight into the world of the frustrated miner, after
personally dealing with a number of mining hardware makers over the last
five months, and dealing with widely varying levels of delay, customer
services and offers of compensation or refund.
Black Arrow
Product: Prospero X-3 (2 TH/s)
Price including shipping: $4,978
Order date: November 18th, 2013
Anticipated shipping date: February 24th, 2014
Expected delay: 2-3 months
After
ordering in November and expecting delivery in February, shipping has
now been delayed till May 1st due to power consumption issues with Black
Arrow’s 28nm ASIC chip.
To compensate for the delay, however, the
company offered free cloud hashing power for six months – effectively
worth 25% of the purchased hashing power.
Tape-out of the improved
chip was completed on February 23rd, and no further issues that could
endanger the new shipping date are foreseen.
Customer support has been somewhat slow, but still reasonable.
HashFast
Product: Sierra (1.2 TH/s)
Price including shipping: $6,696
Order date: November 18th, 2013
‘Guaranteed’ delivery date: February 15th, 2014
Expected delay: 2.5 months
In
December, a production update was communicated via email.
Unfortunately, it also contained the email addresses of all HashFast
customers, thus compromising their privacy, as well as mine.
My
initial order confirmation gave February 15th as the ‘guaranteed
delivery date’ (deliveries after this date entitle buyers to a refund).
In January, however, I received an email giving March 31st as the new
‘guaranteed delivery date’. The email came without any complementary
information whatsoever.
I received a further email on 28th March concerning
shipping updates.
Basically in my case (Batch 3), I must accept another month of delay
(May shipment) or I can ‘upgrade’ my order to the new Sierra EVO (2
TH/s).
The latter option would also mean later shipment (end of
May) and because it will be a kit, I would have to buy my own power
supplies.
Ironically enough, people who placed an order for the
Sierra EVO (available as of 20th February) will seemingly get theirs
before I do, in April, this is despite the fact that I ordered mine
three months before them.
Bitcoin refund requests from early
customers who paid their order in bitcoins were refused and offered
refunds in fiat at USD hardware pricing at the time of purchase
instead. According some displeased customers, who are now considering
legal action against HashFast, the terms of service clearly stated that
orders paid in bitcoins would be refunded with the same amount of
bitcoins.
Facing a one-week backlog, their customer support
strikes me as questionable: some emails are ignored, while others are
answered with generic replies.
No compensation for the delivery delay has been offered at this time.
Virtual Mining Corporation (VMC)
Product: Fast-Hash One Platinum Edition (1 TH/s)
Price including shipping: $6,479
Order date: November 24th, 2013
Anticipated shipping date: January 2014
Delay: 8 months?
Production
of VMC’s consumer mining machines is subject to a significant delay,
due to underperformance of the 28nm ASIC chip manufactured by eASIC.
According
Kenneth E. Slaughter, CEO of VMC, which is a subsidiary of Active
Mining Corporation, customers who wish to cancel their pre-order will be
refunded in full.
Strangely enough, this delay is not being
communicated to the company’s customers, neither by email nor via the
website. One can only discover this information by checking the forums.
Considering the delay and lack of communication, I decided to apply for a refund on January 10th.
The
only refund method is by cheque, and I received mine about a month
after my application. Unfortunately the cheque came with a misspelling
in my name, so that cashing it in was impossible.
The cheque was
sent back with an accompanying letter clearly stating the correct
spelling of the recipient’s name, just to be sure.
However,
mid-March a new cheque arrived containing the same misspelling and, this
time, it wasn’t signed either. At this point I started to wonder
whether these errors were being done on purpose to delay the refund.
Declining
my request to have the funds wired to my bank account instead, VMC will
now be sending a third cheque (after receiving the unsigned one back
from me).
So, maybe with some luck, some four to five months after applying for a refund, I will actually get my money back.
Despite all this, their customer service team has pretty good response times to email inquiries.
Bitmine
Product: CoinCraft Desk (1 TH/s)
Price including shipping: $5,758
Order date: November 28th, 2013
Anticipated shipping date: February (week 1)
Expected delay: 2.5 to 3 months
After a three months’ delay, Bitmine began shipping their first CoinCraft Desk units on the 12th of February.
According
to CEO Giorgio Massarotto, exactly one month thereafter, about 250
units were delivered, which would average out at a production capacity
of 12 units a day.
Some customers have claimed the slow production
rate is due to a deal Bitmine made with PETA-MINE, allowing them to cut
in front of the delivery queue, causing extra delay for ordinary
customers. This has not been confirmed, however.
In addition,
Bitmine is currently experiencing a shortage of 1300W power supplies,
which are needed for a fully populated (1 TH/s) CoinCraft Desk. Also a
result of the PETA-MINE deal, according to some commenters.
Early
recipients of the hardware have also reported that the Desk’s ‘turbo
mode’ doesn’t work as advertised. For a 1 TH/s Desk ‘turbo mode’ would
allow hash rates up to 1.5 TH/s. In reality it doesn’t even come close
to that number, they said.
Those who have ordered a CoinCraft Rig
unit will have to cope with yet more delay, in the sense that shipment
of these units has yet to be started. A recently published
news update on the company website says this is expected in early April.
To compensate for the delay, Bitmine has a customer protection plan in place, which the company says consists of the following:
1) Shipment can be late up to a maximum of 10 days from the agreed shipment date.
2) For each subsequent 10 days of late shipping, we will add for free 10% more hashing power to your order as penalty.
3) After the 61st day of late shipment, you have the right to request a
full refund and we will pay you an additional penalty of 10% of the
initial order amount.
However, Bitmine recently
announced on its official forum (just before it was closed down for
about a week due to personal insults towards the CEO) that the maximum
bonus hashing power was limited to 50% – a fact not mentioned in their
customer protection plan.
This fact, in addition to the PETA-MINE story and the CoinCraft Desk’s ‘turbo mode’ issues, has led to many upset customers.
From
the end of February till mid-March emails were answered with a delay of
one to two weeks. During this period it was also very difficult to get a
support representative on the phone.
Bitmine has worked through its support tickets backlog, however, and you can now expect a response time of about one day.
So far, Bitmine has been unable to provide an estimated shipment date for my order.
KnCMiner
Product: Neptune (3 TH/s)
Price including shipping: $10,175
Pre-order date: January 7th, 2014
Anticipated shipping date: Q2 2014
Expected delay: None
Having taped out their 20nm ASIC chip in February, KnCMiner seems on track for the Q2 delivery of the 3 TH/s SHA-256 mining rig.
In
case a delay should occur, KnCMiner has said it will compensate
customers with a free hosted hashing package as part of its so-called
‘Plan B’.
Alpha Technology
Product: Viper (Scrypt) Miner (90 MH/s)
Price excluding shipping: £5,450 ($8,984)
Pre-order date: January 10th, 2014
Anticipated shipping date: July 2014
Expected delay: None
Shortly
after the KnCMiner 100 MH/s scrypt miner announcement on March 3rd,
Alpha Technology struck back with updated specifications for both of
its upcoming miners.
The hash rate of the 5 MH/s scrypt miner has
increased to 16 MH/s, while the 25 MH/s rig will be mining at 90
MH/s. Prices have not increased as a result.
Regular development updates contribute to a good customer experience so far.
CoinTerra
Product: TerraMiner IV (2 TH/s)
Price including shipping: $6,569
Order date: January 12th, 2014
Anticipated shipping date: May 2014
Expected delay: None
CoinTerra’s
January and February batches were shipped out with a delay of about a month.
Because
hardware specifications have been lower than anticipated – with a hash
rate up to 1.72 TH/s instead of the advertised 2 TH/s and a 20% power
draw increase – early customers were offered a 15% discount coupon
redeemable against their next CoinTerra hardware purchase.
Seemingly
now on track for delivery of later batches, they are working on
improving the miner’s performance and power efficiency to meet its
initial specifications.
