Black Arrow Prospero X-3 Delay

Below are emails from Black Arrow regarding the bitcoin mining rig I ordered.

As of May 20, 2014 Black Arrow has yet to ship my order but is now promising more extras - three 1 TH/s chips (original system would have had 2).  This 50% extra hardware capacity replaces the 25% cloud hashing compensation offered a few weeks ago.  Apparently they now have plenty of chips on hand.  It seems they are now working on circuit board assembly.

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http://www.blackarrowsoftware.com/store/bitcoin-miners-progress-update-06-august-2014.html
http://www.blackarrowsoftware.com/store/bitcoin-miners-progress-update-06-july-2014.html
https://www.blackarrowsoftware.com/store/bitcoin-miners-progress-update-27th-of-june-2014.html

https://www.blackarrowsoftware.com/store/bitcoin-miners-progress-update-13-june-2014.html
http://www.blackarrowsoftware.com/store/bitcoin-miners-progress-update--06-june-2014.html
http://www.blackarrowsoftware.com/store/bitcoin-miners-progress-update--29-may-2014.html

​Bitcoin Miners progress update - 06 August 2014

Prospero X-1

This month we have manufactured and have shipped Prospero X-1 miners. During the latest shipments they also included LCD, touchscreen and WIFI.

Because of several manufacturing issues we have not been able to clear all X1 orders yet but we're working hard to clear all queue in the following weeks.

Prospero X-2

Has been put on hold due to lack of human resources.

Prospero X-3

First units have been shipped to our resellers 3 weeks ago for testing. However, this showed that the glue holding our inductor heatsinks was not strong enough to withstand the DHL shipping and hashboards can get out of their socket during transportation. It took us about 1 week to fix these issues as a new component was required to be manufactured for our cases. Since last week we have begun shipping of X3s and now we are ramping up assembly and shipping.

Rent-A-Minion

Will start in the following few days.

Compensation

We are working on a new design in an attempt to lower the BOM and increase the compensation offered. This design is almost finished and we plan to manufacture the prototype in the following days.

The latest message to me from Black Arrow:

[#JIH-661-12423]: order # 2870
Sylvia B <sales@blackarrowsoftware.com> Tue, Nov 25, 2014 at 12:29 AM
Reply-To: sales@blackarrowsoftware.com

Dear Keith,

Why you are not yet able to mine is because of the mosfet issues stated on my previous reply.
Once all of the tests were conclusive, BA will immediately resume its assembly and dispatch process.
Your mining services will start as soon as your unit and the facility is ready. BA will do proper channels
of announcements for customers to be informed.

Your hashing contract will start on the actual date your hashing service will commence.
The compensation unit will be shipped only after all of the remaining orders have been dispatched.
Best Regards,

Sylvia
Regards,
Black Arrow Team

earlier message to me from blackarrow:

Posted on: 20 May 2014 02:13 AM 

Dear Keith,

I have checked on your order #2870 (11 Dec 2013) and you are entitled to the delay compensation, hence Batch 1 customers just like you, will enjoy with a 50% in the form of physical hardware. The 25% cloud hashing compensation previously announced, is replaced instead with 1 extra Prospero X3 without the PSU (power supply unit).

The extra hardware will not include power supply or shipping, but they will be available to purchase from our store. We will also offer a technical solution for customers who wish to use their own power supplies.

Details:

Every X3 purchased will now contain 3 * 1Thash modules, 2 modules with power supplies, one without.

Once your order is already on production queue, and it is ready for hosting, I believe that the Full details will also be announced directly to customers as well.

The extra PSU is just an order option, it is not required. Should you wish to order however, you can do so online - http://www.blackarrowsoftware.com/store/power1.html

Should you not wish to order the PSU which is already available online, we will also offer a technical solution for customers who wish to use their own power supply.

Kindly take note:

We are not allowed to ship the orders all at once. We will send you the tracking number as soon as we book your order for dispatch, you shall receive an official notification of your shipping details.

You can view the latest and complete updates/news on our website's news section by clicking this link -http://www.blackarrowsoftware.com/store/

Please feel free to contact us anytime for further questions, thank you.

Sincerely,

Sylvia

later on May 20, 2014:

Dear Keith,

Reviewing your order #2870 (11 Dec 2013) and yes, your invoice indicates hosting for 4 months, and includes your delay compensation too.
You shall receive a direct announcement from Black Arrow on the complete details soon.
Please feel free to contact us anytime for further questions, thank you.
Best Regards,

Sylvia

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http://www.blackarrowsoftware.com/store/bitcoin-miners-progress-update-22-may-2014.html

Bitcoin Miners progress update – 09 May 2014

1. The Minion has arrived.

a. Has been tested at 120Ghash. The power measured at the wall was 150Watt. This includes the 8% loss of the PSU and currently 20% on the DC/DC converter. This translates on 0.92W/Ghash at the chip level. We have asked the ASIC designers to come to our office to study how to further improve the power efficiency.

b. The expected loss on the DC/DC should be around 10%. We have identified We identified that part of the power used is lost by the inductor. A new customised inductor is scheduled to arrive in one week.

b. We decided to write a software application which will produce a full report to include details on voltage, speed and efficiency at all ranges. Estimated time to completion is up to 3 weeks but this additional feature will not affect the shipping schedule.

c. We believe that further overclocking is available, further tests are scheduled after we complete the assembly of the 200A board tomorrow.

2. All Minion orders have been shipped today.

3. Most of the X3 and X1 PSUs have been delivered are now in stock.

4. The majority of the heatsinks have been manufactured.

5. The first lot of X3 cases has been received. (Aluminium alloy)

6. The control board assembly has just been completed. This is behind schedule and we are not confident at this stage that we can write the LCD driver in useful time for first shipments. If this is the case we will release firmware updates to enable the LCD functionality.

7. The first batch of LCDs was delayed 1 day and is now due to arrive tomorrow.

8. Unfortunately we have been told that the X1 case will not be delivered in time. If the X1 miners will not be ready at the same time with our X3 miners we made a contingency plan to start hashing with our own X3 units for our X1 customers affected by this delay. Bitcoins mined on their behalf will be transferred accordingly. Full details will be announced directly to customers, therefore please do not flood our customer support with tickets regarding on how to receive Bitcoins.

9. Our main PCB assembly factory failed to initiate the assembly 2 days ago as scheduled. We were forced to switch the assembly production with another local factory which is now scheduled to start the assembly tomorrow.

10. X3s are scheduled to start shipping early next week.

the second latest message from Black Arrow:

Posted on: 23 April 2014 11:19 PM 

Dear Keith,

As the delivery date approaches we have more accurate dates regarding shipping. The schedule as it looks at the moment is:

-5th of May Amkor send out the Minion ASICs

-6th of May ASICs arrive at assembly factory

-7th of May Prospero units start to be assembled and tested

-8th of May shipping starts

Your order sits at the end of the Batch 1 queue. As an estimation you are looking at your order to be delivered around 15th of May.

Knowing the above please let us know if you would like to continue with your order or to be issued a refund. Please note that if you choose a refund we will not reinstate your order if you change your mind. You will have to place a new order.

Regards,

Black Arrow Team

Keith's response May 1, 2014:

OK.   proceed with the order.   Please note:  my order includes a contract that Black Arrow will run the mining for me for 4 months.  So I expect you could begin the mining on May 8th.  Is that correct?

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the first:

Black Arrow LTD: Order #2870 Prospero X-1 and Prospero X-3 delivery delays

Black Arrow LTD                                                                                                        Jan 29 (2014)

Dear Keith,

We have to inform you that our schedule to manufacture and assemble the system has been disrupted and we are unable to make delivery of the Batch 1 Minion ASIC chip on the initial scheduled date (end of February). We are now expecting to dispatch all Batch 1 orders on 1st of May 2014.

Please be re-assured we are confident that we have tried our best to accomplish our initial ambitious targets. However, we came to the conclusion that it is in the best interest of our customers to delay shipping in order to ensure that the product provides the best-possible user experience.

Without this delay we would have achieved 1.5W/Ghash which would have meant that our chip would not have been competitive at all.

We have now finalized the design process using our newly improved code and will start manufacturing the chip (tape out) in the next few days.

We are happy to announce that Black Arrow Software’s products remain on target for being the best in their class for power consumption. We confirm that our latest improved design has the following technical specifications:

·0.75w/Ghash on TT corner @ 25C which is expected to run at 120Ghash/sec.

·SS corner will be 0.6w/ghash and will run at 100Ghash.

·A further underclocking and underpower should be possible and should yield 80Ghash @ 0.5W/ghash. However, please note that this is not guaranteed to work stable.

Please note, that a further push for improvement in the optimization process would have guaranteed further delays for at least 1-2 months.

It is no secret to us that the Bitcoin mining process is proving to be more and more difficult every day. To compensate our loyal customer for the unforeseen delay of in delivering our miners for batch 1, we are happy to offer free extra hashing power which consists of 25% of your purchased hashing power from our Rent-Some-Minions cloud program for 4 months.

The account for the tape-out has been settled in full and we are confident that the delivery will be completed shortly.

We are taking all the necessary measures and positive actions to expedite delivery to you as soon possible and we are confident that we have the resources to be successful.

Please note:

·We estimate that the delivery for the Batch1 will coincide with the delivery of the Batch2

·The delivery of Batch2 remains unchanged

·The one-off offer presented above is open to the customers who placed orders for Batch1

Sincerely,

The Black Arrow Software Team

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from Keith                                                                                                                   Jan 30 (2014)

This is unacceptable.  I've just computed the mining payout schedule for my system and mining contract (with the inclusion of the compensentory 25% computing power) and the result is that I will receive less than half of my $7782.75 investment.

I want you to cancel my order and return to me my $7782.75

    Keith

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[#UVH-479-35671]: Re: Black Arrow LTD: Order #2870 Prospero X-1 and Prospero X-3 delivery delays

Support Black Arrow support@blackarrowsoftware.com                                       Feb (2014)

to me

Dear customer,

We are sorry to hear that you do not wish to continue with your order. As your order has already been put in production it is difficult for us to issue you with a refund. However, we do not want to make anyone unhappy therefore we will do our best to refund your money by moving your order to a new customer.

We trust that Bitcoin mining will be profitable in May as well or all the Bitcoin mining will stop. The online profitability calculators are wrong just because nobody in the right mind will keep doubling the hashrate of the network every month if they are loosing money. The hashrate of the network will keep growing only if the bitcoin value goes up again. For this reason and because we provide the lowest prices possible we do not think that our miners will have a negative return of investment. However, we understand that you might not agree with us and we'll offer you the refund if you decide to go ahead with it.

We understand that the 25% extra mining power is not something that will consider as right compensation for the delay. We are looking into providing an alternative solution, please bare with us for few days until we review what else we can offer.

If you wish to proceed with the refund, please understand and agree with the following:

1. A refund request is final. We will not accept to reinstante your order if you change your mind later.

2. As per agreed terms and conditions of sale, we are not obliged to issue you with a refund and this delay is acceptable. However, we are doing our best to keep everyone happy and we'll issue the refund.

3. To cover time used to refund this order, for each transfer needed to be made, we will charge 50 USD and all 3rd party fees. In some cases, we might also need to charge a further 30 USD handling fee for each incorrect or incomplete transfer information provided by the customer.

If you have paid in fiat (USD/EUR/GBP etc) please note that we cannot refund you right now. Please provide us with your complete bank details and we will be doing our best to send your money back within 1 month.

BTC refunds are available sooner. Please let us know your BTC address where to issue the refund to.

Please let us know if you wish to continue with this refund.

Ticket Details

Department: Refunds

Type: Issue

Status: In Progress

Priority: Normal

Helpdesk: https://www.blackarrowsoftware.com/support/index.php?

________________________________________________

from Keith                                                                                     Feb (2014)

to support

yes, I do want to continue with the refund.   My bitcoin address is 1M7bRKkqKSJ2BPeXuP2KVsp4qUSvWNPVDv

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Posted on: 17 February 2014 05:45 AM

Dear Customer,

Your refund has been added to a refund queue and will be processed as soon as possible, please note refund can take up to a month if we don't currently have funds to fulfill your request.
The refund can be done only in original currency it was paid, if your order was paid by bank transfer, it will be returned in original currency paid.
Please bear with us as the processing will take some time.
You shall receive an email confirmation once the process has been completed.

Appreciate your kind understanding, thank you.

Best regards,
Black Arrow Team

Regards,
Black Arrow Team

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