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...
Greetings,
Just wanted to add my experience.
I sold off 60 gridseed because I decided I was tired of looking at them. I knew that the coming hardware and associated difficulty would make them completely obsolete quickly.
I was an early adopter and had paid 10k for 60 GS,, with that being said I have managed to recoup 2/3rds of that by mining with them. I sold them and all their accessories for under $1500.
I had decided that replacing them with a 27MH Falcon from GAWMINERS for $849 was an ok deal. I was OK with the idea of having one machine VS having 60 gridseed broken into 6 workers to manage. I had been using Hashra software which I really liked, so I was attracted to the zencontroller, which is why I opted to buy from GAW vs just buying directly from Zeus.
Scrypt has begun to do so badly that Ive grown tired of managing workers and always searching for the next fun thing to mine, So I was just going to throw the Falcon on Multipool with full Cryptsy automation and forget about it. (side note: Ive gone from a small gpu Op, 4x 6xR9280 rigs, to 60GS, and I have a modest 21TH BTC Op which is my real bread and butter,,, Ive been ripped Off by Pheonix Tech, Hashfast, and BFL, So im no stranger to the crap that happens to decent people that just want to run a mine)..
So I had placed my order for 1 27mh Falcon with free zencontroller for $849.00. It was declared to be delivered by July 17th, week 8 batch. Sure enough it actually arrived a day early I believe.
At this point I was already pleased and was thinking Highly of GAW. I opened the box and was again pleased with the packing of the Falcon. My Falcon had arrived in perfect condition.
I took the Falcon out and took the case off and immediately noticed that the pcie connections were Male, which meant they would have to be plugged directly into the back of a modular psu.
I went and bought the recommended PSU, the EVGA 1300 watt. After connecting the Falcon to power and firing up the unit I went to set up the "zencontroller" and quickly realized that the zencontroller image was never installed onto the SD card that was sent with the Raspberry Pi. Upon inspection I found plain old Debian installed. I had messaged Gaw about the problem, and had decided to run the Falcon on good ol CGMINER, I installed all the proper drivers and the proper version of CGMINER and had no luck getting the miner to actually accept shares,, It showed up,, but would never accept shares,, not a single hash.
So after a night of trying to figure that out I had decided to try Zeus software,, I altered the chip count,, and did all the steps correctly and again could not get the Falcon to hash. I decided to give up until I could get the zencontroller image from GAW,,,, Which I did get 3 days later. I set up the zencontroller and quickly realized that the Falcon was defective in some manner as it did show 5k MH briefly but would then go back to idle, meanwhile the pool was showing as alive but only rejected shares,, as the miner would toggle from 5k MH to IDLE,, I let this continue overnight then I checked poolside and the Falcon never showed anything,,,, Upon checking the Falcon it was simply exhibiting the same behavior. I took the case off again and began to inspect everything. Everything was connected and oddly the chips on the outside two pcb's were hot to the touch as if they were actually doing something but the chips on the inside 2 pcb's were as cold as could be. At this point it was very apparent that something was wrong with this Falcon.
So I left a ticket and waited 2 days for a response,,, I then called Gaw and spoke with Brian, he was actually helpful he helped me through the RMA process,, I started that process and waited yet another few days to get a response of approved. It was my understanding that I would receive a shipping label and that I would ship the miner back for a replacement. Now it has been another 7 days that I have been waiting for a simple shipping label,, I have decided that running a falcon now is not worth the electricity it consumes, and it certainly wont be by the time I receive the replacement. So I called them again and they very kindly stated that they would mark on my ticket that I just want store credit in exchange for my defective Falcon. So now im thinking "ok all good" And it has now been 3 days again and I have still not received confirmation of my request on my ticket or a shipping label to return the falcon. After reading this thread tonight I have dropped an email to Amber, with all the proper info,, order number, ticket number, approved RMA number,, etc etc.... In hope that may help get the process moving. At this point im almost completely turned off by scrypt mining. I dont even think the Vaultbreaker is going to be a good buy,, and with service like this I would be very weary of spending over 5k on a piece of hardware from GAW. They havent even given me an address to ship to. In my email to Amber I have offered to ship the Falcon back at my expense and am only requesting store credit in the amount of my original purchase $849.00.
At the end of the day, im just thankful its not allot of money and that im in no way depending on this hardware.
Gawminers looks good and I think they are trying to be an honest company that does honest business,, But seriously if your gonna do business like this on the scale your operating on with an advertising campaign the size of GAWMINERS then you need to have the infrastructure in place to deal with issues in a timely effective manner. Thats how honest business works. I have done a fair amount of business with Bitmain and I commend them. I have RMA'd "hashboards" Power supplies all with no issue with replacements shipped back in under a week,, and ive never paid a cent for shipping anything to them,, through a language barrier,, from China to the US easily, in under the amount of time it has taken GAWMINERS to handle this simple RMA and they are in the US! There is no excuse for this! Its plain and simple.
Again if GAWMINERS is having this much trouble handling what should be simple business,, then how could anyone expect GAW to roll out its "vaultbreaker" in a timely fashion with few issues that they can handle in an effective manner the way any business that offers a big ticket item should? The profitability of Scrypt is already very rocky,, by the time VB is released an owner will be lucky if A: They get a working product and B: if it will have any chance of ROI in the scrypt mining realm. Prove me wrong GAWMINERS. Can you back up your aggressive advertising? How about putting some infrastructure in place to deal with issues?
I been buying GAW items most of this year,. But over All I very pleased with there gear and pleased to keep buying.
1) when mining at home the SD cards needed to be flashed. not a big issue and found easy to do even for a newbie. Oh and GAW were helpful.
2) Standard postage is a little long but nothing to complain were I live.
3) I have noticed tickets not been responded as quick or at all in past week.
4) If you can get hold them on the phone, very helpful no issue they great to deal with.
5) Cloud Mining with zenminer was working well for first few days. on my 3rd day things have started to play up I dropping about $25 per day over the 3 days, even when I increasing my mining speed I hopping it's a issue on there end or I go broke in a week.. My rate of payouts have dropped massive more that the difficulty increase. I will respond once I have my tickets answered, As right now I very worried. Please answer my tickets so I keep up the happy feel i had with GAw and Zen, As what i seeing in my hosting I freaking out.
