
Sent $35,104.11 USD to CoinBase. Never received Bitcoins - mgrunin
This story dates back to December 8th when I initiated an ACH transfer with CoinBase.com for a total sum of $35,104.11. On that very same day, the system informed me that I would be credited with the bitcoins come December 13th.<p>December 13th came by and it was this past Friday. No coins ever came in, the only thing CoinBase did was lock in a price for me @ $868.91. Again, they locked in a price and didn&#x27;t give me coins on the day they told me they would deliver the coins.Ever since the 13th, my transaction page has been showing the following:<p>http:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;R2qEn8E.png<p>As you can tell, the funds cleared their end on the 11th. BUT... it still says pending for crediting the coins.&lt;p&gt;This is how the history page looks like:<p>http:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;BQ4fUwZ.png<p>Just take a look at that...it actually says that the transaction has been completed here.<p>Let us now look at the email conversation:<p>http:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;6SQht98.png<p>http:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;eNlIS0V.png<p>I gave their team eight hours to get back to me and settle the issue. They have now missed that deadline so I am taking this matter a bit public. Further avoidance by them will lead me to make a few calls to news stations. I have the right contacts to easily put myself in the media.<p>Now the real dilemma for me here is the fact that while CoinBase.com has locked in a price for me, because they have failed to deliver I cannot sell my coins at any rate. Bitcoins could drop down to $200, and only then might they deliver the coins. The issue at that point is that I would be down a crazy percent already. If they had delivered the coins on the 13th as they had initially promised to, there would not be this issue.&lt;p&gt;Give me a break, the company just secured $25m in VC and this is how they are treating their clientele.&lt;p&gt;
======
barmstrong
Brian from Coinbase here. Sorry for the delay on that - definitely not the
customer experience we are striving for.

We should have things squared away for you by end of day.

Edit: your bitcoin credit has now been processed. It looks like as we were
performing server upgrades last week a handful of jobs didn't run as normal.
We should have certainly caught it and responded sooner so that was our fault.
My deepest apologies for the delay and trouble on that. We've credited $50
worth of bitcoin to your account for the trouble, as a small way of saying
thank you for bearing with us.

Edit2: we'll push through the bitcoin credit at today's price instead of the
original buy price (which should be in your favor) since the mistake was on
our part. Sorry again for the trouble!

~~~
seldo
Forget the difference in the exchange rates. Are you saying _you have no
system in place to monitor if transactions execute successfully_? I'm not
trying to be hyperbolic but that's really shocking for a company that is
trying to play a role as a financial institution.

~~~
slg
>that's really shocking for a company that is trying to play a role as a
financial institution.

That is probably the scariest part about the current Bitcoin community. Many
of the big names are simply "playing a role". We have no idea of their
technical expertise, the viability of their software, their USD/Bitcoin
reserves, how they plan to address disputes like this, or even whether they
are skimming of the top.

~~~
seldo
I mean, MtGox stands for "Magic The Gathering Online Exchange". They were
literally set up to sell trading cards. The whole "being the biggest bank in a
new $6bn+ economy" is a pivot. The whole system is crazy. But even by those
standards, taking 35 grand and _not noticing_ you didn't give them what they
paid for stands out.

~~~
nikatwork
Aww, you guys are so cute. You think banks have this stuff under control?
Auditors will "find" hundreds of millions of dollars of missing assets on the
regs.

Many banks are powered by duct tape and loose Excel spreadsheets. That's why
things like Basel exist.

~~~
srdev
Worked at a bank. They have better processes than this. Not gonna say they're
perfect, but they can handle balancing their books and not dropping
transactions. They certainly don't use a non-ACID PoS like Mongo.

Excel was over-used in many places, but was not used for day to day
transactions and operations.

Yet again, bitcoin apologists inaccurately claim (lie) that banks are actually
worse to excuse failings by "their" services.

~~~
remon
Worked at a bank as what? Working at a bank clearly doesn't make someone an
expert on their IT infrastructure. The actual financial transaction
infrastructure isn't ACID.

~~~
srdev
As a software developer on corporate credit card applications, dealing with
managing transactions, accounts, and restrictions. Our infrastructure was
ACID. We certainly wouldn't have used experimental, flaky datastores like
Mongo, and shit was not processed using Excel.

No-one is an expert on every part of a bank's infrastructure -- its too big
for that. But definitely, we had software requirements, as a matter of IT
policy, that kept stuff like MongoDB out of production.

~~~
remon
Yeah, so, you don't work on financial infrastructure. That stuff is almost
exclusively eventually consistent. And I wasn't arguing that you should use
MongoDB or anything else instead. Merely that claims that ACID is the holy
grail of financial software is a myth propagated by people that do not know
how international financial traffic works.

------
justin66
> Further avoidance by them will lead me to make a few calls to news stations.

Eek. The best case scenario is that you'll get a news blurb on local TV where
you're portrayed as a sucker. "Weird online currency thing does weird stuff in
the way you'd expect weird online currency thing to do, and look at this
greedy rube who got sucked in and lost it all! Film at 11."

~~~
seobeaver
Clearly you don't know who mGrunin is. I'd do a little research before making
comments like the one above.

~~~
xauronx
This guy?
[http://instagram.com/p/h_z7OEkWEs/](http://instagram.com/p/h_z7OEkWEs/)

I mean, I don't know who he is but I generally wouldn't fuck with someone who
has $35k to drop on pretend money. Anyhow, main stream news can be foolish,
regardless of who the subject is.

~~~
seiji
His linkedin page sends us to this awesome article too:
[http://sfctoday.com/news/1025-sfc-senior-already-a-
financial...](http://sfctoday.com/news/1025-sfc-senior-already-a-financial-
trader.html)

Edit: Oh gawd, at the end he actually says "you only live once."

Edit2: "Money drives me completely ... I've gotten so used just being able to
go anywhere without looking at any price tags ..."

Let's go ahead and [dead] this thread. Forget it ever happened. (or make a
movie out of it)

~~~
anigbrowl
Pop culture history in the making, indeed.

ಠ_ರೃ

------
PeterisP
To all of you who say that Bitcoin shouldn't be regulated - this is what it
results in.

If it was any regulated financial deal - say, purchase of stock or Yen - then
there are clear rules on how to handle that, namely, you'd be entitled to at
least compensation for any decrease between the 'locked' price at the agreed
settlement date and the real settlement, whenever it may happen, and the
interest for the period. Repeated such situations would result in a rapid
audit to verify if they really have enough assets to pay out all their debts,
and if not, shut them down immediately.

Now you're quite screwed, while coinbase has taken a profit on this (and
probably other) deals by delaying these settlements. And what are you going to
do if you don't get all the losses covered? Your options are quite limited.

~~~
jonpaul
No way. Regulation won't solve these sort of things. It will just make the
barrier to entry that much higher. Now people have a voice more so than ever
before. If companies don't act appropriately, people can post stories and
complaints online. The companies reputation will then suffer. This is exactly
what's happening here.

~~~
PeterisP
We've had some recent bitcoin companies simply shutting down/running away
while taking the customers' stored funds. Sure, they lost reputation - was
that any help to the depositors?

And from history of 'classic' banking we know very well that the 'lost
reputation' doesn't work - we've tried that all over the world in the earlier
times, it resulted in people creating new 'fresh clean reputation' companies
one after another and sucessfully repeating such things over and over.

Raising the barrier of entry is the whole point - if you're unable to meet
your agreements, you should be kept far, far away from that business
permanently.

~~~
jonpaul
Tell me how regulation stopped Enron. Tell me how regulation stopped the 2008
financial crisis with the housing bubble. These all happened in traditional
markets.

You're right that some Bitcoin companies have screwed their users. Consumers
need to educate themselves on who they're doing business with. A lot of these
Bitcoin companies operated anonymously without impunity. Coinbase is an
entirely different case. They are a US based company with VC backing. You know
who you are conducting business with.

If you as a consumer want to purchase something from a company that isn't
transparent, you don't know where their located, and don't know who's behind
the operation, it doesn't matter whether you send bitcoins or your credit card
number. It's still stupid. Common sense must prevail somewhere.

~~~
hbags
And laws against theft don't prevent all theft so theft should be legal.

I will never, in my life, understand why so many Libertarians take the
argument that if some criminal might engage in a crime, then everyone should
be allowed to do that same thing. It's the stupidest argument possible, yet
you all parrot it unquestioningly. It blows my mind.

~~~
jonpaul
Wow. I encourage you to study logical fallacies. In particular:
[https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/strawman](https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/strawman)

I never held the position that you stated.

~~~
hbags
Wow. I encourage you to study written English communication.

Your writing clearly implied that regulation is useless because sometimes
criminals evade regulation. If you were capable of understanding how
communication works, you'd admit this.

Further, I encourage you to learn how not to be a jerk. because you are one,
and it undermines any value that you might have, by ensuring that no sane
person (who disagrees with you on you on any point) will ever want to have a
discussion with you. That said, I can see where an ignorant jerk like yourself
might consider it a feature that only people who agree with you completely are
capable of having a conversation with you.

~~~
jonpaul
I'm sorry. Please accept my apology as that wasn't my intent. As a student of
both writing and communication, I subscribe to the belief of that a person
should write not to be understood, but to not be misunderstood. Clearly I've
failed at that.

My point was that I don't think that regulation is the answer. I honed in on
the idea that regulation has failed in the past (I have more research to do
here) and thus, maybe alternatives should be considered. I wasn't trying to
imply that because laws don't prevent criminals, that we should not have laws.
Obviously, that's ludicrous. It's ludicrous because regulation != laws, or the
principle of having laws. I think we can safely say that regulation may be an
implementation of a law, or a specific law. Much like pizza is food, but not
all food is pizza. Follow me so far? So, philosophically, if we have a bad set
of laws, I wasn't suggesting that we throw out all laws, I was suggesting that
we look for alternatives to the bad set of laws. To bring it home a bit more
to other areas in modern society, it'd be like if I said that I think the war
on drugs is failure, "tell me how the war on drugs has helped stopped drug
abusers and criminals" and then you were to respond with your same response of
"And laws against theft don't prevent all theft so theft should be legal."
when that clearly wasn't my position.

Does this clear up my position a bit? Anyways, sorry I came off as a jerk.

------
sheetjs
From their terms of service:

> Coinbase does not guarantee the value of bitcoin. You acknowledge that the
> price or value of bitcoin can change rapidly, decrease, and potentially even
> fall to zero. You acknowledge that holding bitcoin is high risk. You agree
> to deliver the agreed upon payment for bitcoin upon confirmation of an
> order, regardless of changes in bitcoin value.

> Coinbase will make reasonable efforts to ensure that requests for electronic
> debits and credits involving bank accounts, credit cards, and check
> issuances are processed in a timely manner but Coinbase makes no
> representations or warranties regarding the amount of time needed to
> complete processing because Coinbase services are dependent upon many
> factors outside of our control, such as delays in the banking system or the
> U.S. or international mail service.

It's possible that Coinbase is experiencing delays, and their terms of service
give them a clear escape path. It sucks that they are holding onto your money,
but consider this a learning experience: always start small, make sure
everything smells right, and then scale up. If they were holding onto 35.10
rather than 35.10K, I suspect you would react differently

~~~
fleitz
Fuck their shitty TOS, call the SEC and have them investigate, they need to
comply with the law.

They are acting as financial services provider and must be in compliance with
those laws.

The law gives the OP a clear resolution.

There's a pretty clear resolution here, give the customer back their money
because your business doesn't actually work, or give the customer the coins at
the most favorable price.

~~~
sheetjs
BTC exchanges aren't regulated in the same way as stock exchanges. Coinbase
isn't a BD AFAICT, so they don't have the same type of fiduciary
responsibilities. They also aren't registered as a bank or as a NY private
bank, so they aren't subject to FDIC or other banking regulations.

They are much closer to ebay than to IB

~~~
fleitz
If you get it in front of a judge miraculous things can happen, if a judge
finds as a matter of fact that they are an exchange than suddenly their more
like IB than eBay. By guaranteeing a price they are acting as a counterparty
to the transaction.

That's the whole point of this, CoinBase doesn't want to be like IB so they
should refund the customer his money rather than acting like a fraudulent IB.

There are plenty of more serious operations like
[http://bitcoincapitalpartners.com](http://bitcoincapitalpartners.com) that
take client money seriously.

------
tga
For anyone considering using Coinbase or similar services where you have to
pay via bank transfer -- think twice and take this as a serious warning that
you have almost no protection if they screw you/up somehow.

I have a problem with Coinbase for a much smaller sum (luckily): ordered at
what I was convinced was a fixed price and just received less BTC at a much
higher rate. Their customer support refuses to help (or even to cancel the
transaction) and banks just don't get involved in direct transfers on your
side, the way they would do on a credit card transaction.

Short of going to the police and lamenting on forums (hello!), there is
nothing you can do.

~~~
gaadd33
Why can't you file a small claims lawsuit? It should cost you about $50 and a
few hours of your time.

~~~
sequoia
"a few hours" lol. Also, where? Summon whom to court? If I were coinbase I'd
simply ignore such a suit.

~~~
gaadd33
If its not enough money to spend a few hours on, then I'm not sure its enough
money to complain about either.

Where? Wherever you are, assuming in the US? I'm sure they could motion for
dismissal under their TOS but at that point they will have probably taken note
and fixed your issue.

Summon whom? You file suit against the corporate entity, this is how most
lawsuits against corporations work. They get a notice and its up to them to
either show up or not.

So if they ignore it and you get a default judgement, you can then use the
judgement to collect from their bank since I doubt they are structured to hide
money across international lines. Or you can just sell the judgement to a
collections agency and let them deal with collecting it. Either way, if they
ignore it you will likely get your money back. (Again this all assumes both
you and Coinbase are in the US, if either of those isn't true then its
possible for them to ignore it and have no issues)

------
chollida1
Here is the problem with coinbases tactics.

Consider buying $1,000 worth of bitcoins...

Coinbase can tell you your price.

Coinbase can then just wait, and wait and wait, weeks on end for the price to
dip down. They can then buy the coins at the lower price and deliver them to
you voila, they profit from you. This is very dubious.

If the price goes up they then buy at your price + some percent of their
commission so they don't lose money, either way.

~~~
infinitone
Yeah but what if you decide to withdraw while they are waiting for the price
to dip?

~~~
sequoia
You can't because your coins aren't "available." I've only used coinbase once
and haven't done more than buy btc, but it did take several days for the coins
to become available (presumably for bank transfer to clear), during which time
the price dropped by about $100/btc. I'm not mad about this- it was clear at
time of purchase that I'd have to wait for transaction to clear, but >3 days
would have upset me.

------
buss
They've had some problems recently. I'm now at day 12 waiting for an "instant
buy" to clear. The ACH transfer cleared over a week ago but I still don't have
my coins. (Support #67989 for anybody at coinbase)

It's weird, I performed several small buys in a row just in case this exact
thing happened. I got 5/6 purchases but this one is stuck in some weird state.
I really like coinbase; they're just having some trouble handling the huge
increase in volume recently.

~~~
buss
And all it took was a single comment on HN to get it resolved. Thanks!

~~~
alttab
You are really thanking them for that?

------
nathas
I hate to be that guy, but Coinbase is pretty clear that you'll get your coins
_eventually_.

If I were doing thousands in transfers, I'd absolutely be using an exchange.
They're also a small start up, funding or not.

Their support team has always come through and usually eats the cost
difference if it was a bump on their end. I'd just wait it out.

~~~
d23
Can you explain the difference between Coinbase and an exchange? I'm afraid
now that an order I put in could be futzed up.

~~~
nathas
Sure. Coinbase, as far as I know, sources its coins from the exchanges (Mt
Gox, Bitstamp, btc-e, etc). I could be wrong about this.

Coinbase acts as a nice middleman where you can securely link your bank
account, and for this convenience Coinbase charges you a higher fee than the
exchanges. They procure your coins, handle the financial leg work, and
suddenly you have access to bitcoins.

I wouldn't worry about it. I've used both quite a bit. It was a huge pain in
the ass to gain access to Mt Gox. Coinbase is just better imo. The support
team always comes through for any problems.

------
margaux
Not to shamelessly self promote, but the best way to buy/sell large amounts of
BTC is directly, without going through an exchange/retail site. It is faster,
cheaper and definitely a better customer experience. I've worked at two
bitcoin exchanges so I know from experience. Now I am arranging private deals
between a buyer and a seller. Here is the plug now though
www.BitcoinCapitalPartners.com

~~~
ciupicri
How can I be sure that the other person won't run away with my money?

~~~
margaux
I use a btc escrow for non trusted sellers

------
mgrunin
The situation has been appropriately resolved by CoinBase. I would like to
thank Brian for making this right. It is unfortunate that this situation had
to be dealt with in the public light, but this was my last resource before
contacting lawyers.

I will answer other comments later tonight.

Thank you HackerNews.

\- Martin

------
baddox
> Now the real dilemma for me here is the fact that while CoinBase.com has
> locked in a price for me, because they have failed to deliver I cannot sell
> my coins at any rate. Bitcoins could drop down to $200, and only then might
> they deliver the coins.

It's scary that they can literally guarantee constant wins for themselves by
choosing how long to delay the delivery of Bitcoins to customers.

~~~
msand0621
I don't think they're maliciously delaying the delivery of bitcoins. I just
think they need to hire more customer support reps to deal with problems like
these in a timely manner when they arise.

~~~
WoodenChair
Do you really believe these systems are so non-automated? Of course the price
swings must have something to do with their delays!

~~~
bushido
Actually if there was a delay alone this would not really be illegal and could
be forgiven.

If you look at:
[http://i.imgur.com/R2qEn8E.png](http://i.imgur.com/R2qEn8E.png)

They clearly quoted a transaction price for the BTC conversion. This price
should be calculated as:

=> (rate at which the bitcoin have Already been purchased) + (costs incurred
by coinbase) + (fees owed from client)

The rate Can Not under any circumstance be quoted unless the transaction has
already been executed.

If the trade(s) were not executed, Coinbase broke laws that they are governed
by regardless if bitcoin is regulated or not.

If the trade(s) were executed, Coinbase still broke laws(albeit different
ones) that they are governed by regardless if bitcoin is regulated or not.

------
sard420
I'll say this again about coinbase, I'm convinced they are playing the market
on peoples investment. I bought when bitcoin was starting to rocket, they tied
my money up for weeks, bitcoin doubles in that time. Then after that I get a
sorry letter and my money back. What was my money doing in that time? Probably
making them money.

~~~
powertower
Something tells me if the price went the other way (in coinbase's favor), the
situation would have not ended with refunded money.

------
Moral_
I feel bad for you, honestly. But serious question as well: Would you have
went public with this if the price hadn't fallen dramatically? Perhaps if it
went back up to $1500 a coin would things be different? Either way I hope
things get resolved for you.

~~~
makomk
If the price went back up to $1500 a coin, Coinbase would cancel his
transaction whether he wanted them to or not despite the supposed price lockin
(and return his dollars in their own sweet time). Their usual justification is
"excessive risk".

~~~
Istof
They also have an history of halting Bitcoin sales when it's value drops too
much.

------
agib
I also have some very strange behavior going on in my account:
[https://twitter.com/agibralter/status/411685377015947264](https://twitter.com/agibralter/status/411685377015947264)

Basically they're showing a transaction of selling BTC that I never made or
authorized. Also, it's showing up in my transaction list but not in my
history...

They said they're looking into it, but I haven't heard back in days.

~~~
agib
Update: I just logged in and saw the coins returned to me as a new, separate
transaction. Very strange. Still no word from customer service.

------
seanalltogether
HN is really getting overloaded with bitcoin noise the past couple weeks.
Honestly this just doesn't feel like the right venue for advice and support
about this stuff.

------
GarrettBeck
This is the same situation as Facebook's IPO with NASDAQ. Orders were placed
$40, then cancelled, then filled at $40 six hours after the market closed (at
which point Facebook was already trading below its IPO price).

Unless you are a massive financial institution with some serious clout/legal
department, I recommend you cut your losses and move on.

Your time is much more valuable spent doing something else rather than the
time you will spend trying to recover $X,XXX

~~~
ajju
Not sure if this is sarcasm, but $35,000+ is a HUGE sum of money for even the
decamillionaires I know.

~~~
GarrettBeck
$35,000 is a huge sum of money. I'm suggesting he sell the 40 or so bitcoin he
purchased immediately at market price (~$550), cut his loses and move on. By
doing so he would limit the damage and would only lose ~$12,700. Bitcoin will
continue to fall and he will continue to lose money.

He won't get his money back from CoinBase and he is losing money every second
he holds his bitcoin.

Losing money sucks. It happens to everyone who invests, gambles or takes a
risk. Take your medicine, learn for your mistakes and be better tomorrow.

~~~
GarrettBeck
$549...

~~~
ffrryuu
Bitcoin's been extremely bouncy, there is a chance that it could re-test
resistance at around 700-800, or it could retest support at $300 short term.

------
zt
ACH transactions are reversible FWIW.

~~~
mgrunin
Yes, I am aware of that. I told them in my last email that I will be reversing
my ACH if they continue to ignore me.

~~~
dusing
you should just get it reversed as soon as possible. Combined with the fall of
BTC you are lucky to have a "out".

Also once you threaten the reversal there isn't much reason for them to work
with you. What if they give you BTC tomorrow and you reversed the ACH already.

~~~
yapcguy
Second this. Get your money back, live to fight another day. Why ask for
delivery and suffer a loss?

------
7Figures2Commas
Welcome to counterparty risk, Bitcoin style.

~~~
codegeek
shouldn't it be more like Market Risk ?

~~~
7Figures2Commas
In this case, the counterparty to the transaction appears unable to meet its
obligations, at least according to the OP. That's counterparty risk.

~~~
codegeek
But the ACH is completely reversible. So not really a risk specially
considering that price has fallen :).

~~~
7Figures2Commas
There are rules that govern ACH reversals. My understanding is that reversals
are permitted in cases where the amount transferred was incorrect or the
transfer was not authorized.

As another poster on this thread noted, Coinbase's terms of service appears to
give them great flexibility in processing transactions. The OP, on the other
hand, seems to have the understanding that Coinbase was obligated to complete
his transaction within a very specific period of time.

This is a dispute between two parties to a transaction. One is arguing that
his counterparty failed to meet its obligations; it appears the other has the
ability to argue that under its terms of service those supposed obligations
never existed. Given the amount of money involved, either party might be
motivated to resolve this matter through legal action.

Again, this is all an inherent part of the wonderful world of counterparty
risk.

------
scrame
I bought 1 a few weeks ago. I got a notice last week that they rejected it and
would be returning my money. They have still not returned my money, and their
customer service emails just return an automated "we are looking into it",
with no follow-up.

It seems like they take orders as long as they make money (a friend ordering
the day before took a loss and they accepted his payment no problem). Looking
around their forums, the arbitrary rejections seem very common and make the
company seem quite scammy.

------
tylerlh
FWIW, I made a small transaction with Coinbase not long ago and while they
"guaranteed" the coins would be in my account by a certain date, they didn't
actually deposit them until 2-3 days after that. Struck me as pretty odd.

Hope your situation gets settled quickly.

------
keeran
If you search for 'coinbase' on
[https://bitcointalk.org/](https://bitcointalk.org/) you get a sea of people
complaining about the same or similar issues - stay well clear.

------
jbverschoor
Tbh... I would still reverse it. I refuse to do business anymore with
companies that do not respond.

------
drcode
HN is now a coinbase support forum?

Why would you put that much money into a service that isn't a true bitcoin
exchange? Do you realize they're an extra middleman that is likely to add more
delays to any transaction?

If you look at reddit.com/r/coinbase you'd know this sort of thing is a common
occurrence with coinbase- Why are you surprised this is happening? Seems like
they have a history of this sort of thing that should have warned you of the
risks you were taking. Why give them your business if they're known to do this
type of thing?

If people keep supporting businesses that act in a manner they're not happy
with then what is the incentive for anyone to create a better alternative?

~~~
justincormack
All HN posts are now about bitcoin, so yeah I guess its a support forum now.
Its quite hilarious that people are prepared to throw that much money away,
but hey.

------
ffrryuu
I got some Tulips you can buy to make up your loss on.

------
bsiddiqui
Coinbase customer service sucks - I rarely get a response, given I've never
been this screwed over

------
kjackson2012
Do an ACH chargeback as quickly as possible, don't be an idiot and wait for a
response, otherwise you may miss your opportunity to walk away without losing
$10k.

------
yeahwhateverbro
So Coinbase put me in a similar situation but they haven't bothered to respond
to any of my emails thus far. Is this where I contact Coinbase customer
support?

~~~
midas007
founders@coinbase.com :)

------
issdispatch
I am really confused and frustrated. I sent my first ever BUY through
Coinbase. I got my checking all set up. Made my purchase on 12-16-2013(an
earth shattering .12 coins $100 bucks) No biggie. On 12-17-2013 the US funds
left my bank account and off to coinbase. Alas... All I need to do is wait now
until the 20th to spend my now 30 dollar loss due to market. Well here it is.
The 20th of December somewhere in the world so I go to look at my account and
there are no coins. Further inspection of this I find my transaction was
canceled. No explanation. Just a big red canceled. Wheres my money now? I
really want to be an advocate and intend to move WAY more than $100.00 into
the bitcoin market place but seriously? Just a hundred dollar transaction that
made one of their customers slightly irritated? Im glad I DIDN'T trust them
with serious cash like the originator of this post! Come on... GUYS! Don't
take the fun out of all this! Figure it out! (Because if its not fun... It
certainly wont be VIABLE!)

------
kolev
I've had poor experiences with Coinbase as well, hit major bugs, which cost me
hundreds. The only reason people use them is that they are the only choice at
the moment. Can't wait for more alternatives such as Circle to launch! In
cases like this , regulation and compliance don't sound like something
negative!

~~~
cromulent
> The only reason people use them is that they are the only choice at the
> moment

Has anyone tried Kraken.com ?

Registered there, but no transactions yet. Serious question.

~~~
mrud
Yes, I personally like them. I don't have much money with them but it works.

The only minor problems are the verification time and the API rate-limits.
They don't publish the rate-limits. :/

------
fnordfnordfnord
This was posted to imgur a few hours ago. I have no idea of its authenticity,
but hopefully they're just really busy, and will do the right things. Good
luck.

"Coinbase being a bro - saved me $400"
[http://imgur.com/r/Bitcoin/E52ILfD](http://imgur.com/r/Bitcoin/E52ILfD)

------
heavymark
I'd go straight to anyone and anyone who will listen. Companies don't escalate
until they need to. HackerNews is big for us technies but you need to blow up
their twitter,facebook, retweets daily as every day your going to lose value
as bitcoin continues to drop with the news about china.

------
coinhoarder
I'm in the same exact situation, except for the amount of BTC (I purchased
10BTC). The ACH was cleared on Friday Dec 11th and the message read "Your
bitcoin will arrive by the end of day on Friday Dec 13, 2013.". The actual
coins didn't show up until mid-day Dec 18th, 5 days later and $400 below the
Friday's levels. Can I have my purchase price adjusted as well? Or Coinbase
have some sort of a preferential treatment program? My Case # is 73898.

------
WoodenChair
Apparently mgrunin's website was also hacked. Not his week.

------
yeukhon
Leaking the last four digit of your bank account can be dangerous.
[http://www.nbcnews.com/id/44231957/#.UrKovi95F7M](http://www.nbcnews.com/id/44231957/#.UrKovi95F7M)

Though old news god wonders what other services still do this.

We know your name is Martian and if we spend enough time we might be able to
identity your true identity and possible to start trying things.

If you want to hide your identity, you probably should just use something more
distinct.

Just saying.

------
bachback
If you have serious money to transfer into BTC, this is not the way to go.
Coinbase essentially is an intermediary, not a wallet. The whole point of
Bitcoin is to get of intermediaries as are inefficient and make profits along
the way. Bitcoin will solve this, it will just a take a couple of years. Btw,
online-wallets neglect the working of the algorithm at some point. The system
depends at the moment depends that people know what they are doing.

------
AH4oFVbPT4f8
Did you have prior experience with CoinBase and buying bitcoins from them?

If not, why didn't you start with 1k to make sure the transaction went
smoothly before sending over 35k?

~~~
mgrunin
I have purchased from them before, to a tune of $18k over several different
transactions.

------
sergiotapia
His website is hacked by some terrorists:
[http://www.winningportfolio.com/](http://www.winningportfolio.com/)

------
C1D
I get you're angry about the bad customer service but dude, you need to get
off your high horse and realise you're not that special. I don't know who you
are and don't care and googling you name doesn't come up with anything
special. Get over your self, unless you're a real celebrity no one will care,
even if your story made it on to tv (which I highly doubt).

~~~
ceejayoz
Why do you have to be special to get customer service?

~~~
shortstuffsushi
I wouldn't say you need to be special to receive it, but resorting to
threatening to expose them to the media seems desperate and childish.

------
rjbwork
Hey, do you know your website has been hacked?

------
sifarat
Now take my sincere advise, take a trip to Hawaii for couple of weeks. don't
sell them fast. Once you are back, you will either have another trip, or just
cash out successfully. end.

As for coinbase, _Well played Sir_ , this comes from a broker but in a
different field. every fucking pun intended.

------
camus2
Can we say coinbase is basically shorting bitcoin with its customer's money ?
(it's a question.)

------
thinkcomp
The official way to file a complaint is with the California Department of
Business Oversight, and the form is here:

[http://www.dbo.ca.gov/forms/tma/Form2120_English-
Spanish.pdf](http://www.dbo.ca.gov/forms/tma/Form2120_English-Spanish.pdf)

------
wintermute2013
mgrunin isn't alone.

I have been having severe issues with Coinbase recently. Attempted to sell a
small amount (less than 1) Bitcoin, and it has been nearly a month now -- no
money in my bank. According to their own customer support representative, the
transaction should take 2-7 business days. It has been more than double that.
I've inquired again as to what the heck is going on, but I'm still waiting for
a response. Unless they can get their act together and complete the
transaction soon, I don't know if I'd trust Coinbase with my money.

------
frodopwns
My first purchase with Coinbase took 7 full business days (not far off from
what you waited). Other than that my experience with Coinbase has been 100%
positive...extremely fast and reliable service.

------
miguelrochefort
> Further avoidance by them will lead me to make a few calls to news stations.
> I have the right contacts to easily put myself in the media.

Cringe.

------
arun_bansal
Since it has taken this long, I guess you would rather have the lock price
removed. It's around ~551.57 vs your original 868.91

~~~
mgrunin
Yes, and that is only because they didn't deliver the coins on the day they
locked in the price even though they said they would deliver then.

~~~
arun_bansal
I too had a sour experience with them, took more than 7 days to transfer coins
after transfer took place.

------
wil421
How could you get that amount of money back to dollars, if lets say the price
doubled and you wanted to sell?

Like back in my bank account dollars.

------
cehlen
Question for mgrunin. In your opinion did CoinBase make things right? If not,
why? If so then can well just drop this!

------
deutronium
Wow, what a disgraceful way to treat people. Certainly a company to steer
clear of then.

------
bsiddiqui
What're your non-Coinbase platforms for purchasing coins?

------
thaifighter
Crap. I was looking at Coinbase. Has this happened to others?

------
_nato_
Yikes! I really hope this gets resolved for you!

------
adizam
Well now I know not to use coinbase :)

------
wavefunction
Speculation is a risky endeavor.

~~~
dragonwriter
Yes, but the usual significant expected risk is in the market value of the
speculative commodity, not whether or not the broker ever bothers to execute
your order.

------
tyang
Bitcoin amateur hour continues.

------
logjam
So wonderful to watch this little drama (complete with breathless appeals to
get the news media involved) play out today on HN, which appears to have
become "Bitcoin News".

A match made in heaven, between this genius financial entrepreneur and this
competent, reliable trading platform, seems to at least sum up Bitcoin nicely,
if not the brainless economic philosophies underlying this horseshit.

~~~
ceol
_> HN, which appears to have become "Bitcoin News"._

Seriously, what's up with this? There are at least two Bitcoin articles on the
front page every day.

I had no idea Coinbase was funded by YC, though. I wonder if there's any
correlation.

------
yarou
This is why I can't take Bitcoin seriously. It's a liquidity depth issue. Much
like HFT, there is a _perception_ that the order book has depth. But there's
no guarantee that you'll get execution at the price displayed. At least market
makers in the past were forced to execute up to a certain amount by
regulation. No such regulation exists here.

------
justinzollars
ouch

------
melling
Those guys in finance don't make or sell anything. They're just greedy. Too
many of the smartest people go into it just to make money... Me on the other
hand, I'm gonna make a difference.

Where can I get me some of those Bitcoins!?

------
iblaine
The guy who bought these coins is a douche. The fact is bitcoins are highly
unstable and he bought them when the price was high(for this week). It is
doubtful he would have had the sense to sell them before todays drop. If he
really believes that bitcoins are a good investment, which I do, then he
should have faith that they will rise in value over time(months, years). It's
speculators like this that buy in when the price is high then immediately
complain about the volatility that give bitcoins a bad name.

~~~
ceejayoz
> It is doubtful he would have had the sense to sell them before todays drop.

Based on... what?

~~~
iblaine
My spidey sense. Plus he bought in at $950 for $25k. Either he's rich or a
gambler.

~~~
alttab
Or at least, temporarily one or the other.

