I know, ordering another Equihash miner by the middle of October was not the smartest move.
But I already owned one A9 ZMaster and I was really impressed by the results. So I believed that I could do more than just make my money back.
I ordered directly from Innosilicon, the price for one A9 ZMaster was 3,180,
to receive it faster I chose to pay in BTC, that was an up-charge of about $220
plus shipping fee $196 - what I did not know at that time was the new import tax, DHL cashed in additional $355
Anyway, I was waiting and waiting, I did not receive it as fast as I was hoping for.
And then I got it:
Not only did it look and feel like a used or refurbished product, connecting the miner it completely under-performed by 20% dancing around 40 kSol/sec with settings to max performance.
Of course I reached out to the customer service - if you want to call it that.
To summarize their answer: "Our job is done, contact the support team"
So I did. I sent an email with my video and with screenshots to miner_support@innosilicon.com.cn
Loise responded and requested to analyze my machine via team viewer. I emailed the access code and Loise told me that the firmware on my miner was an elder version, I should upgrade.
How come a brand new produced machine have installed old firmware? Red flags waiving, right?
So I installed the new firmware, I started the miner, set it all the way to the new setting PERFORMANCE PLUS
Here is the result:
The Support Team from Innosilicon played me for a few more weeks, telling me they would have to check again, could not see anything, check again and again, until I stumbled across a thread in Bitcointalk from September, where peoplke were experiencing exactly the same problem. In fact asicminervalue.com gave a warning about those"LemonMiners" from Innosilicon.
I just did not think that a company like Innosilicon would sell these faulty devices for new - for full price.
Now it all made sense, the old firmware, the reduced performance. Confronting Sales and Support team I requested the complete exchange or at least a partial refund.
Denial was Innosilicon's answer:
Thanks for letting me know your concern. But I'm sorry that we don't have such batch. And I'm equally sorry that we don't have a refund policy at present
I really wanted to share my experience with everyone of you. I will certainly not buy from Innosilicon again