{ "meta": { "title": "D-Central — ASIC Miner Warranty & RMA Matrix", "description": "Warranty term, what starts the clock, coverage, exact void clauses, RMA process, freight responsibility and North American service reality for 12 ASIC miner manufacturers, from primary sources.", "generated": "2026-07-20T17:09:57+00:00", "as_of": "2026-07-20", "version": "1.0", "license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/", "license_name": "CC BY 4.0", "source": "https://d-central.tech/asic-warranty-rma-matrix/", "method": "Each row was researched from the manufacturer's own primary documents — warranty pages, sales and purchase agreements, after-sales maintenance policies, support portals — and then handed to an independent adversarial fact-checker instructed to assume it was wrong. Reseller statements were used only where clearly labelled as the reseller's own terms. Values that are not published are recorded as \"unverified\" rather than inferred from what is typical for the industry.", "provenance": "Manufacturer primary documentation, retrieved and read directly. D-Central is an independent repair shop; the research brief explicitly required reporting warranties accurately rather than unfavourably, and findings that cut against our commercial interest are published.", "disclaimer": "Warranty terms change without notice, vary by sales contract, and are frequently region-specific. This is a research reference, not legal advice, and it does not describe your specific purchase agreement. Confirm with your seller and your own paperwork before relying on any figure. Canadian and other consumer-protection statutes may grant rights beyond what a manufacturer policy states." }, "vendors": [ { "name": "Bitmain (Antminer — S19 series and later, incl. S21 line)", "warranty_period": "365 days for \"BTC Miner (S19 and later models)\". Bitmain's warranty table sets different terms for parts bought separately: control board 180 days, APW-series power supplies 365 days, spare parts (fans, etc.) NO warranty, EOS models NO warranty. Terms are \"subject to the sales contract,\" so a bulk or negotiated order can differ. Out-of-warranty paid repairs carry a 15-day warranty on the repair. Repaired mixed-board units also get only 15 days (Policy 4.4.3). An optional extended warranty exists for the S21 family only (S21, S21+, S21 Pro, S21 XP, S21 Hyd, S21e Hyd, S21+ Hyd, S21 XP Hyd, S21e XP Hyd, S21 XP+ Hyd, S21 Imm, S21 XP Imm, U3S21EXPH), sold in One-Quarter (90-day) blocks priced in BTC/T, capped so the total warranty never exceeds two years from the shipment date. It is not an always-on checkout option: it is offered in campaign windows through a sales manager with 100% upfront payment, requires more than 7 days of warranty still remaining, and the last published window closed 2026-06-30.", "starts_from": "Shipment/dispatch, NOT delivery. Article 223400048: \"The product warranty period is calculated from the official sales shipment date.\" Policy 1.4: the warranty period starts \"from the date of dispatch (as such date is indicated on this website),\" with per-product periods listed on the sales page. Replacement units inherit only the ORIGINAL unit's remaining warranty, still measured from the original dispatch date (Policy 1.7). Opening a ticket does not stop the clock — Policy 4.1.2: \"we will determine whether the Product is within the warranty period based on the actual arrival date.\"", "coverage": "Free repair or replacement of a defective Antminer within the period — hashboards, control board and PSU are covered as parts of a complete machine (note that a control board bought as a standalone part carries only 180 days, and fans and other spare parts carry none). Bitmain chooses the remedy at its sole discretion: repair, part replacement, whole-unit replacement, or \"repair through cannibalization\" (Policy 1.3). Replacement units \"may not be a new Product but in good working condition,\" and must be the same type/specification or the same brand at no lower hashrate (1.7). Defective parts that are replaced are not returned to you (3.6), and once the unit is opened you cannot demand it back unrepaired except in Non-maintenance or mixed-board cases (3.5). NOT covered at all (Policy 4.2.1 \"Non-maintenance\" — Bitmain refuses the job entirely, free or paid): product lost before arrival; damage from third-party over-frequency software; non-Antminer or non-official product; cosmetic damage not affecting operation; fraud, including forged or replaced barcodes/SNs, and any product lacking its original barcode; models past the EOS notification period; units determined \"scrapped\" (operation beyond specified parameters, deleted records, flashing, incomplete logs, altered parameters; 10 or more repeated restarts after a failure; failure to upgrade firmware after notification; repeated overheating; limescale or water-quality blockage; dust-blocked heatsinks; large-scale hashboard corrosion or oxidation; expired warranty with no repair possible); and products previously repaired through third-party cannibalization. Bitmain also disclaims implied warranties of merchantability and fitness (8.3) and does not guarantee a repair will succeed (8.2). Section 8.4 states \"AS A CONSUMER, YOU MAY HAVE CERTAIN ADDITIONAL RIGHTS\" while simultaneously refusing liability beyond the remedies in the policy — whether Canadian provincial consumer-protection warranties override that disclaimer is a legal question the policy itself does not settle.", "void_triggers": "Policy 4.3.1(2) lists the conditions that void warranty cover and convert the job to a paid repair. Third-party firmware and seal removal are genuinely in Bitmain's own text — this is not folklore: (n) \"Original warranty stickers ('fragile' labels) altered, defaced or removed\" — the seal is explicitly named; (o) original barcode or SN label altered, defaced or removed; (h) disassembly or alteration of the product by anyone other than Bitmain or its authorized service providers — opening the chassis yourself or using an independent shop voids it; (j) unauthorized firmware or hardware changes using any third party's products; (k) damage from unauthorized firmware or drivers, expressly including firmware enabling an \"over-frequency setting\" — the third-party-firmware and overclocking trigger in one clause; (l) incompatibility arising from unauthorized firmware, drivers or hardware alterations; (f) immersion in liquid or excessively harsh operating environments causing moisture, oxidation, corrosion or short circuit — immersion conversion voids it; (i) use of unauthorized power supplies, parts or units; (p) \"Mixed boards\" — any hashboard, control board or PSU that is not an original part of that product; (a) operating outside specified temperature/humidity/altitude or improper installation, use or maintenance; (b) on water-cooled miners, non-compliant operating temperature or water quality; (c) dropping, breakage, accident, theft, misuse, abuse, negligence or improper operation; (d) overvoltage, undervoltage, electrical leakage, moisture, fire, corrosive environment, surge, extreme temperature, lightning or transportation; (e) crushed, broken, burnt or dropped through improper operation; (g) natural disasters (flood, lightning, fire, earthquake, tsunami); (m) loss of operation logs through improper use; (q) running a drainage-equipped model without the drainage assembly; (r) daily wear and tear; and the catch-all (s) any reason that prevents Bitmain from diagnosing warranty status. Separately, Policy 3.3: shipping the unit in without moisture-proof packaging and cushioning \"may void the warranty\" on its own. Note that damage caused by third-party over-frequency software is worse than a void — under 4.2.1(2) Bitmain refuses the job outright rather than quoting it as a paid repair.", "rma_process": "Self-service ticket, no phone RMA. (1) Create a Repair Ticket at service.bitmain.com/support (login required). (2) Policy 2.4: upload correct tracking information and dispatch the product within 7 days; Bitmain's warranty article describes this as the ticket expiring after 7 days. (3) The machine must ARRIVE at the service location you selected within 15 days of ticket creation; if it is late, warranty status is judged on the actual arrival date, not the ticket date (2.4, 4.1.2). Creating a ticket does not freeze the clock. (4) Ship freight-PREPAID to the designated address — Policy 6.4: if you ship freight collect or to a non-designated address, Bitmain will be unable to receive it. Sea freight is prohibited outright (3.1) because the machines are susceptible to moisture damage. (5) Bitmain may refuse the parcel if there is no valid Repair Ticket, freight is unpaid, or packaging is severely damaged (3.4). (6) Once opened they will repair it — you cannot demand it back unrepaired except for Non-maintenance or mixed-board cases (3.5). Ownership of the shipped-in unit transfers to Bitmain on arrival at the service location where a replacement is issued (3.7). FREIGHT: you pay inbound, always, in or out of warranty (3.1, 4.1.1, 6.3). Bitmain pays return freight on in-warranty repairs, but NOT for Non-maintenance, mixed-board or scrapped units, which you pay to get back (6.3). Local tariffs, taxes and related expenses on the return are yours (6.3), and air return on request costs extra (6.2). DOA (within 30 calendar days of dispatch, Policy 1.5) and Second DOA (within 15 calendar days of a repaired or replacement unit's dispatch, 1.6) qualify for an inbound transportation subsidy — but issued as COUPONS, not cash, and you bear the insurance/declared-value portion (6.6). PAID repairs: fee estimate, then payment in US dollars by bank transfer within 3 calendar days, with a payment screenshot showing the payer's name and the Repair Ticket ID uploaded to the site (5.2). Storage fees begin on day 31 after the estimate at USD 1.50/day for mining products (USD 0.75/day for others); at 95 days the machine is deemed abandoned and may be sold to cover fees (5.3, 5.4). The same day-31 storage clock and a 60-day abandonment rule apply if a completed unit cannot be delivered back to you (6.1). No published turnaround SLA.", "regional_reality": "This is the honest good-news case and should not be spun otherwise: you do NOT have to ship an Antminer to Asia. Bitmain's own repair-site directory lists a Canadian centre — Vancouver Service Center, 11980 Hammersmith Way Unit 2125, Richmond BC V7A 0A4, Mon–Sat 9:00–18:00 — plus nine in the USA (Newark DE, Nashua NH, Chicago/Bensenville IL, Hickory NC, Paris TN, Oklahoma City OK, Dallas/Farmers Branch TX, Mesquite TX, Bismarck ND), alongside sites in the Netherlands, Kazakhstan, UAE, Hong Kong, Paraguay and Ethiopia. A Canadian owner ships domestically to Richmond BC. That is a materially better service footprint than most ASIC vendors. The catches are real but different from the usual ones: (1) Policy 8.6 states the global repair centres are third-party companies authorized by Bitmain and that anything they tell you \"cannot represent the position of BITMAIN\" — and several listings show consumer-grade contacts (the Vancouver contact email is a qq.com address; several US sites list gmail/yeah.net addresses and flag their phone as logistics-only). (2) Policy 16.2: each site has a specific range of services and you must contact customer service in advance to be routed — Vancouver will not necessarily handle every model or repair type, and the scopes are not published in the directory. (3) If you are routed to a US centre, Policy 7.8 makes YOU responsible for guaranteeing the machine lawfully entered that country, and 6.3 puts return-leg tariffs and taxes on you — a live cost given current CA/US trade friction. (4) Dispute forum is Singapore: Singapore law governs and disputes go to SIAC arbitration under the UNCITRAL Rules, seated in Singapore, single arbitrator, in English, final and binding (14.1–14.2). For a one-machine denial that is a practical dead end regardless of how close the depot is.", "consumer_note": "On any used or reseller unit, get the original Bitmain dispatch date in writing before you pay, because the 365 days runs from Bitmain's shipment date and not from the day you bought it: a machine that sat in a distributor's warehouse for four months arrives with roughly eight months of cover, not twelve. If a unit is still in warranty, send it to Bitmain rather than to us — a free factory repair beats a paid independent one, and the moment we open the case or touch the fragile label the remaining warranty is gone. Bring it to an independent shop when the warranty has expired, when it is already void (opened, reflashed, immersion-converted, mixed boards), when the model is EOS, or when Bitmain has declared it scrapped and wants freight from you just to send the corpse back.", "confidence": "high", "sources": [ "https://service.bitmain.com/support/policy (After-Sales Maintenance Policy; source document served at https://assets-product.bitmain.com.cn/shop-product-s3/clause/ticketsRulesEn.html — sections 1.3–1.7, 2.4, 3.1–3.7, 4.1–4.4.3, 5.2–5.4, 6.1–6.6, 7.8, 8.2–8.6, 14.1–14.3, 16.2 read verbatim)", "https://support.bitmain.com/hc/en-us/articles/223400048-Product-Warranty (warranty period table: BTC Miner S19+ 365 days, control board 180 days, APW PSU 365 days, spare parts and EOS models none; retrieved via https://support.bitmain.com/api/v2/help_center/en-us/articles/223400048.json)", "https://support.bitmain.com/hc/en-us/articles/17960350462873-After-sales-extended-warranty-service (S21-family eligibility list, 90-day quarters, BTC/T pricing, two-year cap from shipment; retrieved via the help_center API)", "https://support.bitmain.com/hc/en-us/articles/8180309996697-About-after-sales-maintenance-and-repair-price (in-warranty repair free, return freight borne by Bitmain, scrap return freight borne by customer)", "https://shop-repair.bitmain.com/api/repairSite/getListAll (official service-centre directory API, retrieved 2026-07-20 — Vancouver BC plus nine US sites)" ], "period_short": "365 days", "clock_short": "Shipment", "slug": "bitmain-miner" }, { "confidence": "high", "name": "Bitmain (APW Series PSUs, control boards, and spare parts)", "warranty_period": "APW Series power supplies: 365 days — the same length as a 19-series miner, not shorter. Separately purchased control board: 180 days. Loose spares — \"Parts（Fan\\Other components, etc.）\" — carry \"Warranty not available\", i.e. explicitly none. Two independent Bitmain documents state the same table: the Product Warranty page and the Repair Guide that Policy 1.4 designates as the authority on periods. Context for older fleets: the Repair Guide rates ANTMINER S9-and-later at 180 days and only the 19 series at 365, so a PSU can outlive the pre-19-series miner it shipped with. APW3/APW3+/APW3++ (end of service July 7, 2020) and APW8 (March 31, 2021) are past EOS and get no service at all, free or paid.", "starts_from": "Date of dispatch. Policy 1.4 defines the Warranty Period as \"starting from the date of dispatch (as such date is indicated on this website)\", and 1.2 defines Products to include power supply units, so the same clock governs PSUs. The Product Warranty page words it as \"calculated from the official sales shipment date\"; the Repair Guide says \"delivery date of order\", but Policy 16.1 makes the Policy prevail over the Repair Guide where they conflict. What matters in practice is the test in 4.1.2: the repair-ticket creation date must fall inside the warranty period — except that if the unit misses the 15-day arrival window, Bitmain judges warranty status by the actual arrival date instead.", "coverage": "A PSU or control board bought inside a machine is covered as a component of that machine's warranty. Bought separately, an APW PSU carries its own 365 days and a control board 180, tracked by that part's own serial — Policy 2.3 requires SNs for the whole product, control board, power supply unit and hash board when opening a ticket, and inaccurate or incomplete information entitles Bitmain to refuse service. Loose fans and components carry nothing. A replacement part or unit inherits only the remaining warranty of the original, counted from the original's dispatch date (1.7). A DOA claim is a request made within 30 days of dispatch (1.5) and earns coupon compensation for inbound freight against proof of payment; a Second DOA is within 15 days of the repaired unit's dispatch (1.6). Any out-of-warranty or paid repair carries a 15-day warranty afterwards. Article 4.3.1(4) lets Bitmain bill you for chips: where chips are missing from a hash board, you bear the cost of the replacements if the board is repairable.", "void_triggers": "Third-party firmware genuinely voids it — this is vendor text, not folklore. Article 4.3.1(2) drops you to paid service for \"(j) Unauthorized changes on firmware or hardware using any third party's product(s)\", \"(k) Product damage or failure caused by the use of unauthorized firmware or drivers, including but not limited to unauthorized firmware that enables users to apply an over-frequency setting\", and (l) incompatibility arising from unauthorized firmware, drivers or hardware alteration. Worse, Article 4.2.1(2) puts damage \"due to the use of third-party over-frequency software\" under Non-maintenance — Bitmain will not repair it at any price — and 4.2.1(7)(c) treats failure to upgrade to the latest firmware after notification as grounds to declare the unit scrapped. Seal removal is equally real: 4.3.1(2)(n) covers \"Original warranty stickers (\"fragile\" labels) altered, defaced or removed\", (o) covers original barcode or SN labels altered, defaced or removed, and (h) covers \"Disassembly or alteration of Product by anyone other than us or our authorized service providers\". Bitmain's own warranty-lookup tool warns that mixed board, scrapped and missing-board states void warranty. Two more matter especially for parts: (p) \"Mixed boards: any or all of the hash boards, control boards, or power supply units are not the original parts of such Product, or anything preventing us from determining whether these parts are original\"; and (i) damage or failure \"caused by use of power supplies, parts or units which are neither supplied by us or our authorized providers\" — note (i) requires the third-party PSU to have caused the damage, it is not automatic. Article 4.2.1(5) is the absolute one: \"Products and parts that do not have the original barcodes will not be eligible for Maintenance.\" Swapping a PSU or control board between two machines can therefore compromise both.", "rma_process": "Same ticket flow as the miner: create a Repair Ticket, upload tracking and dispatch within 7 days, and ensure arrival at your chosen service location within 15 days of ticket creation (2.4, 4.1.2). A ticket is only valid 7 days, so do not open one merely to freeze a warranty date. Inbound freight is yours and must be prepaid — the Repair Guide states that freight payable at destination will be rejected — and Article 3.1 forbids sea freight outright because ANTMINERs are moisture-sensitive. Return freight is more generous than commonly assumed: Article 4.1.1 says that \"after the repair is completed, we will cover the cost of shipping the product back to you\", which the Repair Guide confirms applies to out-of-warranty paid repairs too, not only valid warranty claims. You pay return freight only in the two exception cases — a Non-maintenance determination under 4.2.2, or declining a quoted mixed-board repair under 4.4.2. Turnaround is stated: generally within three working days of the system confirming receipt for in-warranty units, or within three working days of your payment voucher being uploaded for paid repairs, extended for bulk or whole-machine work. Paid repairs settle by USD bank transfer with the voucher uploaded to the ticket. Mixed-board units fall under 4.4: Bitmain has \"sole discretion in determining whether your Products belong to mixed board Products\", then offers either a quoted paid repair or return-as-is at your freight cost, and any repaired mixed-board unit carries only a 15-day warranty.", "regional_reality": "Eighteen official repair centres worldwide as of the September 2025 roster, nine of them in the US (NH, DE, two in TX, IL, NC, AR, ND, OKC). Canadian owners use CA-VAN in Richmond, BC, which accepts shipments from the USA and Canada only and returns anything from outside that zone to the sender. Loose parts are far lighter than a 15 kg miner, so freight economics beat whole-unit RMAs. But Policy 16.2 warns that \"Each of our worldwide repair sites has a specific range of services\", and that bites here specifically: the CN-HN hub — the main site that accepts all overseas packages — is flagged \"can not repair the power supply alone\", and USA-TX2 is currently the only site handling Z15 and hydro units. Confirm with Bitmain customer service that your chosen depot actually does board- or PSU-level work before shipping, and ship DDP with customs fees prepaid, since clearance costs inbound are yours.", "consumer_note": "Flashing third-party firmware really does forfeit your Bitmain warranty, and over-frequency software damage is worse than a paid repair — it is on the no-service-at-any-price list, so do that only on units you have written off warranty-wise. Never break the fragile seal, peel a barcode, or mix boards and PSUs between machines to keep a fleet alive: Bitmain only has to be unable to confirm a part is original to drop you to paid service. Keep each PSU with the miner it shipped with. Loose fans and components carry no warranty at all, so buy those on price, not brand. The offsetting good news is that return shipping is on Bitmain after any completed repair, including one you paid for.", "sources": [ "https://assets-product.bitmain.com.cn/shop-product-s3/clause/ticketsRulesEn.html — After-Sales Maintenance Policy, updated Oct. 20, 2025; the underlying document rendered at https://service.bitmain.com/support/policy (Articles 1.2, 1.4, 1.5-1.7, 2.3, 2.4, 3.1, 4.1.1, 4.1.2, 4.2.1, 4.2.2, 4.3.1, 4.4, 16.1, 16.2)", "https://assets-product.bitmain.com.cn/shop-product-s3/clause/repairGuideEn.html — Repair Guide, the document Policy 1.4 designates for warranty periods; warranty table (Control Board 180 days, APW series PSU 365 days, Parts/Fan 'Warranty not available'), prepaid-freight requirement, 3-working-day return target, 15-day post-paid-repair warranty", "https://support.bitmain.com/hc/en-us/articles/223400048-Product-Warranty — warranty table listing APW Series Power Supplies 365 days, Control board 180 days, 'Sending spares only (such as fans)' No warranty; 7-day ticket validity; 15-day warranty after paid repair", "https://support.bitmain.com/hc/en-us/articles/18365915458713-ANTMINER-End-of-Service-EOS-Notification — APW3 series (APW3/APW3+/APW3++) EOS July 7, 2020; APW8 EOS March 31, 2021; 17 series EOS May 30, 2023", "https://support.bitmain.com/hc/en-us/articles/220138027-Overseas-Repair-Centers-Delivery-Addresses-Official — updated Sept. 18, 2025; 18-site roster, CA-VAN address in Richmond BC, CN-HN 'can not repair the power supply alone', USA-TX2 sole Z15/hydro site" ], "period_short": "PSU 365 d · control board 180 d · spares none", "clock_short": "Dispatch", "slug": "bitmain-parts" }, { "name": "Bitmain (EOS / end-of-service legacy models — no warranty, no paid repair)", "warranty_period": "None. Bitmain's Product Warranty page lists \"EOS Models\" explicitly under \"No warranty,\" and After-Sales Maintenance Policy Art. 4.5 removes paid service as well: once the EOS notification period expires Bitmain \"shall no longer provide the After-Sales Maintenance Service of that Product model either for free or for charge.\" The knowledge-base article on non-repairable products states it plainly: \"We will not repair Items which already the end of service.\" For contrast, still-supported hardware carries 365 days (19-series and later miners, APW-series PSUs) or 180 days (separately purchased control boards, and new miners other than the 19 series), per Art. 1.4 counted from date of dispatch.", "starts_from": "Not applicable — no purchase date matters. The controlling date is the published EOS deadline for the model. Per Bitmain's current EOS/Out-of-Service Product Types table (last updated Jan. 29, 2026): A3, B3, D3, DR3, G1, G2, L3, L3++, L5, R1, R3, R4, S1, S3, S5, S7, S9, S9i, S9j, S11, T9+, T11, V9, X3, Z9, Z9 Mini — May 9, 2020 (Bitmain's separate EOS Notification bulletin dates this same group May 10, 2020 and additionally lists DR5). E3 — June 9, 2020. APW3 series incl. APW3/APW3+/APW3++ — July 7, 2020. D5, T9, L3+ — Sept 1, 2020. Z11, Z11e, Z11j, S9 Hydro — Nov 15, 2020. S15, T15, S9k, S9 SE, B7, K5, APW5 — March 1, 2021. APW8 — March 31, 2021. 17 Series (S17, S17 Pro, S17+, S17e, T17, T17+, T17e) — May 30, 2023. APW8 and APW9+ — Jan 29, 2026. Every date above has now passed, so all of these models are out of service today.", "coverage": "Nothing. Policy Art. 4.2.1(6) lists \"A notification of EOS of a certain Product model has been issued and the period of notification has expired\" as a Non-maintenance circumstance, and Art. 4.5 confirms service ends for free and for charge alike and that \"You will not be able to create a Repair Ticket on this website from the expiration of the EOS notification period.\" Art. 8.5 further exempts Bitmain from any liability arising from malfunction of an EOS model \"caused by all and any reasons.\" Bitmain still offers product consultation, customer service and knowledge-base FAQs for these models, but no hardware service of any kind.", "void_triggers": "Moot on an EOS machine — there is nothing left to void. This cuts in the owner's favour: because Bitmain will never service these units again, the fragile-label seal, third-party firmware and immersion restrictions carry no remaining warranty cost. An S9, S17, Z11, S15 or APW3 can be opened, reflashed, tuned, immersion-converted or board-swapped with no warranty consequence, because there is no warranty and no paid-repair path left to lose. Worth knowing for machines that are NOT yet EOS, because the folklore overstates the penalty: under Art. 4.3.1(2) the classic triggers — original warranty stickers (\"fragile\" labels) altered, defaced or removed (n); barcode/SN label altered or removed (o); disassembly or alteration by anyone other than Bitmain or an authorized provider (h); unauthorized firmware or hardware changes (j, k, l); mixed boards (p); immersion in liquid or corrosion damage (f) — void the free warranty but move the unit into \"Maintenance with Charges,\" meaning Bitmain will still repair it for a fee. Only the Art. 4.2 circumstances mean no repair at all: scrap condition, EOS, fraud or removed original barcodes, damage caused by third-party over-frequency software, non-Bitmain products, and units previously repaired by third-party cannibalization.", "rma_process": "There is none. The ticket system blocks EOS models per Art. 4.5, and a repair ticket is the mandatory entry point under Art. 2.1. Do not ship an EOS miner to a Bitmain service centre. Under Art. 4.2.2 a Non-maintenance product \"will be returned at your own cost\" and you must pay return freight plus any storage fee before they release it. The exposure is worse than a single bill: Art. 5.4 starts storage fees on the 31st day after the parcel is accepted at USD 1.50/day for mining products (USD 0.75/day for others), and if fees remain unpaid for 95 days Bitmain will deem the product abandoned and may dispose of it, including selling it at private or public sale to cover the outstanding amount. Art. 3.4 also lets them refuse the parcel outright where no valid repair ticket exists.", "regional_reality": "Bitmain's North American intake is reasonable for supported hardware — the Canadian site CA-VAN (YIMENG ELECTRONICS, 11980 Hammersmith Way Unit 2125, Richmond, BC V7A 0A4) accepts USA and Canada shipments, and several US sites including USA-CHI, USA-NC and USA-TNSE2 also take Canadian packages, so Canadians generally do not have to ship to Asia. None of that applies to EOS models: no site, however close, will accept them. Note also that these are third-party authorized centres, not Bitmain-operated — Art. 8.6 states the global after-sales repair centre is \"a third-party company authorized by BITMAIN\" whose statements cannot represent Bitmain's position. For Canadian owners the EOS gap bites hardest on the used market, where S9s, S17s, S15s, Z11s, APW3s and now APW9+ units still trade actively and are all permanently out of factory service. Independent repair shops are the only option.", "consumer_note": "Check the current EOS list before buying any used Antminer or PSU — the list grows, and APW9+ was added January 29, 2026, so a PSU that was serviceable last year may not be now. An EOS unit has zero factory support at any price, so assume you or an independent shop will do every repair for the rest of its life and price it accordingly, budgeting for spare hashboards. That is not automatically a bad buy — the machines are cheap for exactly this reason — and nothing on an EOS unit is warranty-protected any more, so tuning, custom firmware and immersion conversion cost you nothing you had not already lost. Never ship one to a Bitmain centre on spec: they can refuse it, charge you return freight and storage, and ultimately sell it if the bill goes unpaid.", "confidence": "high", "sources": [ "https://assets-product.bitmain.com.cn/shop-product-s3/clause/ticketsRulesEn.html — BITMAIN After-Sales Maintenance Policy, full text, updated Oct. 20, 2025 (this is the document rendered at https://service.bitmain.com/support/policy, which is a client-side shell); Arts. 1.4, 2.1, 3.4, 4.2.1(6), 4.2.2, 4.3.1(2), 4.5, 5.4, 8.5, 8.6", "https://support.bitmain.com/hc/en-us/articles/900000468703 — End of Service (EOS) / Out of Service Product Types, updated Jan. 29, 2026 (authoritative model/date table, incl. APW9+)", "https://support.bitmain.com/hc/en-us/articles/18365915458713-ANTMINER-End-of-Service-EOS-Notification — ANTMINER End of Service (EOS) Notification, created May 10, 2023, updated Apr. 29, 2024", "https://support.bitmain.com/hc/en-us/articles/223400048-Product-Warranty — Product Warranty (lists EOS Models as \"No warranty\"; 365/180-day terms from official sales shipment date), updated Oct. 11, 2024", "https://support.bitmain.com/hc/en-us/articles/4607901865625 — Which products cannot be repaired by the BITMAIN repair centers? (\"We will not repair Items which already the end of service\"), updated Aug. 23, 2024", "https://support.bitmain.com/hc/en-us/articles/220138027 — Overseas Repair Centers Delivery Addresses (Authorized), incl. CA-VAN Richmond BC, updated June 15, 2026", "https://support.bitmain.com/hc/en-us/articles/4604672292889-Miner-Warranty-Check — Miner Warranty Check (180-day non-19-series vs 365-day terms, from official dispatch date), updated July 3, 2026" ], "period_short": "None — and no paid repair either", "clock_short": "Not applicable", "slug": "bitmain-eos" }, { "name": "MicroBT (Whatsminer)", "warranty_period": "unverified — MicroBT publishes NO global duration figure on any public endpoint. Five official sources were checked (After-sales Maintenance Clause, Repair Guide, repair-process page, support page, repair FAQ) and none state a number of days, months or years. The Repair Guide says only: \"The warranty period of WhatsMiner is indicated in the product > commodity > after-sale policy, you can also click support to check.\" The authoritative answer is per-serial-number: the official Warranty Check tool at whatsminer.com/src/views/support.html returns a warranty EXPIRY DATE for a given SN. Do not assume a number for any Whatsminer model — look up the SN. Separately sourced: the PSU is inside the policy's scope (Item 1.2 defines the covered products as mining machine, power supply and after-sale maintenance service), but hashboards and chips that are broken or burnt are excluded from free repair (6.1.13) and scrapped boards are refused outright (6.2).", "starts_from": "Factory dispatch date — and the end of the window is tested on ARRIVAL at the service centre, not on the date you report the fault. Repair Guide 4.1: \"The difference between the date when the miner leaves the factory and the date when the repairing parts are received at the service center is within the warranty period, and if it exceeds the warranty period, it will be considered as an exception.\" Practical effect: international transit time is consumed out of your own warranty. A unit that is in-warranty the day it fails can be out-of-warranty by the time it lands in Asia.", "coverage": "In warranty (Item 5.1): free repair AND MicroBT pays the return shipping back to you. Covered scope is the machine and power supply as defined in Item 1.2. NOT covered even inside the window: broken, crushed or burnt hashboards or chips (6.1.13); damage caused by a third-party low-quality PSU, including boards showing burn marks or burnt chips (6.1.6); damage from a POE switch (6.1.11); high-voltage and leakage damage (6.1.14); temperature extremes, high or low (6.1.15). Refused entirely, no repair at any price (6.2): scrapped units — burned out, corrosion or oxidation, chip pad pin dropout, PCB breakage, plate-hole failure. Hydro and immersion carve-outs are explicit in the official repair FAQ: cold-plate extrusion deformation from water inlet pressure above 300 kPa voids coverage, as does liquid outside PH 6–8, medium conductivity above 100 µS/cm, or using a liquid other than the specified one.", "void_triggers": "Sourced from MicroBT's own After-sales Maintenance Clause Item 6.1/8.1 and Repair Guide 5.1: (1) SERIAL-NUMBER LABEL — 6.1.4 in the Chinese original covers tearing or defacing the serial-number label on the whole machine, the hash board and other accessories (撕毁或污损…序列号标签); the official English rendering reads more broadly as \"the label…was teared or altered\". Either way this is the single cleanest void trigger, and it merges the seal and serial-number cases. Item 8.1 separately voids where the serial number is changed, smeared or removed, and Repair Guide 5.1 lists \"serial number of the miner is missing or ambiguous.\" (2) OPENING THE CASE — 6.1.12 \"矿机本身被拆卸（矿机的标签人为损坏），私自改动、更换元器件\": the machine was disassembled (label artificially damaged), with private modification or replacement of components. Opening is judged by the label. (3) OVERCLOCKING — 6.1.9 \"因软件超频导致机器损坏\", machine damage caused by software over-frequency; Repair Guide 5.1 lists \"Overclocking\" flatly. (4) IMMERSION/WATER — damage from wetting and corrosion of leaching solution, circuit board and components; Item 8.1 covers spilled or immersed units. (5) THIRD-PARTY REPAIR OR PARTS — 6.1.8 covers human disassembly or use of any third-party accessory not meeting MicroBT's required parameters; Item 8.1 excludes incorrect installation, repair or maintenance by anyone other than MicroBT or its authorised service provider, and unauthorised modifications. (6) THIRD-PARTY PSU — 6.1.6. (7) POE SWITCH — 6.1.11. (8) Extreme temperature and humidity, voltage problems, surges, lightning, static, fire and natural disaster (Item 8.1; Repair Guide 5.2 names lightning, floods, storms, fires and earthquakes). (9) CATCH-ALL — 6.1.16, any situation that prevents MicroBT from judging whether the product is under warranty. Verified absence: neither the After-sales Maintenance Clause nor the Repair Guide mentions third-party firmware, custom firmware, VNish, BraiinsOS or LuxOS anywhere. The published text voids on the RESULT — damage caused by software over-frequency — not on the act of flashing. Do not overstate this as a blanket firmware ban.", "rma_process": "Create a repair work order first (Item 2.1), which directs you to microbt.com/service/repair_guide.html. The details on the ticket must match the physical package exactly, and the work-order information governs if they diverge (2.2, 2.3). You ship to a maintenance point you select, freight PREPAID and arranged at your own cost (Item 3.1; Repair Guide 1.2.3: \"the maintenance freight of the warranty miners are paid by each individually… please make sure delivery fee prepaid\"; self-pickup is not supported). Packages are REJECTED for: no work order created, logistics fee unpaid, or severely damaged packaging (Item 4.1) — and if MicroBT accepts a defective package anyway, that does not waive your costs or risk (4.2). Inbound transit risk is entirely yours (Item 3.2). Turnaround is stated as about 7 working days for the repair itself, excluding shipping (Item 7.3), and risk passes back to you at logistics handoff (7.4). In warranty MicroBT pays return freight (5.1). THE BIG ONE — you may not get your own machine back: Item 7.1 dispatches pre-repaired units randomly on the premise of the same model, cannot guarantee return of the original product, and states the unit you receive may differ in age. Repair Guide 8.2 gives the workaround: to get YOUR unit back you must request it specifically when creating the ticket and confirm with customer service. Out of warranty: they disassemble, then quote, and the repair price does not exceed but may equal the current market price of the machine (5.2.1); submitting the ticket is deemed acceptance (5.2.4). Payment is due within 3 days of the quotation notice (5.2.2), in RMB; non-payment triggers retention and possible disposal of your machine after 62 days to cover costs. For normal, non-scrap miners you cannot decline the quote and ask for the unit back — Repair Guide 5.3: \"Normal miners quoted are not allowed to be not repaired and returned.\" No work order or customer-service contact for more than 90 days, or unpaid fees, and the miner is not returned at all.", "regional_reality": "MicroBT publishes NO North American service centre. Its after-sales contact list is Telegram (t.me/Whatsminer_Aftersales), WeChat (microbt_service, whatsminer_service) and Support@microbt.com — no NA address, no NA phone number. The counterparty is Shenzhen MicroBT Electronics Technology Co., Ltd., out-of-warranty repairs are payable in RMB, and Item 8.2 requires compliance with export law and bars re-export of products for service without authorisation under the law of the mainland People's Republic of China. The repair flow lets you pick a \"maintenance point\" but the public site does not enumerate them without an account, so whether any Canada- or US-based MicroBT point is available to a given buyer is unverified from primary sources. For a Canadian buyer the documented default is: you pay prepaid freight on a ~15 kg machine to Asia, you carry the loss if it is damaged in transit, the clock runs against you the whole time it is in transit, and a same-model random replacement may come back instead of your unit. On a mid-life S-class Whatsminer that round trip plus customs can approach or exceed the repair value.", "consumer_note": "Before you ship anything, run the SN through MicroBT's Warranty Check — it gives you a hard expiry date, and because the deadline is tested on ARRIVAL in Asia you need weeks of margin, not days. If the expiry is inside about six weeks, the warranty is effectively already gone for a Canadian shipper. Budget for the out-of-warranty path too: once you submit the ticket you have accepted the quote, payment is due within 3 days, and a normal miner cannot be sent back unrepaired. If you want your own machine back rather than a random same-model unit, say so in the ticket and confirm with customer service, otherwise you have agreed to a swap. Never peel a serial-number or chassis label — that single act is the cleanest void trigger in the whole document. And note what is NOT void: running third-party firmware is nowhere named in the policy; only damage caused by software over-frequency is. Don't let anyone tell you flashing alone kills a Whatsminer warranty.", "confidence": "medium", "sources": [ "https://www.whatsminer.com/renren-fast/app/policy/queryAfterSalesServicePolicy (MicroBT official \"After-sales Maintenance Clause\" / \"After sales service policy\" — source of Items 1.2, 2.1–2.3, 3.1–3.2, 4.1–4.2, 5.1, 5.2.1–5.2.4, 6.1.x, 6.2, 7.1–7.4, 8.1–8.2; served to whatsminer.com/src/views/repair_process.html)", "https://www.whatsminer.com/renren-fast/app/policy/queryMaintenanceManual (MicroBT official \"Repair Guide\" — clock-start rule at 4.1, freight rule at 1.2.3, void list at 5.1–5.2, scrap/90-day and no-unrepaired-return rules at 5.3, original-unit-return workaround at 8.2, and the \"warranty period is indicated in the product > commodity > after-sale policy\" pointer)", "https://www.whatsminer.com/src/views/repair_process.html (official repair process page; loads the two policy endpoints above; states no duration)", "https://www.whatsminer.com/src/views/support.html + /renren-fast/app/RepairWorkOrder/warranty (official Warranty Check — per-SN expiry date lookup; page itself states no duration)", "https://www.whatsminer.com/renren-fast/app/repaircommonproblem/findAll (official repair FAQ — hydro 300 kPa inlet pressure, immersion PH 6–8, conductivity 100 µS/cm and specified-liquid warranty carve-outs; states no duration)" ], "period_short": "Not published — per-serial lookup only", "clock_short": "Factory dispatch", "slug": "microbt" }, { "confidence": "medium", "name": "Canaan (Avalon)", "warranty_period": "360 days for the AvalonMiner; ZERO for the PSU. Order Policy, \"CANAAN'S WARRANTIES\": \"CANAAN gives a warranty for all delivered AvalonMiner Products for 360 days from the date of dispatch (as such date is indicated on your order information page).\" For the power supply the same document is explicit: \"CANAAN grants no warranty for the PSU, but you have the right to request us to repair the defective PSU within 3 days from the actual delivery date\" — after that 3-day window Canaan takes on no repair or replacement obligation for it. 360 days is five days short of a calendar year; Canaan does not explain the figure, and 360-day terms are a common commercial convention, so read it as a hard date rather than as \"about a year.\" A second, separate Canaan document governs direct/bulk sales orders rather than webshop purchases — the Sales Order Terms & Conditions — and states a different figure: \"Seller warrants that all Goods sold to Buyer will be free from defects in workmanship and material, for a period of 12 months from the date of shipment.\" Which one applies depends on how you bought. Fans, fan extension cables and other vulnerable parts are excluded outright (After-Sales Repair Service Policy 5.1.3: \"Fans, fan extension cables and other vulnerable parts are damaged without warranty\"). Both the Order Policy and the After-Sales Repair Service Policy carry an effective date of 5 September 2022; neither has been superseded on Canaan's live support site, but Canaan does not publish model-specific warranty terms, so buyers of current-generation units should confirm the figure on their own order page.", "starts_from": "Date of dispatch, as indicated on your order information page (Order Policy; After-Sales Repair Service Policy 1.7 defines the warranty period as \"period during which we provide free repair services to our Customers, starting from the date of dispatch\"). Not delivery, not activation. The bulk Sales Order T&C runs from \"date of shipment\" instead. The PSU's 3-day reporting window is the one clock that runs from delivery — \"3 days from the actual delivery date.\" There is a second, sharper deadline once you claim: policy 4.1.2 requires you to open the work order inside the warranty period AND send the unit out within 3 days, with a certificate of consignment. Miss that window and 4.1.2 gives Canaan the right \"to determine whether the Returned Product is within the warranty period based on the actual arrival date\" — which on a cross-border shipment can push you out of coverage.", "coverage": "AvalonMiner units only. The After-Sales Repair Service Policy defines Products as those \"such as AvalonMiner published and sold on this website, but not including Power Supply Units\" — the PSU sits outside both the warranty and the repair policy. Inside 360 days Canaan provides free repair and bears the cost of shipping the unit back to you (4.1.1), choosing repair vs. part-swap vs. whole-unit replacement at its own discretion (3.8). Replaced parts become Canaan's property (3.7), and the same clause states the replacement \"may not be new, but will work well and have the same performance,\" and \"will continue to be eligible for free repair for the remainder of the original Product's warranty period\" — a repair does not reset your clock. Excluded even in-warranty: burnt hash boards or chips (Order Policy exclusion (h), verbatim \"burnt hash boards or chips\"); fans, fan extension cables and other vulnerable parts (5.1.3); normal wear and tear (Order Policy (c)); and scratches or rust not affecting operation (5.2.3). Order Policy exclusions also cover improper installation or operation (a), damage caused by you or a third party (b), improper use/repair/accident/abuse/neglect (d), force majeure (e), undue physical or electrical stress including moisture, corrosive environments, voltage surges and extreme temperatures (f), software interoperability (g), pre-installed software quality (i), and a catch-all (j).", "void_triggers": "From After-Sales Repair Service Policy Article 5, one of the more granular published lists in the ASIC sector. Article 5.1 lists conditions where free repair is refused: (1) TAMPER LABEL/SERIAL — 5.1.6: \"The Product's tamper-proof label is torn or the serial number label on the whole Product, the computing board, control board, power supply and/or other accessories of the Products has been altered.\" (2) THIRD-PARTY FIRMWARE — 5.1.7 is unambiguous and is vendor text, not folklore: free repair is refused where \"Failure or damage to the Product is caused by the use of firmware not authorized by CANAAN and the overclocking firmware, or by the modification of the firmware using third-party tools.\" Article 5.2.2 goes further and puts a unit \"damaged due to the use of third-party overclocking software or firmware\" on the no-repair-at-any-price list. Canaan's own GitHub documentation repeats the principle for its API: \"Using Privileged API will cause the warranty invalid. The Privileged API just fit for privileged firmware.\" Note the causation wording — 5.1.7 keys on damage caused by the firmware, not merely on its presence, but 5.1.16 lets Canaan refuse whenever it cannot determine warranty status, which narrows that distinction in practice. (3) OPENING/THIRD-PARTY REPAIR — 5.1.5: the Product has been \"disassembled, reassembled, or has been replaced with other parts by someone else.\" (4) IMMERSION/LIQUID — 5.1.10: damage from \"immersion in liquid or environmental causes, corrosion, oxidation, short circuit.\" (5) BOARD MIXING — 5.1.13: \"Some or all of the control boards and computing boards in the Product are not original to the machine or in any way that makes it impossible for us to determine whether the control boards or computing boards are original to the Product\" — swapping boards between two of your own units voids it. (6) POE SWITCH — 5.1.4 refuses free repair for \"Damages to the Product... caused by the use of POE switches,\" and 5.2.4 lists POE damage among scrapped/no-repair cases alongside burned boards, corrosion/oxidation, dislodged chip pad pins, broken PCBs and inaccessible board holes. (7) Missing parts including boards, power supplies, fans and cables (5.1.9); physical and environmental damage from corrosive environments, surges, temperature extremes and drops (5.1.11); accident, theft, misuse, negligence and improper installation (5.1.12); improper packaging of the return shipment itself (5.1.14); force majeure (5.1.15); and the catch-all 5.1.16, any circumstance where Canaan cannot determine warranty status. Article 5.2.5 also refuses repair where disqualifying conditions were intentionally concealed. (8) NOT TRANSFERABLE — Order Policy: Canaan's warranty and the After-Sales Repair Service Policy \"only apply to and are only enforceable by the original purchaser who purchased the Products directly through this Website.\" The bulk Sales Order T&C is blunter: the warranty \"runs only to Buyer and is non-transferable and non-assignable either directly, indirectly, or by operation of law.\"", "rma_process": "Email avalonsupport@canaan.io to open a repair work order (2.1); Canaan's shop FAQ also asks you to CC customerservice@canaan.io. You must supply the SN, product model, logistics/tracking number and a description of the fault (2.2). Send the unit out within 3 days of the work order and provide a certificate of consignment (4.1.2). You pay inbound freight and carry inbound risk — 3.1: \"You are responsible for all costs and risks associated with returning the Products.\" Canaan provides free repair and bears the cost of shipping the repaired unit back on in-warranty claims (4.1.1, 6.2), but under 6.5 \"The risk of damage and loss of the repaired Products in transit will be borne solely by you after we deliver the repaired Products to the first carrier\" — so you carry transit risk in both directions. Packages are refused where no work order was established, the information does not match, shipping is unpaid, or packaging is improper (3.4). Out of warranty, the published policy's only stated route is external: 4.2.2 says Canaan \"may provide you with the contact information of a third-party repair service provider,\" and 4.2.4 disclaims \"any responsibility for the repair methods, repair quotations and repair results of the third-party service providers.\" No turnaround time is published anywhere in the policy, and the policy does not establish a priced in-house out-of-warranty repair channel.", "regional_reality": "The contracting entity for webshop purchases is Canaan Creative Global PTE. Ltd. The Order Policy is \"governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of Singapore,\" and disputes go to binding arbitration: \"referred to and finally resolved by arbitration administered by the Singapore International Arbitration Centre ('SIAC')... The seat of the arbitration shall be Singapore.\" A Canadian buyer therefore has no domestic forum on a webshop purchase — pursuing a denied claim means SIAC arbitration in Singapore. The separate bulk Sales Order T&C is governed by New York law instead, so your forum depends on your purchase channel. The cross-border cost split is spelled out in policy 6.2: \"you shall bear the import and export customs clearance procedure and applicable duties/taxes/fees in the country where your designated shipping address is located, and we will bear the import and export customs clearance procedure and its duties/taxes/fees in the country where our designated repair facility is located.\" So on a \"free\" in-warranty repair a Canadian still pays outbound freight, Canadian customs brokerage, and any duty or GST on the returning unit. Canaan's shop FAQ mentions warehouses in \"Singapore, the USA, and China,\" but describes them as sales and shipping warehouses, not repair facilities — do not read them as service centres. Canaan's public service-centre and repair-ticket pages were not retrievable for verification, so whether a North American mail-in or on-site service option exists in practice is unverified; confirm the designated repair facility for your region in writing before you buy, because 6.2 makes its location the thing that decides your customs bill.", "consumer_note": "Two things decide whether you have a Canaan warranty at all: did you buy directly from Canaan's webshop, and are you inside 360 days from dispatch. Neither published Canaan document gives a reseller, broker or secondhand buyer a direct claim — the webshop warranty is enforceable only by the original direct purchaser and the bulk terms are expressly non-transferable — so if you bought through a dealer, get the dealer's own written warranty commitment in hand and price the machine on that, not on Canaan's. Treat the PSU as an unwarranted consumable from day one: you have exactly 3 days from delivery to report a dead one. If you run anything other than stock Canaan firmware, a firmware-caused failure is not merely unwarranted, it is on Canaan's refuse-to-repair list, so decide up front whether the tuning gain is worth surrendering coverage. And never swap control or hashboards between two units you own — 5.1.13 voids the machine the moment the boards are not original to it.", "sources": [ "https://support.canaan.io/en-us/knowledgebase/article/KA-01246 (Canaan Order Policy, effective 5 Sep 2022 — \"CANAAN gives a warranty for all delivered AvalonMiner Products for 360 days from the date of dispatch (as such date is indicated on your order information page)\"; \"CANAAN grants no warranty for the PSU, but you have the right to request us to repair the defective PSU within 3 days from the actual delivery date\"; exclusions (a)-(j) incl. (h) \"burnt hash boards or chips\"; original-direct-purchaser-only enforceability; Singapore law and SIAC arbitration, seat Singapore; entity Canaan Creative Global PTE. Ltd.)", "https://support.canaan.io/en-us/knowledgebase/article/KA-01249 (Canaan After-Sales Repair Service Policy, effective 5 Sep 2022 — Products definition excluding PSUs; 1.7 dispatch-date start; 2.1, 2.2; 3.1, 3.4, 3.7, 3.8; 4.1.1, 4.1.2 incl. actual-arrival-date rule, 4.2.2, 4.2.4; Article 5.1.1-5.1.16 and 5.2.1-5.2.5 verbatim void/no-repair triggers; 6.2 customs and duty split; 6.5 return transit risk)", "https://support.canaan.io/en-us/knowledgebase/article/KA-01253 (Canaan SALES ORDER TERMS & CONDITIONS — \"free from defects in workmanship and material, for a period of 12 months from the date of shipment\"; warranty \"runs only to Buyer and is non-transferable and non-assignable\"; buyer returns goods at \"Buyer's sole risk and expense\"; New York governing law)", "https://support.canaan.io/en-us/knowledgebase/article/KA-01251 (Canaan shop FAQ — warehouses in Singapore, the USA and China described as sales/shipping warehouses; no returns or exchanges on customized servers; repair requests via avalonsupport@canaan.io CC customerservice@canaan.io; no warranty duration stated)", "https://github.com/Canaan-Creative/avalon10-docs (Canaan's official GitHub org, README: \"Using Privileged API will cause the warranty invalid. The Privileged API just fit for privileged firmware.\")" ], "period_short": "360 days miner · zero for the PSU", "clock_short": "Dispatch", "slug": "canaan" }, { "confidence": "high", "name": "Bitdeer (SEALMINER)", "warranty_period": "365 days. Published in Bitdeer's own Sales and Purchase Agreement (v20260120) Clause 5.2: \"Seller provides a limited warranty for all Warranted Products... for a period of 365 days from the Date of Delivery (the 'Warranty Period').\" The same figure appears on the official SEALMINER Warranty eCard: \"we hereby guarantee all products against manufacturing defects for a period of 365 days from the date of delivery.\" No separate or shorter PSU/hashboard term exists — but coverage scope depends on how the part was bought (see coverage). Per-unit remaining time is checkable by SN at the public Warranty Check tool, which supports scan-to-search and bulk comma-separated SN lookup. Separately: the DOA window is 30 days and the Second Return window is 15 calendar days.", "starts_from": "Date of Delivery, for the 365-day warranty (SPA Clause 5.2). Three timing traps sit on top of that. (1) DOA clock — the sources conflict: the governing After-Sales Policy Article 1 defines DOA as non-functional \"within 30 calendar days from the date of dispatch by the Company,\" while the DOA help article says \"30 days from the date of delivery... to the date of creation of the repair ticket.\" Dispatch is the earlier and stricter reading and sits in the controlling document, so treat the DOA clock as starting when Bitdeer ships, and open the ticket well inside 30 days. (2) Arrival, not just ticketing, can decide warranty status: you must ship within 7 calendar days of creating the ticket and the unit must reach the service centre within 15 calendar days of ticket creation; if it arrives later, Bitdeer determines warranty status by the actual arrival date and may charge you (After-Sales Policy 2.4, 4.1.2, 4.3.1(1)). (3) A repair does not reset the clock — a Replacement Product carries only the remaining Warranty Period of the original unit, measured from the date you dispatched the defective one, and \"may not be a new Product.\"", "coverage": "Published and component-specific (SPA Clause 5.3). Buy a complete mining rig and the entire rig is covered for the Warranty Period. Buy parts and accessories separately and ONLY power supply units (PSU) and PCBA control boards are covered — every other separately purchased part is strictly as-is with no warranty. Excluded either way, whether sold alone or inside a complete rig: server blank-off panels, nylon cable ties, cable signs, PVC slots, PVC buckles. Consumables such as fans bought separately are not \"Products\" at all and the After-Sales Policy does not apply to them. Remedy is repair or replacement at Bitdeer's sole discretion; if an in-warranty unit cannot be repaired or is not cost-efficient to repair, Bitdeer supplies a replacement of the same or similar model at no cost, though replacements may be refurbished. Verified DOA units are replaced outright. Returns must be in original packaging with complete accessories. Hard stops on coverage: End of Service (EOS) — once a model or batch is declared EOS and the 60-day notification period lapses, service ends entirely, and Bitdeer notifies only direct purchasers, so broker-bought owners must check the website themselves; \"Mixed Board Products\" containing any hashboard not manufactured by Bitdeer may be refused service outright at Bitdeer's sole discretion; and units are declared scrap for burned boards, corrosion or oxidation, disconnected chip pins, PCB breakage, blocked board via holes, or use of POE switches. Most service centres are third-party operated, not run by Bitdeer.", "void_triggers": "The full exclusion list is public, in SPA Clause 5.4 \"Denied Warranty Claims\" (a)–(m) and After-Sales Policy 4.2.1 and 4.3.1. None of the common triggers are folklore here — all are written down. Warranty seal/sticker removal: explicit — \"missing, altered, or defaced warranty stickers or SN labels,\" restated in the Policy as \"altered, defaced or missing warranty stickers (i.e. vulnerable labels) or SN labels,\" plus any situation where Bitdeer cannot determine whether the unit is in warranty. Third-party firmware and software: explicit — SPA 5.4(g) voids for \"use of unofficial or unauthorized supporting software and/or hardware that interacts with the Product(s),\" and Policy 4.2.1(2) separately denies service where \"the Product is damaged due to the use of third-party overclocking software.\" Overclocking: explicit — 5.4(c) covers \"use of the Product(s) outside its intended operating parameters or specifications (e.g. overclocking of mining rigs)\" and unauthorized modification of operating settings. Water damage: explicit — 5.4(d) names \"water exposures.\" Opening the case and third-party repair: 5.4(k) voids for \"unauthorized disassembly, alteration, repair, or modification... including but not limited to re-soldering, replacing internal chips, or opening sealed power supplies,\" and 5.4(a) extends to damage from \"maintenance or repair by Purchaser or any third party\" — an independent board-level repair, including one by a shop like ours, is itself a stated voider. Board mixing is the harshest clause: the warranty is void \"if any or all of the hash boards or control boards in a Product are not the original parts of that Product, or if there is any factor preventing the Company from determining whether the hash boards or control boards are the original parts,\" and the DOA article adds that combining hashboards, PSUs or control boards from different miners \"constitutes a violation of the warranty terms and will result in the warranty being voided.\" Also void: third-party or unapproved accessories, PSUs, control boards, fans or cables; over/undervoltage, leakage, surges, unstable or non-compliant power sources, sockets or power strips; operating outside manual conditions (excessive heat or cold, corrosive gases, high humidity, dust, poor air quality); negligence, misuse, fire, theft or tampering; force majeure; normal wear and tear; any hardware modification without Bitdeer's prior written permission. Model-specific: immersion use or cooling-system modification \"may void your Sealminer A2 Air warranty,\" and for hydro models \"operating the Product without being connected to such [drainage] assemblies will void the warranty.\" Parts without original barcodes are ineligible for service, and forged or swapped barcodes are treated as fraud.", "rma_process": "Online ticket. Log in at bitdeer.com/shop/support, click \"Miner Repair\" then \"Start a new repair,\" confirm you have already contacted the After Sales team, add devices, pick a service centre, give a return address, and accept the After Sales Service Terms. Print two copies of the ticket — one taped to the outside of the box, one inside — then submit courier and tracking number. Freight, which is better than commonly assumed: you pay inbound only. SPA 5.2 states \"Purchaser shall bear the cost of inbound shipping to the repair center designated by Seller, and Seller shall bear the return shipping costs for any repaired or replaced Warranted Products,\" and After-Sales Policy 4.1.1 confirms \"we will cover the cost of shipping the Product back to you from the Service Center after we complete the Services.\" Verified DOA and Second Return units get round-trip freight covered by Bitdeer; DOA pickup is arranged by Bitdeer. Claim DOA or Second Return and be wrong on inspection and you pay the return leg. Units denied service outright are returned at your expense plus storage. In-warranty and out-of-warranty units must ship separately from DOA and Second Return units. Sea freight is prohibited for mining machines. Out-of-warranty work is quote-only (aftersales@bitdeer.com); the quote is issued after inspection, must be paid in full within 3 calendar days or Bitdeer may treat it as a decision not to repair, and no work starts before payment clears. Unpaid units accrue storage at USD 1.50/day per miner and USD 0.75/day per PDU or loose board from day 36, and at 95 days are deemed abandoned and may be sold under a claimed mechanics lien. Return shipments are uninsured unless you pay for insurance, and air return costs extra. Typical turnaround (RTAT) is 7 working days, varying with volume, complexity and spare-parts availability. Onsite repair at the mine site can be arranged through aftersales@bitdeer.com.", "regional_reality": "Genuinely strong for North America. Bitdeer's listed official repair centre is 3291 Charles Martin Hall Road, Rockdale, TX 76567, United States — no shipping to Asia for a US or Canadian owner, and it is the only location published in the repair-centre article. From Canada it is still a cross-border export and reimport. Bitdeer anticipates the friction and supplies a downloadable warranty statement plus the old (defective) and new (replacement) serial numbers, since \"customs may require verification of both\" and some customers need proof that replacement parts are under warranty and not for resale. Budget accordingly: After-Sales Policy 6.3 puts \"any local tariffs, taxes and other related custom clearing expenses\" solely on you regardless of who pays freight, and SPA 5.2 does the same for customs duties and taxes, so Bitdeer covering return shipping does not cover your duty exposure or broker fees. Two further wrinkles — the repaired or replacement unit may ship back from a different location than the one you sent it to, and risk of loss in transit is yours in both directions. Sea freight is not permitted. No Canadian service centre is listed, and most service centres are third-party operated.", "consumer_note": "Bitdeer's warranty is better than its reputation and better than most of this group: a published 365-day term from delivery, a real Texas depot, and Bitdeer paying the return freight on a normal in-warranty repair — you only fund the leg into Rockdale. Do not repeat the common claim that you pay both ways. The catch is the void list, which is unusually broad and fully written down: third-party firmware or overclocking software, any opened case, re-soldering, chip replacement, a defaced warranty sticker or SN label, or any hashboard or control board that is not the original part of that chassis. Practically, that means decide early — send it to Bitdeer while it is in warranty and untouched, or accept that an independent board-level repair (ours included) ends the manufacturer coverage. Never swap boards between chassis before shipping. Watch the calendar hard: open the ticket well inside 30 days for a DOA claim, ship within 7 days of opening it, and make sure the unit physically lands at the service centre within 15 days, because late arrival can be judged against the arrival date and turn a free repair into a paid quote. If you bought from a broker rather than Bitdeer directly, you have no Sales and Purchase Agreement with Bitdeer and you will not receive End of Service notices, so check EOS status on their site before you ship anything.", "sources": [ "https://www.bitdeer.com/shop/sales-and-purchase-agreement", "https://www.bitdeer.com/shop/after-sales-policy", "https://bitdeersupport.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/46139867597209-Warranty-eCard", "https://bitdeersupport.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/39772957703193-Dead-On-Arrival-DOA", "https://bitdeersupport.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/39773982085913-Official-Repair-Center-Locations", "https://bitdeersupport.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/47900545459993-What-is-the-average-turnaround-time-for-repairs", "https://bitdeersupport.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/39773071212953-Creating-A-Repair-Ticket", "https://bitdeersupport.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/46542857721881-Do-I-have-to-ship-In-Warranty-and-Out-of-Warranty-Products-separately-from-DOA-and-Second-Return-Products", "https://bitdeersupport.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/48046487797785-Can-the-Sealminer-A2-Air-Operate-in-an-Immersion-Cooling-Environment", "https://bitdeersupport.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/39771702329113-Warranty-Status", "https://bitdeersupport.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/39774091879705-Onsite-Repair-Service", "https://www.bitdeer.com/en/shop/support/warranty-check" ], "period_short": "365 days", "clock_short": "Delivery", "slug": "bitdeer" }, { "name": "Auradine (Teraflux) — now operating as Velaura", "warranty_period": "unverified. No warranty period is published for Teraflux hardware, and no limited-warranty document exists in public. This is a verified absence rather than a failed search: the vendor's page sitemap enumerates only nine pages, /warranty/, /legal/, /terms/ and /terms-of-sale/ all return 404, and a full-text sweep of every live page returns zero occurrences of \"warranty\", \"guarantee\" or \"return policy\". Terms for the miner body, hashboards and PSU are all unstated and are not distinguished anywhere public. The single piece of published warranty language in any vendor document is a coolant-scope clause in the AI3680 immersion datasheet (see coverage and void triggers).", "starts_from": "unverified. Nothing published states whether coverage runs from shipment, delivery, invoice date or activation.", "coverage": "Partly documented. The Velaura support page publishes a \"Support Offerings\" matrix under an \"Included\" column in which \"RMA replacement options\" carries an inclusion checkmark, alongside Online support, Software releases, Software Support, Support Case Management, Expert to Expert Access, Enhanced Response Time, On-boarding Service and Service Manager. Only \"Resident Consultant\" is marked \"Optional\"; \"Enterprise Grade Support\" is presented separately as a distinct offering. RMA replacement is therefore published as part of standard support rather than a premium add-on. What that covers at component level — hashboards, control board, PSU, fans — is not stated, nor is any dollar cap or labour term. One coverage limit is published: the AI3680 immersion miner is \"Qualified with, and warrantied for, use with Engineered Fluids Bitcool 888 and Shell S3X only.\" All three datasheets also state products are for indoor use only. The AH3880 hydro model carries no equivalent coolant-warranty restriction (PG25 is cited only as the basis for performance estimates).", "void_triggers": "No consolidated void list is published — nothing public on seal removal, chassis opening, serial tampering or water damage. Three published facts bear directly on the usual folklore. First, immersion: on the AI3680 the fluid list is an explicit warranty condition, warrantied for Engineered Fluids Bitcool 888 and Shell S3X only, so running another dielectric on that model puts you outside warranted use — this one is real and documented, not folklore. Second, third-party firmware: there is no published clause voiding warranty for it, but all three datasheets document a hardware-based root-of-trust secure boot that \"validates that only digitally signed and trusted code is allowed to run during the boot sequence\", so unsigned aftermarket firmware is blocked technically rather than being a warranty question. Third, overclocking: pushing these units is a vendor-supplied feature, not an aftermarket act — AutoTune and EnergyTune ship with ECO and Turbo modes and the Turbo figures are printed as headline specs, so operating within published modes cannot reasonably be treated as abuse. Absence of a public list is not absence of a list: Auradine sells under negotiated contracts and the binding void terms almost certainly sit in the purchase agreement.", "rma_process": "Partly documented. \"RMA replacement options\" is published as an included item in the standard Support Offerings matrix, which establishes that RMA exists and is not gated behind the optional tier. The mechanism is otherwise undocumented: there is no public RMA portal, web form, ticket system or case-tracking tool, and no published statement of freight responsibility in either direction, turnaround time, or repair-versus-replace policy. The published contact routes are the support page contact form, info@velaura.ai, and the Santa Clara head office; the 2025 Teraflux datasheets still print info@auradine.com as the contact address.", "regional_reality": "Structurally the most favourable geography in this group, though the terms behind it are undocumented. The company is US-based at 3200 Coronado Drive, Santa Clara, CA 95054, and the products page markets the miners as \"Engineered in the USA\", so a North American RMA should not mean shipping to Shenzhen. Treat that as a structural advantage rather than a documented guarantee: no service-centre location, depot address or freight-responsibility term is published. Corporate status has changed and any public matrix should reflect it — auradine.com now issues a 301 permanent redirect to velaura.ai, and the company presents itself as Velaura, focused on ultra-low-power compute for cloud, edge and physical AI. Bitcoin mining is no longer the corporate front-of-house, but the mining line is still published as current, not retired: /products/ is live under the heading \"Teraflux Bitcoin Mining Solutions\" with the AT2880 air-cooled, AH3880 hydro-cooled and AI3680 immersion-cooled miners, a 3nm Teraflux ASIC, megawatt containers, FluxOS miner firmware and FluxVision fleet software, and the datasheets carry 2025 dates and Auradine Inc. copyright. Continuity of hardware support and spares through the rebrand is not addressed publicly.", "consumer_note": "Treat this as a contract-only warranty: nothing public binds them on term, start date or void conditions, so whatever is written into your purchase agreement IS your warranty — get the period, the void list, the freight terms and repair-versus-replace in writing before you pay. Two things you can hold them to today: RMA replacement is published as included in standard support, and if you are buying the AI3680 immersion unit, run Bitcool 888 or Shell S3X and nothing else, because the fluid list is a stated warranty condition. Do not buy these planning to flash third-party firmware — signed-code secure boot will stop you regardless of what the warranty says. The live risk is corporate, not legal: confirm in writing that mining RMA is still staffed and that spare hashboards exist post-rebrand, especially on a used unit where you inherit no contract at all.", "confidence": "low", "sources": [ "https://www.auradine.com/ (301 permanent redirect to velaura.ai, verified)", "https://velaura.ai/", "https://velaura.ai/support/ (Support Offerings matrix: 'RMA replacement options' checkmarked under the Included column; 'Resident Consultant' marked Optional)", "https://velaura.ai/products/ (Teraflux Bitcoin Mining Solutions, Engineered in the USA; AT2880 / AH3880 / AI3680; FluxOS, FluxVision)", "https://velaura.ai/page-sitemap.xml (full nine-page enumeration; no warranty, terms or legal page exists)", "https://velaura.ai/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Teraflux-AT2880-Data-Sheet.pdf (hardware-based root-of-trust secure boot; indoor use only)", "https://velaura.ai/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Teraflux-AH3880-Data-Sheet.pdf (no coolant warranty restriction; PG25 cited only for performance estimates)", "https://velaura.ai/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Teraflux-AI3680-Data-Sheet.pdf ('Qualified with, and warrantied for, use with Engineered Fluids Bitcool 888 and Shell S3X only')" ], "period_short": "Not published", "clock_short": "Unverified", "slug": "auradine" }, { "name": "ElphaPex", "warranty_period": "180 days on the miner, published verbatim as \"The 180-day warranty period begins on the shipping date.\" It is a single blanket term: the identical warranty text is attached to all 19 miner SKUs in ElphaPex's live product catalogue (DG 1, DG 1+, DG 1 Lite, DG 2, DG 2+, DG Home 1, DG Hydro 1 and the rest), and no separate or longer term is published for the PSU, hashboard or control board. \"180\" is the only warranty duration that appears anywhere in the product data. Two important qualifiers: (1) repaired units get their own short term — \"the repaired product warranty period is 15 days, starting from the day after receiving the repaired product\"; (2) spare parts and accessories sold by ElphaPex (fans, hashboard connecting cable, power signal/voltage cables, decorative covers, DG Hydro elbow connector) carry no published warranty field at all.", "starts_from": "Shipment. Explicitly the shipping date — not delivery, not invoice, not power-on, not activation. That matters on a term this short: goods ship from Hong Kong, so sea freight, customs, or a broker holding stock burns warranty days before the machine is ever plugged in, and on 180 days a slow shipment can eat a meaningful fraction of the coverage. The separate 15-day repair warranty is the one term that starts on receipt rather than dispatch — it runs from the day after you receive the repaired product back.", "coverage": "Defined by purchaser, by component, and by exclusion. The purchaser limit is absolute and is stated twice: \"The warranty applies exclusively to the original purchaser who bought the machine directly from us\" and \"After resale, the warranty responsibility lies with the reseller.\" Component rules are published in the repair portal's filing instructions: for a whole-machine fault you return all components in the original case — all hash boards, control board, power supply unit and fans; for a PSU fault return only the power supply; for a control board fault return only the control board; and hash boards must never be sent back on their own (\"Do not return the hash board by its own for repair\", repeated twice). Out-of-warranty units are still serviced, but \"Items that are out of warranty will incur repair charges.\" Warranty status is verifiable per serial before purchase: ElphaPex runs a public, no-login SN lookup returning a warranty start date and warranty expiration date. Not published anywhere: turnaround times, and any statement of who pays freight in either direction.", "void_triggers": "One squarely named exclusion and one broad liability clause. Named: \"Products with damaged or missing serial numbers (SN) are not eligible for warranty coverage\" — ElphaPex adds \"We strongly recommend keeping a clear record of the SN.\" Guard the serial label; that is the single hard, published way to lose coverage outright. Broad clause: ElphaPex is \"not liable for damages caused by failure to follow instructions, specifications, or conditions. This includes damages from unauthorized modifications to the unit's settings\" — elsewhere worded as \"changing the unit's function settings without our prior consent.\" That reaches overclocking, undervolting, custom tuning profiles and firmware-level configuration changes, and it is the clause most likely to be used against a tuner. The referenced operating conditions are the published NOTE block: correct input voltage (\"Incorrect input voltage may damage the miner\"), the rated AC input wiring (two wires at 16 A each on DG 1/DG 1+/DG 2+; one 10 A wire on DG Home 1), and a recommendation to operate below 2000 m altitude. Now the folklore, which matters as much: across ElphaPex's product terms, user agreement, service-centre data and the entire repair portal, there is NO mention of firmware, third-party firmware, warranty seals, stickers, opening the chassis, disassembly, tampering, immersion conversion, water damage or overclocking as such. Flashing third-party firmware and breaking a seal are NOT published void triggers for ElphaPex — treat claims that they are as unsourced. The exposure from custom firmware runs through the \"unauthorized modifications to the unit's settings\" clause, not through any firmware or seal rule. Note also that being out of warranty is not the same as voiding it: out-of-warranty machines are still repaired, for a fee.", "rma_process": "There is a real documented workflow, on a separate portal at service.elphapex.com (reachable from the Support page's After-Sale card), not just a service-centre list. It requires a registered account. Published sequence: contact customer service first — \"Please contact customer service to confirm and check before maintenance\" and \"Please contact customer service to confirm before repair\" — then submit a repair application, add the affected devices by SN (single entry for three or fewer, batch upload above that), supply the system error code as reported by the ElphaPexTool software or the miner web portal, and give a problem description. You choose a shipping method from Send for Repair, Self-return for Repair, or On-site repair, select a service point to ship to, and enter the carrier and logistics tracking number, with a separate repair form per shipping order. Work orders are then tracked through published states: To be Confirmed, To be Delivered, To be First-check, Repairing, Returned, To be Commented, Commented. Packing is your responsibility — \"use the original packaging or appropriate cushioning material to prevent further damage during transit.\" Separately, warranty status alone can be checked self-serve without an account at /warranty by entering an SN or bulk-uploading SNs from a downloadable template, returning warranty start and expiration dates. The model is repair, not replacement, and out-of-warranty repairs are chargeable. Still unpublished: who pays freight in either direction, and any turnaround-time commitment. For cross-border shipments ElphaPex instructs \"Please contact our after-sales service before sending products from other countries for repair to ensure smooth customs clearance\" — an unannounced shipment is a good way to lose a machine in customs.", "regional_reality": "ElphaPex lists six service centres and two are in North America: a United States Service Center at 1100 Venture Court, Suite 100, Carrollton, TX 75006 (contact Wilson Shi, business01@bitcruiser.com), and a Canada Service Center (contact James Zhang, james@bithouse.ca, phone 431-866-9169). The rest are China Hong Kong (Fo Tan, Shatin), UAE (Al Ain, Abu Dhabi), Ethiopia (Gelan Gurra, self-delivery and self-pickup only) and Malaysia (Sibu, Sarawak). Confirm the Canadian street address before shipping: as published it reads \"Unit3, 34 Don Valley Pkwy, Sunnyside, Manitoba, R5R 0C9\", which is internally inconsistent — Don Valley Parkway is a Toronto, Ontario roadway. The depot itself looks genuine rather than a phantom entry: the contact resolves to BitHouse Technology, an operating Canadian mining maintenance and repair business, and the 431 area code is Manitoba, so it is the street line that is suspect, not the existence of the site. Get the shipping address confirmed in writing by the depot before sending hardware. The far larger regional catch is not geography but the resale clause. Machines reach Canadian buyers overwhelmingly through brokers and resellers, and ElphaPex states plainly that after resale the warranty responsibility lies with the reseller — so for most Canadian buyers ElphaPex is not the warranty counterparty at all and the North American depots are irrelevant to their claim. Goods also ship from Hong Kong and ElphaPex disclaims customs exposure: customers \"are responsible for any customs delays or returns caused by insufficient or improper documentation.\"", "consumer_note": "The resale clause is the whole ballgame: unless you bought directly from ElphaPex, your warranty is your reseller's promise, not ElphaPex's, so vet the reseller's own written terms and treat 180 days as a ceiling rather than a guarantee. Before buying used or broker stock, run the serial through ElphaPex's free SN lookup and screenshot the expiry date — the clock started at shipment, so a machine that sat in a warehouse may have far less coverage left than the seller implies. Protect the serial label above all else, because damaged or missing SNs are the one thing ElphaPex names outright as ending coverage. Do not believe anyone who tells you a seal or third-party firmware voids an ElphaPex warranty — neither appears in their terms — but do get written consent before changing tuning or function settings, since \"unauthorized modifications to the unit's settings\" is broad enough to swallow most overclocking. And open a ticket before shipping anything: unannounced returns, hash boards sent on their own, and cross-border parcels without prior contact are all explicitly outside their process.", "confidence": "high", "sources": [ "https://www.elphapex.com/ — product detail pages carry the binding Warranty / NOTE / Purchasing Guidelines / Shipping Details blocks", "https://www.elphapex.com/warranty — serial-number warranty lookup (start date / expiration date, bulk SN template); note this page carries no terms text", "https://www.elphapex.com/service-center — service centre directory", "https://service.elphapex.com — after-sales repair portal: repair application, work orders, component return rules, 15-day repair warranty, damaged/missing SN exclusion", "https://web.elphapex.com/free?op=Page&cloud=product — live product API; identical 180-day warranty text on all 19 miner SKUs, no warranty field on accessories", "https://web.elphapex.com/free?op=Page&cloud=service — live service-centre API returning all six centres and contacts", "https://web.elphapex.com/free?op=List&cloud=protocol — User Agreement and Privacy Statement (contains no warranty, repair, seal, firmware or return terms)", "https://service-web.elphapex.com/cloud/app/crm/customer/api/OpenApi?op=SearchSn — public SN warranty lookup endpoint", "https://www.elphapex.com/assets/index-DDRqILe7.js — shipped i18n bundle, warranty terms verified in English, Chinese and Spanish", "https://service.elphapex.com/assets/index-Di92rArC.js — repair portal i18n bundle with filing instructions and repair rules" ], "period_short": "180 days", "clock_short": "Shipping date", "slug": "elphapex" }, { "name": "VolcMiner", "warranty_period": "unverified", "starts_from": "unverified", "coverage": "unverified", "void_triggers": "unverified", "rma_process": "unverified. VolcMiner runs a serial-number \"Warranty Check\" tool and an \"After Sale — Repair and Common Questions\" section, so a warranty exists and is tracked per unit, but no procedural terms are published to the open web: no ticket procedure, no freight responsibility, no turnaround time, no repair-versus-replace policy and no repair pricing render on the homepage, /SaleAfter, /WarrantyCheck, /ServiceCenter, /DeviceFAQ or /TechnicalSupport. The site publishes five service-centre contacts with direct phone and email, and lists Discord, Telegram, YouTube and X as support channels. In practice a claim starts by contacting a service centre or a support channel directly rather than by following any published process.", "regional_reality": "There is a North American depot. VolcMiner's published service-centre list includes a \"North America Service Center\" at 1100 Venture Court, Suite 100, Carrollton, TX 75006, United States, with US phone numbers (+1 737-267-7355 / +1 972-439-7455), a named contact, and a contact email on a third-party domain (business01@bitcruiser.com), which points to a contracted repair partner rather than a VolcMiner-owned facility. The other four centres are Al Ain (UAE), Debre Berhan (Ethiopia), Kuala Lumpur/Klang (Malaysia) and Hong Kong (Fo Tan). There is no Canadian service centre, so a Canadian claim means a cross-border shipment to Texas — materially better than shipping to Asia, but into an arrangement whose written terms you cannot read in advance.", "consumer_note": "A VolcMiner warranty exists and is tracked by serial number, but you cannot read its terms before buying: the period, the clock start, the covered components and the void list are published nowhere. Get the written after-sales terms from your seller as a document you can keep — specifically the period, what starts it, and the void conditions — and treat any unwritten claim about seals, firmware or immersion as unconfirmed rather than as VolcMiner policy. The Texas depot is a genuine advantage over an Asia-only RMA; confirm in writing that it accepts your model and who pays freight each way before shipping across the border.", "confidence": "low", "sources": [ "https://www.volcminer.com/", "https://www.volcminer.com/SaleAfter", "https://www.volcminer.com/WarrantyCheck", "https://www.volcminer.com/ServiceCenter", "https://www.volcminer.com/json/srvcenter/data.json", "https://www.volcminer.com/DeviceFAQ", "https://www.volcminer.com/TechnicalSupport", "https://www.volcminer.com/json/faq/data.json" ], "period_short": "Not published — terms are login-gated", "clock_short": "Unverified", "slug": "volcminer" }, { "confidence": "high", "name": "Goldshell", "warranty_period": "Miners: 180 days (After-Sales Terms §3.1). Hardware wallets: 1 year (§5.1). Watches (§4.2): main unit 180 days, wireless charger 180 days, watch band 15 days, all other accessories not covered. Post-warranty paid repairs carry only a 24-hour warranty, and no warranty at all where the repair involved moderate-to-severe corrosion or complex difficulty (§3.6); that 24 hours runs from when you sign for delivery of the repaired unit, and covers the repair labour only — you still pay any shipping, customs duties and insurance. PSU: no separately published period. The terms define \"Product\" as miners \"including the components, such as power supply units (PSU)\", so a bundled PSU rides the miner's 180 days; a PSU purchased standalone has no separately stated term (unverified). Models can also lose service entirely ahead of any clock via an EOS (end-of-service) notice — Goldshell has already issued these for X6/X6S and for SCBOX/KD6.", "starts_from": "Date of shipment for miners (§3.1) and wallets (§5.1). Watches run from date of activation, including the activation day itself (§4.2). The clock is judged at ticket time, not failure time: §3.2 and §3.3 make the governing date the submission date of your After-Sales Request, so a request filed on day 181 is out of warranty even if the unit died on day 170.", "coverage": "Free repair or replacement, at Goldshell's sole discretion, of any part proven defective in material, performance or workmanship (§3.2). Replacement units and parts explicitly \"may not be new\" — refurb is permitted — and inherit only the remaining warranty of the original, they do not reset the clock. Goldshell may subcontract the work to a third party. Diagnosis is remote first; depending on the result they either mail you parts or call the unit in. Once a unit is in their hands, repair is the default and consent is assumed: their own repair-pricing article states they will not confirm before proceeding with general BOX and MAX/LITE hashboard repairs, and \"you cannot request us to return the item without repairing it\" (echoed in §8.1). Excluded outright under §3.4: mixed boards (any hash/control board they cannot confirm as original), scrap-tier damage (burnt boards, corrosion/oxidation, disconnected chip pins, PCB breakage, blocked via holes), cosmetic scratches, units found not faulty, non-Goldshell or counterfeit units, units lost before arriving at the designated address, and any model past its EOS notice. Goldshell disclaims any guarantee that a repair will succeed and pays zero compensation for lost mining revenue during repair (§3.7). Under the Order Terms, total liability is capped at the price of the Product.", "void_triggers": "Read the structure before the list, because Goldshell splits it two ways. §3.3 is titled \"Maintenance With Charges\" — these do not refuse you service, they strip the \"free\" and make you pay: disassembly or alteration by anyone other than Goldshell or an authorized service provider; \"unauthorized change on firmware or hardware\"; use of unauthorized firmware or drivers \"including but not limited to firmware that enables users to apply an over frequency setting\" (i.e. overclocking firmware — this is the vendor's own text, not folklore); use of a power supply, part or unit not supplied by Goldshell or its authorized providers; moisture, humidity, oxidation, corrosion, short circuit, fire, flood, lightning, transportation and extreme environments; over-voltage, under-voltage or leakage; ambient temperature significantly above or below spec; dropping, crushing, burning, abuse or improper operation; daily wear and tear. §3.4 \"Non-Warranty Scope\" is the harder list — no service at all: damage from third-party overclocking software, mixed boards, scrap-tier damage, counterfeit units, EOS models, and fraud, which expressly includes forging or swapping barcodes. On labels, §3.4 states \"maintenance will not be available for products or parts without original barcode or SN label or which has been altered, defaced or removed.\" Note there is no warranty seal or tamper sticker anywhere in Goldshell's terms — the word \"seal\" does not appear; the operative clauses are unauthorized disassembly and the barcode/SN label. Two under-appreciated ones: (1) §6.2 says improper packaging on the return leg \"may void the warranty,\" so an unboxed or uncushioned miner can kill your own claim in transit; (2) Goldshell's own part-replacement guides (PSU, hashboard, control board, fan) each open with \"Disassembling the miner without permission of after-sales staff will void your warranty\" and \"Incorrect installation may void your warranty\" — so get written approval from after-sales staff before opening the case, even to swap a PSU. Immersion and oil conversion are not named anywhere in the terms; they are captured only by inference, via the moisture/liquid, corrosion and unauthorized-modification clauses.", "rma_process": "Ticket-based. File an After-Sales Request at goldshellhelp.zendesk.com or in the GoldshellZone app (§2); a WhatsApp support line also exists (currently advertised as a +86 China number) but there is no published phone-support desk, and staffed hours are Monday–Friday 01:00–04:00 and 05:30–10:00 GMT, which is China business hours and lands overnight for North American time zones. Staff run a remote diagnosis first, then either mail you parts or issue a per-ticket return address. You must supply a return tracking number within 7 business days of their proposed solution or the ticket is closed and invalidated — and re-filing creates a new submission date, which §6.1 warns can push you outside the warranty window and forfeit coverage. Freight: you prepay inbound, always (\"the return of the Product to us is at the expense, risk and peril of the Customer\", §7); Goldshell pays outbound only on valid warranty claims. Freight-collect shipments are refused, as are units sent without a ticket, with a wrong tracking number, or to the wrong address (§8.1). Exception: genuine DOA (non-human-induced failure within 15 days of delivery) or Second DOA (within 3 days of receiving a repaired or replacement unit) gets reasonable inbound freight and duties reimbursed, but only with valid unaltered proof of cost and only if staff agree it qualifies (§3.5). Customs is entirely your problem. Out-of-warranty quotes must be paid within 5 calendar days of the notification email; non-payment for 60 days is deemed abandonment and Goldshell may sell the unit to cover charges — a separate 60-day abandonment clause applies if they cannot deliver the unit back to you. Storage fees accrue on non-warranty units. Shipping damage must be reported within 48 hours of receipt. Parts and repair pricing are published: control boards $35–$70, fans $6–$9, parts shipping $55–$90, and hashboard repair quoted in RMB at ¥170–¥1,130 depending on difficulty and corrosion, chips ¥100.", "regional_reality": "Goldshell publishes no North American service centre and no return address — it is issued per ticket. The selling entity is INTCHAINS PTE. LTD.; the Order Terms are governed by Singapore law, require 30 days of \"friendly negotiation\" before litigation, and give Singapore courts exclusive jurisdiction. Operationally the service side reads as China-based: repair prices are quoted in RMB, support hours track China business hours, and the WhatsApp line is a +86 number. So a Canadian claim means an international courier shipment out of pocket, self-managed export/import paperwork, duty exposure on the return leg, and a support window that opens late at night Eastern time. Goldshell also warns the repaired unit may ship back from a different location than the one you sent to. On customs, their position cuts both ways and the distinction matters: on their own outbound shipment they refuse to help you — they will not declare the unit a \"gift\", will not declare a lower value, and will not describe it as a warranty return to reduce tariffs, stating they must comply with customs law and that the value will be declared accurately. But on your inbound shipment their help-centre article advises the opposite, telling customers to declare the value within $200, to \"set the value as low as possible\", and to present the unit as a \"COMPUTER SERVER\" under HS code 8517699000. Following that advice into Canada is a misdeclaration risk that sits on you, not on Goldshell. The honest mitigating factor: Goldshell's home units (BOX/MINI-class) are small desktop boxes, not 15 kg data-centre ASICs, so courier cost is a real but survivable number rather than an automatic write-off — the economics are much worse on the MAX/LITE units and on any low-value box.", "consumer_note": "Do the freight math before you file: Goldshell's actual repair charges are small (¥170–¥1,130 for a hashboard, ¥100 a chip), so on a sub-$500 box the round-trip international courier and duties will usually cost more than the repair itself, and you are owed nothing for downtime. Before shipping the whole miner, ask whether they will just mail the part — control boards run $35–$70 and fans $6–$9 with $55–$90 shipping, which frequently beats sending the unit to Asia. Three things actually protect you: test hard in the first 15 days so any failure lands in DOA, the only window where they reimburse your inbound freight and duties; get written approval from after-sales staff before opening the case or swapping a PSU, because their own guides say unauthorized disassembly voids coverage; and pack it in the original box, since bad packaging alone can void the claim. Ignore their advice to under-declare the value on the way in — that is your legal exposure at the border, not theirs.", "sources": [ "https://www.goldshell.com/after-sales-terms/", "https://www.goldshell.com/order-terms/", "https://goldshellhelp.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/10718597762457-Is-my-hash-board-still-repairable-", "https://goldshellhelp.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/18804474757785-MAX-LITE-Series-Instructions-on-Replacing-the-Power-Supply", "https://goldshellhelp.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/18803115429145-MAX-LITE-Series-Instructions-on-Replacing-Hash-Board", "https://goldshellhelp.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/38902049546777-Unit-Price-of-Accessories-Shipping-Cost-Repair-Cost", "https://goldshellhelp.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/17466177274649-How-to-avoid-customs-duties-during-the-return-for-repair-or-replacement", "https://goldshellhelp.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/10559567809049-Can-you-claim-a-WARRANTY-RETURNS-REPLACEMENTS-on-the-item-so-I-don-t-have-to-pay-for-the-duties", "https://goldshellhelp.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/10559494430233-Can-you-ship-the-repaired-or-replacement-item-as-a-gift-or-declare-a-lower-price-on-the-item-so-I-don-t-have-to-pay-for-the-duties", "https://goldshellhelp.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/44507665283609-Check-Miner-Warranty", "https://goldshellhelp.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/20859578860953-Termination-of-X6-and-X6S-Repair-Service-Effective-July-22-2023", "https://hub.goldshell.com/coverage" ], "period_short": "180 days miners · 1 year wallets", "clock_short": "Shipment", "slug": "goldshell" }, { "name": "iceRiver", "warranty_period": "180 days. iceRiver's FAQ states: \"A warranty of 180 days is provided from the date of shipment.\" Caveat worth stating: After-Sales Service Terms §1.4 says \"Different products have different warranty periods, which can be viewed on the sales page or in the 'Maintenance Guide'\" — so 180 days is the published general figure and a specific model may differ. Check the per-model sales page. Two short secondary warranties exist: repaired MIXED-BOARD products get 15 days (§4.4.3), and any out-of-warranty paid repair gets 15 days (\"After out-of-warranty payment, you will receive a 15-day warranty\"). A replacement unit inherits only the remainder of the original 180 days, not a fresh term (§1.7). Remaining coverage can be checked by serial number at iceriver.io/warranty-inquiry/ — a public SN lookup, no login required.", "starts_from": "Shipment, not delivery. The FAQ says \"from the date of shipment\"; the terms are more precise — §1.4 defines the warranty period as \"calculated from the date of delivery to the first carrier.\" You lose the entire transit period out of your 180 days. There is a second clock: you must create the repair ticket inside the warranty period AND get the machine to the service location within 15 days of the ticket date, or \"we will determine whether the product is still within the warranty period based on the actual arrival date\" (§4.1.2). Tracking must also be updated within 7 days of ticket creation (§2.4).", "coverage": "Free repair plus iceRiver-paid RETURN shipping for in-warranty machines; you pay inbound freight (§4.1.1). \"Product\" is defined to include mining machines and power supply units (§1.2), but note that iceRiver's own out-of-warranty price list states \"PSU repair services are not provided\" — so do not assume a failed PSU gets bench-repaired; expect replacement or nothing. Repair-or-replace is at iceRiver's sole discretion (§3.7); replacement units may not be new and carry only the remaining original warranty (§1.7, §3.6). Once a unit is opened for inspection you cannot demand it back unrepaired (§3.5). Not repairable at all under §4.2.1: units lost before arrival, damage from third-party overclocking software, non-iceRiver or counterfeit hardware (which they confiscate as trademark infringement), cosmetic-only damage, scrap-tier failures (burnt boards, corrosion/oxidation, chip pin disconnection, PCB fracture, blocked through-holes, use of POE switches), missing or forged barcodes, immersion/oil cooling, and any model past its EOS notice period (§4.5), after which no free OR paid service exists and tickets can no longer be created. Critical limit from the FAQ: only sending the ENTIRE MACHINE back qualifies for free warranty service — shipping a bare faulty hashboard is reclassified as a paid out-of-warranty repair. iceRiver also disclaims any performance difference between a repaired hashboard and the original (§3.8).", "void_triggers": "Read this as two distinct regimes, because iceRiver's own terms separate them. §4.2 \"Non-Repairable Conditions\" = service REFUSED outright, at any price: IMMERSION / OIL COOLING is named explicitly (§4.2.1(8), alongside cleaning agents and other substances harmful to handlers), as is damage from third-party overclocking software, POE switch use, corrosion/oxidation, burnt boards, chip pin disconnection, PCB fracture, blocked through-holes, and any product with no original barcode or a forged/swapped one. The out-of-warranty price list reinforces this economically: \"Oil-soaked or water-damaged machines: Priced according to the cost of a new machine.\" §4.3 \"Fee-Based Maintenance\" = still repaired, but you PAY; the terms word it \"Warranty invalidated due to reasons such as\": unauthorized firmware AND hardware modifications; unauthorized firmware or drivers \"including but not limited to firmware that allows users to apply overclocking settings\"; disassembly or modification by anyone not iceRiver or an authorized provider; power, parts or devices not from iceRiver; moisture, water damage, fire, lightning, corrosion, short circuit; over-voltage, under-voltage, leakage; ambient temperature well above or below spec; drops, theft, misuse, negligence, improper installation; products without original barcode or SN label, or with labels altered, defaced or removed; and improper packaging on the return leg (unpacked or without cushioning). So third-party firmware voiding coverage is genuine vendor text, not folklore — but it moves you to paid repair rather than outright refusal. There is NO tamper seal or warranty sticker anywhere in iceRiver's published terms: the physical triggers are the original barcode/SN label and unauthorized disassembly, not a seal. The FAQ adds two softer statements in iceRiver's own wording: using third-party firmware or control boards promising higher hashrate, and mixing control boards between models, \"will affect the machine's warranty\"; a separate FAQ answer on performance upgrades states flatly that if you use third-party firmware for upgrades \"your machine will lose its warranty coverage.\" Sea freight for repair returns is prohibited outright because of moisture exposure (§3.1).", "rma_process": "Account-based repair ticket at iceriver.io/my-account/repair-ticket/ (login required; the ticket also selects your service location from \"the acceptable repair locations we provide\"). Update tracking within 7 days of ticket creation and land the machine at the service location within 15 days, or you bear all loss/damage risk and warranty is judged on actual arrival date. You pay inbound freight; iceRiver pays return freight on valid in-warranty claims. Air only — sea shipment is not allowed. Service is refused if the ticket is missing or wrong, the physical unit does not match the ticket, freight is unpaid, or the box arrives severely damaged (§3.4). Once opened for inspection you cannot demand it back unrepaired (§3.5). Stated turnaround: generally within 7 working days of system-confirmed receipt for in-warranty units, or 7 working days after payment clears for out-of-warranty; longer for bulk. Out-of-warranty quotes must be paid in USD within 3 calendar days. If you are out of warranty and inspection finds no fault, or you decline the repair, there is a USD 30 per-unit inspection fee. Storage fees begin on day 36 after quotation at USD 1.50/day for mining products (USD 1/day other), and at 95 days the unit is deemed abandoned and may be sold to cover fees; a repaired unit that cannot be delivered is deemed abandoned after 60 days. Legal counterparties are BGIN TECHNOLOGIES PTE. LTD. (Singapore) and BGIN TRADE HK LIMITED (Hong Kong), \"separate and independent legal entities,\" each liable solely for the tickets on which it is the service provider.", "regional_reality": "This is the genuinely better case among Asia-based ASIC vendors and it deserves to be said plainly: iceRiver's FAQ states \"We currently have repair centers in Hong Kong, the USA, Canada, and the UAE,\" and the terms let you pick from the acceptable repair locations offered. A Canadian buyer may therefore have a domestic or at least continental drop point rather than a forced Asia shipment — the specific addresses sit behind the ticket login, so confirm yours in the ticket before booking freight. Two real catches remain. First, chain of title: the FAQ states the warranty \"only applies to the original purchaser who bought the machine directly from ICERIVER. Once the machine is resold, warranty responsibility shifts to the reseller.\" Buy from a reseller or the secondary market and iceRiver is not your counterparty. Second, forum: §14.5 sends any dispute to binding arbitration at the Hong Kong International Arbitration Centre under UNCITRAL rules, single arbitrator, seated in Hong Kong — a Canadian buyer has no practical domestic court remedy regardless of where the repair centre sits. Stock ships from Hong Kong by air courier, orders are non-refundable once placed, and a long restricted list (including Mainland China, Russia, Iran, Cuba, Belarus, Venezuela and North Korea) cannot purchase at all; Canada is not restricted.", "consumer_note": "Ask one question before you buy: did this unit come direct from iceRiver, or through a reseller? If it was resold, iceRiver's own FAQ puts the warranty on your reseller, not on them — get that reseller's terms in writing and do not assume the 180 days follows the serial. Run the serial through iceriver.io/warranty-inquiry/ before money changes hands; it is a free public lookup. If you bought direct, open the ticket early and ship fast by air, because the clock starts at handover to the first carrier and the machine must land within 15 days of the ticket. Never send a bare hashboard hoping to save freight — that is reclassified as a paid out-of-warranty repair, so on a heavy KS-class unit you either eat full-machine freight or you eat the repair bill. Know which failures are merely expensive versus fatal: unauthorized firmware or a non-iceRiver PSU means they will still fix it but you pay, whereas immersion, corrosion, a burnt board or a missing SN label means they refuse the job entirely. If you run immersion, treat the warranty as already gone — oil cooling is named as non-repairable and oil-soaked machines are quoted at the price of a new machine.", "confidence": "high", "sources": [ "https://www.iceriver.io/iceriver-after-sales-service-terms/", "https://www.iceriver.io/faq/", "https://www.iceriver.io/out-of-warranty-repair-price-details/", "https://www.iceriver.io/warranty-inquiry/", "https://www.iceriver.io/my-account/repair-ticket/" ], "period_short": "180 days", "clock_short": "Shipment", "slug": "iceriver" }, { "name": "Bitaxe / open-source hardware", "warranty_period": "There is no manufacturer warranty, and that is a structural fact rather than a missing data point. Bitaxe is an open-source hardware DESIGN, published by skot at github.com/skot/bitaxe under the CERN Open Hardware Licence v2 Strongly Reciprocal (CERN-OHL-S-2.0) — a licence that, like all OSHW licences, disclaims warranties on the design itself. bitaxe.org is a project site, not a company: it sells nothing and publishes no warranty, support or RMA terms anywhere. Every warranty on a Bitaxe is therefore the VENDOR's own, and the length is whatever that vendor chose. Worked primary example: Solo Satoshi LLC (a Delaware LLC based in Conroe, Texas) warrants Bitaxe and Nerdaxe hardware for 90 days from delivery under its own published policy; its accessories carry the same 90 days. For contrast, the same policy passes Canaan Avalon units through to a 1-year warranty that runs from the MANUFACTURING date as determined by Canaan, not from delivery — so a unit that sat in a warehouse arrives with part of its year already spent. Treat 90 days as one real data point, not as an industry norm; the periods across the other ~17 vendors are unverified, and at least one listed vendor publishes no warranty terms at all.", "starts_from": "Vendor-dependent, and you must read the specific vendor's policy. Solo Satoshi's clock starts on \"the date of delivery as recorded by the carrier\" — a genuinely buyer-favourable choice, because you do not lose transit time the way you do under a ship-date or manufacturing-date clock. Note the split inside that same policy: products Solo Satoshi warrants itself run from delivery, while pass-through manufacturer warranties run on the maker's terms (Canaan from manufacturing date). Other Bitaxe vendors: unverified.", "coverage": "Vendor-dependent. Under Solo Satoshi's policy, defects in materials and workmanship under normal use, remedied by repair, replacement (new or refurbished) or refund at the vendor's discretion, with total liability expressly capped at the original purchase price. Explicitly NOT covered: consumable parts, specifically fans, thermal paste and cables, unless defective at time of delivery; normal wear; external and cosmetic damage; software issues; and performance variation within tolerances. Also excluded, and important for a hobbyist board that trades hands often: anything purchased from unauthorized resellers or secondary markets is ineligible for both returns and warranty. The warranty is non-transferable and applies only to the original purchaser. Separately, the vendor states it acts as a distributor for certain manufacturers and cannot process warranty claims on those products — for pass-through brands you deal with the maker directly. There is no hashboard/control-board/PSU split here: a Bitaxe is a single small board, so coverage is effectively whole-unit or nothing.", "void_triggers": "Vendor-dependent — the CERN-OHL-S licence governs the design, not your unit, so nothing in the open-source licence gives or removes a warranty on the physical board you bought. Under Solo Satoshi's published terms the exclusions are named in the vendor's own text, not folklore: third-party firmware, overclocking, underclocking, undervolting, altered cooling solutions, and modified power delivery; plus unauthorized modifications generally, improper installation, misuse and abuse, external damage, and products with removed, altered or illegible serial numbers. The vendor's terms page repeats the point directly, warning that overclocking, running third-party firmware and modifying power delivery may damage hardware, reduce lifespan and void warranties. There is a real irony worth naming for buyers: this is open hardware explicitly designed to be inspected, modified and tuned, yet the vendor warranty backing it still excludes firmware changes and clock/voltage tuning. Modifying a Bitaxe is entirely within the spirit and licence of the project and simultaneously outside your vendor's warranty. Warranty-seal language and immersion conversion appear nowhere in any source found here — no vendor examined treats seal removal as a void trigger, so treat seal folklore as unverified rather than assumed.", "rma_process": "Vendor-dependent; there is no central Bitaxe RMA channel and no manufacturer to escalate to. Solo Satoshi's documented flow: contact support with order number and issue, complete requested troubleshooting (photos, video, serials, config, logs — the policy states your cooperation is required to process the claim), receive an RMA number, then ship with the RMA number written on the outside of the package. Watch the deadline: the RMA number is valid for only thirty (30) calendar days from the date of issue. Inspection then decides repair, replacement or refund. Freight: for a confirmed defect the vendor reimburses reasonable return shipping or provides a prepaid label, and covers getting the unit back to you — but prepaid return labels are expressly limited to the continental United States. For non-warranty claims you pay both directions. Out-of-warranty repair is offered at then-current rates, subject to parts availability and technician capacity, by quote. Separately, a 14-day change-of-mind return exists on unused items in original packaging at a 10% restocking fee — that window is for essentially untouched stock, so it is not a substitute for warranty.", "regional_reality": "bitaxe.org's official vendor list carries roughly twenty independent sellers (19 at time of checking) across South America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, India and North America. For North America specifically it lists two Canadian vendors (jabitaxe, lazy-miners) and two US vendors (ix-tech, solo-satoshi). This is the one product here where a Canadian buyer can straightforwardly avoid a cross-border RMA entirely — by buying domestically in the first place. It matters because vendor warranties are geographically scoped: Solo Satoshi's prepaid return labels stop at the continental US border, and its policy states international customers \"are responsible for all shipping costs, customs duties, taxes, and import/export fees associated with warranty claims in both directions.\" Buying Canadian is not automatically buying better terms, though — Lazy Miners (Toronto) is on the official list and advertises manufacturer warranty on new miners but publishes no Bitaxe warranty period, clock or void conditions at all, so domestic here means shorter freight, not documented coverage. The offsetting good news is genuine: a Bitaxe is a small board, not a 15 kg ASIC. Even a worst-case international RMA is ordinary parcel post, so the freight-exceeds-repair-value trap that dominates full-size ASIC warranties largely does not apply. bitaxe.org also provides a \"Report a Vendor\" mechanism (routed to GitHub issues), which is the only community-level recourse in the model, and the site makes no claim to vet or endorse the vendors it lists.", "consumer_note": "Pick the vendor as carefully as you pick the board, because the vendor IS the warranty — there is no Bitaxe corporation to escalate to, and a seller that closes takes your coverage with it. Get the vendor's written warranty length, clock start and RMA terms BEFORE paying: they vary widely and most listed vendors, including Canadian ones, document none of it publicly. Buy from the secondary market and you likely have nothing at all, since resale voids coverage outright and warranties are non-transferable. Accept the honest trade-off too: tuning clocks or flashing custom firmware is the whole point of open hardware and will still void a vendor warranty like Solo Satoshi's, so run a new unit stock until you are satisfied it is not defective, then modify it knowing you have traded the coverage away. At this price point, a board-level repair from an independent shop is often the rational path once the short window closes.", "confidence": "high", "sources": [ "https://www.bitaxe.org/", "https://www.bitaxe.org/buy", "https://github.com/skot/bitaxe", "https://www.solosatoshi.com/return-policy/", "https://www.solosatoshi.com/terms-of-conditions/", "https://lazyminers.com/" ], "period_short": "No manufacturer warranty (structural)", "clock_short": "Per vendor", "slug": "bitaxe" } ], "lessons": [ { "title": "The clock almost always starts at SHIPMENT, not delivery", "body": "Bitmain, Canaan, ElphaPex, Goldshell, iceRiver and MicroBT all run the warranty from the date the unit leaves the factory or is dispatched. Sea and customs time is warranty you already paid for and never had. On a 180-day term with a slow cross-border delivery, a meaningful slice can be gone before the machine is powered on. Bitdeer is the notable exception — its 365 days run from Date of Delivery." }, { "title": "Seal removal and third-party firmware really do void it — this part is not folklore", "body": "People repeat this without a source, so we checked the source. Bitmain's After-Sales Maintenance Policy names it directly: clause 4.3.1(2)(n) voids cover where the \"original warranty stickers ('fragile' labels) [are] altered, defaced or removed\", (h) where anyone other than Bitmain or an authorized provider disassembles the unit, and (k) for damage from unauthorized firmware including an \"over-frequency setting\". Immersion conversion is (f); mixed boards are (p). Opening the box yourself is a real, written forfeit." }, { "title": "You pay to ship it there — every time", "body": "Inbound freight is the buyer's cost in and out of warranty at Bitmain, which also refuses freight-collect parcels and prohibits sea freight outright because of moisture damage. Return freight is covered on valid in-warranty repairs but not on units judged non-maintenance, mixed-board or scrapped. On a low-value or older machine, round-trip freight plus customs can exceed what the repair is worth — which is the honest case for a local bench, and it is the freight math that makes it, not warranty length." }, { "title": "Buying used or from a reseller often means no manufacturer warranty at all, on day one", "body": "ElphaPex limits cover to the original purchaser and strips it on resale; iceRiver's own FAQ voids the manufacturer relationship for units not bought direct; Bitaxe has no manufacturer layer to begin with. Serial-number age is the second question. The first is who you bought it from — which is exactly why a condition-grading standard and an honest repair path matter more in this market than a warranty badge." }, { "title": "The PSU is frequently not covered like the miner", "body": "Canaan grants a 360-day warranty on the AvalonMiner and states plainly that it grants no warranty on the power supply. Bitmain covers an APW-series PSU for 365 days when bought as a part, but gives fans and other loose spares no warranty at all, and a separately purchased control board only 180 days. Check the part, not the machine." }, { "title": "North America is better served than the stereotype suggests", "body": "The \"you must ship 15 kg to Shenzhen\" line is not accurate across the board, and we are not going to pretend otherwise just because we sell repairs. Bitdeer runs a repair centre in Rockdale, Texas with a ticket system and a stated seven-working-day turnaround. iceRiver publishes USA and Canada repair centres and pays the return leg on valid in-warranty claims. ElphaPex and VolcMiner both list Texas depots. The real North American catch is customer-paid inbound freight, customs exposure on the return leg, and resale clauses." } ], "cautions": [ { "note": "icerivermining.com is NOT iceRiver. That domain currently resolves to an unrelated site. The official domain is iceriver.io — worth knowing before you send a serial number or a payment to a lookalike." }, { "note": "ElphaPex's published Canadian service-centre address is internally inconsistent — it combines a Toronto street (Don Valley Parkway) with a Manitoba province and a postal code that is not an assigned Manitoba FSA. We publish it as printed rather than laundering it into \"has a Canadian service centre\". Phone before shipping anything." }, { "note": "Auradine now redirects to velaura.ai and the company is positioned around AI compute rather than mining hardware. No warranty document is published for Teraflux at either domain. Treat any quoted Auradine warranty term as unsourced until the vendor publishes one." }, { "note": "ElphaPex's US depot and VolcMiner's North America depot are published at the same street address in Carrollton, Texas, and both list a Hong Kong centre in the same industrial building. That is an observation about matching published addresses — it suggests shared or contracted depots, and implies nothing about any corporate relationship between the two companies." }, { "note": "MicroBT and VolcMiner do not publish warranty terms openly at all. MicroBT directs you to a per-serial lookup; VolcMiner's after-sales system sits behind a login. A warranty exists in both cases — it simply cannot be read before you own the machine, which is itself worth weighing at purchase time." } ] }