I've been excited about crypto and bought some finally in late 2016. I am no trader/investor by any means and like the most of the people, i worked very hard outside of crypto so that i could have some money left over to buy some bitcoin as an investment. Earlier this year i also tried my hand at trading and right away i realised it was not for me so i simply stuck to buying bits/sats of bitcoin. Although now i think buying and holding is the best strategy, but back then i thought diversification into venturing into mining would be a good option to get consistent growth. I stay in Russia and was able to connect with miners here who were doing well because of power being comparatively cheaper to other parts of the world. So I did my research about GPU/ASIC miners and also about companies who supply miners and Bitmain stood out as the top choice for high class miners. Now even though the negative comments were flying thick and fast as i dug deep in my research about mining i must admit i found it hard to believe a leading company like Bitmain offering such high class equipment could be affected by mediocre service. I also found a community of people claiming mining was still profitable. In this article i would to share my experience with Bitmain. Please bear in mind the context of actions and decisions made are from early to mid of this year.
Although mining seemed to be a feasible alternative (i'm talking about early 2017) the mining equipment was unaffordable. But as the price of bitcoin rose i realised i could simply buy with my Bitcoin.
After months of speculation & failed buying attempts on the 11th July 2017 i placed an order for 2 Bitmain Antminers L3+ through their official website. I am sure by now you must all be saying I should have simply hodl rather than get into mining :) Yes you are right i should have done that but at that time I thought i should also try mining as i was not good at trading and it seemed rewarding too. And back then there were ample of people claiming to making more than a LTC a day with Bitmain's L3+.
I wanted to give it a go and because Bitmain offered a 17 day shipping guarantee including custom clearance delivered here in Russia and for that they charged a premium shipping fee (0.095 BTC/L3+) They called this shipping method Xiang Gao.
The regular shipping method they said would be around 30 days for delivery and would not include the convenience of custom clearance and was called CDEK, i refrained from choosing the CDEK shipping method as it would add to the uncertainty of when i would receive these miners. So I took a leap of faith and placed an order parting ways with 2 BTC i accumulated over such a long period of time and putting my trust in a broken and shabby Bitmain website which kept crashing throughout the process of placing the order. Bitmain said for the September batch they would ship anywhere between 20th to 30th September and I thought in any case I would receive both my miners latest by 13th October 2017.
Another 3 weeks passed and on the 3rd of August i ordered another L3+ Miner. (Still can't believe i did that) So once again i chose the faster shipping method and was told this order would start shipping 10 October onwards.
And so i waited patiently for 2 months which felt like a lifetime (trust me) and September 20th came and i didn't hear from Bitmain, so i waited for a few days and on the 26th of September i got an automated email with a tracking number saying that my miners have been shipped. I counted 17 days and expected the first 2 miners by the 13th of October or sooner. What was really bothering me was that the tracking number given to me would not display any results on the tracking website. And so right away i raised a support ticket and reporting the problem. And got no reply. I waited another day and 2 more days and raised another ticket. No reply. I called them but no one attends the call and you end up on the IVR forever. And so i kept trying to get in touch by raising a support ticket on support.bitmain.com because that is what Bitmain wants us to do. Meanwhile I was already beginning to hear how mining does not make sense and there had been way too many batches of miners released by Bitmain within these 2 months and how selling them off is a better idea to recover the ROI as the difficulty had sky rocketed and so on. So despite it all I prepared the mining rack & told myself within a few days i would have those noisy miners on the rack and would start mining and see how it goes. On the 7th October I got another email with tracking number stating the third miner was on the way. I was pretty happy that this miner was shipped 3 days ahead of the scheduled date so i went to check if i was able to track this one. But the same result "invalid number" on the Xiang Gao tracking website (www.c2rexpress.ru) I raised another ticket for this one and started looking on the internet for information i could find on what i could do in such situations. I read a lot and without a doubt the experiences & horror stories people have shared about Bitmain leave you with an impression that it is not the classiest of the companies out there. I did my best to inform them that they were not honouring their end of the deal, i wrote to them informing them about my numerous international calls on the IVR, the tracking number not working, about the delay in response, about the delay of the miners. All the negative responses by Bitmain customers on the internet made my enthusiasm wane, meanwhile the last date (13th October) when i was suppose to receive the 2 miners passed by and i still had no one from Bitmain answer my support tickets. I felt very impatient, worried and anxious going back and forth in my mind deciding if i had made the right decision investing my BTC in mining.
On October 18th I get a response from Bitmain and this is what it says :
After waiting for all this time and of all the questions i asked this was the most generic silly reply i never would've guessed was coming, after weeks and weeks of waiting. I have sent them so many emails trying to make them understand that the tracking number seems to be wrong, the shipment appears to be delayed, etc. but each time the rep dodged my query.
The time, effort and the mental resource i have spent on explaining these Bitmain representative in itself is sufficiently equivalent to mining a bitcoin, I mean Bitmain should reward it's customers with bitcoins for just having to deal with such reps. (pun intended)
They have no idea of what you are asking and they have absolutely no idea what they are writing, the intention of avoiding your question is just evident & their substandard level of english is just appalling and such a waste of time. I am shocked that a global leader in mining technologies would have such mediocre level of customer service (website, reps etc. ) or perhaps it is intentional. It is pretty clear they do want to create a monopoly. They never really care if the customer makes an ROI, they take our money 2 months in advance (always) they are known to have the largest mining operations & perhaps they are mining with our own money on hold just to get a head-start for 2 months for each batch and then once they scoop the cream of mining profit they flood the market with miners once they are sure it is more profitable to sell than to mine. They know they are the only ones who are currently dominant in the crypto mining space and they abuse this power for personal gains only, they just use their customers which is people like us who don't run massive mining farms as a means for personal progress only.
Moving on, somehow i managed to find a phone number of the company Bitmain uses to send parcels in Russia. After giving this company the tracking numbers of my orders what i find from them is just shocking. Bitmain did not ship the 2 miners from September batch on 26th September as stated by them in the email but they actually shipped the September batch along with the October batch on the 7th of October. And it does not just end with that, they used the CDEK shipping service (cheaper shipping alternative) to send all 3 miners while i paid for the more expensive and faster shipping alternative Xiang Gao. And hence all the while the tracking number never worked on the website for Xiang Gao but all the tracking numbers work on the CDEK website.
And the problems don't end here, so CDEK is the shipping option which takes around a month and does not include speedy custom clearance and which is why i found that 2 miners of the September batch were sent with incomplete paperwork and that is the reason why they are delayed and they won't be delivered to me till Bitmain gets that sorted out with them. I am also told i cannot contact the Russian Customs Clearance on behalf of Bitmain and now imagine me trying to explain this to the Bitmain representative who still can't give me simply answers to questions like why is my tracking number invalid and also add to that the time it would take for them to understand and react to sort this out to an already late order and with the mining difficulty already sky rocketed to a level where the ROI is impossible even in 6-8 months and i don't see myself ever being able to get my 3 BTC i paid to Bitmain. And honestly i also see all over the internet that i am not the only one with such problems with Bitmain I also see Bitmain does not give a f*ck about this entire situation at all. They don't care if we will ever receive the miners on time or if we receive them at all, they don't care if we will never manage to make my ROI even in 1 year, they don't care they failed to honour their commitment for premium shipping
To resolve a problem they first need to understand our problem and then acknowledge our problem, but again honestly I don't think they care.
This is the last email email i got from them :
In my experience dealing with Bitmain is nothing short of a nightmare. Happy Halloween guys !
In hindsight, I know mining was not the best option but Bitmain made it the worst ever option for me.
P.S. Up vote me with some steem guys and help me recover my losses. Cheers !