Obelisk made $13m and is now forcing customers to take its e-waste
I pre-ordered this equipment a year ago from Obelisk and now it’s useless. I asked the company not to ship it — but the founder dumped it on my front door when I was on vacation with my family last week and insisted that “Obelisk still had a legal obligation to deliver the units that you ordered.” What was just a consumer issue is now an environmental one, too. I hope this will get attention from regulatory agencies.
The tl;dr on Obelisk — this Boston company raised $13m in a presale fundraise for cryptocurrency mining equipment called DCR1. The equipment did not meet specs, had long delays, and it technically reached end-of-life status approximately 8 months before shipped. Production should have stopped long ago but Obelisk insisted on going through with it. In my case, I tried to cancel my order a full year ago (in fact, two weeks after I had placed the order) but the company refused cancellations for any reason. The Boston Small Claims Court told me that I they were right because Obelisk convinced the Court that they were just a Kickstarter Campaign. Now have no recourse for the lost money. [see here]
What’s new, now, is that the company shipped this equipment to me —even though I’ve told them repeatedly that I don’t want them to. This practice is occurring with other consumers as well. Other consumers, like me, don’t want to hire attorneys (and I’m seeking no damages), but I would like assistance from an enforcement agency to clean this mess up —quite literally, e-waste — and to require Obelisk to take responsibility for its end-of-life inventory. It’s a serious environmental problem and the responsibility cannot be shifted in this way.
What’s next: I’m writing this as a draft public letter to use with regulatory & enforcement agencies. It’s a first step to figure out how to formulate this request into a more actionable regulatory complaint. I’m unsure yet whether to address this to California regulators (where I live), to Massachusetts regulators, or Federal regulators — all a question of caseload and interest.
To Obelisk: why not take this opportunity to come and pick this equipment up? It’s still sitting right at my front door just where you told the driver to leave it without signature. Please come get it. It’s never too late to do the right thing.
Dear Regulator,
I came home with my daughters from Spring Break and the company Obelisk has delivered $20,000 of electronics that have reached their end-of-life and are considered e-waste. I don’t want them, and I don’t want to incur the expense of shipping the equipment elsewhere or disposing of it on the producer’s behalf. I had specifically requested that the company not deliver this equipment to me but it did anyway, and I believe that it is part of a scheme to shift the burden of disposing end-of-life product from the producer to the consumer.
For background: prior to delivery of this equipment litigated their refusal to allow me to cancel my order in Small Claims. I lost because the company convinced the Court that they were a Kickstarter Campaign. See this Medium article. All of this stuff described here is new and occurred recently.
Why is this e-waste? From an electronics life-cycle perspective, the devices that Obelisk shipped to me reached an end of their useful lifecycle at least eight months ago. In technical terms these products were stillborn and it was foolhardy to complete their production. Having made the decision to produce worthless electronics anyway, instead of taking responsibility to dispose of them and issue refunds, the company is now forcing customers like me to take delivery of the equipment, even when customers specifically request otherwise.
For a sense of scale, Obelisk sent out this mass email on April 3, 2019 notifying them of these final shipments — units that have long been at end-of-life and inefficient without an upsell, upgrade or conversion:
All of these shipments are end of life months ago. It’s irresponsible for an electronics producer to shift the responsibility of handling e-waste to consumers in this way and at this scale.
Some consumers may wish to receive the goods, perhaps because maybe they believe the next bait & switch “upgrade” or “upsell” presale from Obelisk can turn the e-waste into something profitable because of emails like this from December 4, 2018:
When Obelisk was trying to sell me these conversions, upsells and switches — on December 4th, 2018 — my equipment had not yet even finished production, let alone shipped to me.
Current presale of GRN-1
Obelisk’s model is to issue constant presales of product, one after the other, in order to avoid the need for a regulated fundraise. Just this week, Obelisk announced it’s presale of GRN-1 miners, for delivery in October of this year. Obelisk is advertising that these miners will make $106.91 per day in profit.
This $106.91 profit is what drives the presale cost of the GRN1 — just opened this week — and apparently justifies the presale price of these for $10,000 apiece:
My request: It is inappropriate for Obelisk to force delivery of hundreds of pounds of end-of-life-cycle equipment with all the e-waste liability on consumers. Perhaps some consumers may want the upsell and upgrade opportunities — but for me and others that do not, Obelisk should be ordered to take on its responsibility as a producer and dispose of its inventory through proper channels. This should be the case for current orders as well as for the next cycle of pre-order, like the GRN-1.
I would be happy to collaborate in any investigation. An excerpt of the requests that I made to the company Obelisk and the discussion with it’s co-founder David Vorick are noted below.
Prior requests not to deliver
the tl;dr —
- received notice from UPS on March 27th about incoming shipment;
- called UPS same day, they informed me it’s just a label. I put note in record with request not to ship;
- sent an email to the Obelisk customer service entitled “Don’t ship this”
- posted on public forum in a public forum discussion exchange with company founder David Vorick (“Taek”);
- company snubbed nose at the request, asked UPS to deliver without signature while I was on Spring Break with family;
- company founder declared after delivery a belief that they have a “legal obligation” to send me the equipment.
March 27, 2019 on Grin Forum:
On March 27th, 2019 I wrote Obelisk customer support:
April 3, 2019 the equipment was delivered:
Founder David Vorick’s Responses
Conversation with David Vorick (“Taek”) on the Grin Forum on April 4, 2019. I had received the notice of delivery while on vacation and asked him why he’d sent them in spite of my multiple requests to not send them to me. He said:
“Obelisk still had a legal obligation to deliver the units that you ordered.”
“We have not delivered hazardous waste, we have delivered fully functional DCR1 mining machines, per your order.”
[Edit 4/11: typo]
