Topic: Apparently I owe Coinbase.com (Read 3345 times)

Companies need to stop this "BETA" bullshit and stop hiding behind that for excuses when things go wrong. If it was monopoly money and it didn't matter if thousands worth of bitcoin were lost it wouldn't matter. But there is real world value behind the bitcoin here and having BETA attached to a transaction worth several thousand USD is quite stressful. They are basically using the general public for R&D. I follow this thread because I do LIKE coinbase. I'm just a prick some times when I see companies operating behind words like "BETA" and "EXPERIMENTAL" and alike. I do hope they succeed and hope all these type companies succeed. One day I'd want to wake up, log into my account and buy bitcoin with my credit card. Maybe that day will come but who knows when.

Search for the "coinbase trader" project on GitHub. It's a program that will use your API key to continually retry your order until it goes through.

Well yeah I'm sold out on my magick rainbow unicorn cupcakes as well. They do 250gh a watt.

Can you ask them at what time they made their purchase, please? With which frequency do they retry, if it doesn't work the first time?
Maybe I need to get up @5AM and try, or some funny hour like that?

I can attest to it being incorrect. I know many coinbase customers who have bought in the last month. Some of them have had weird issues with their balances, 100% of which were solved by customer service. The fact that they are often sold out shows how much demand there is. They seem to be working very hard to scale up as fast as possible.

That is about on par with the bullshit Amiretard Taaki was sprouting in that recent skynews feature. The one with "Here's where Bitcoin is made" shots about his flea-infested council flat and whatnot.

Where do all the roaches come from?!

Yup. Even more troubling is their silence on everything. They are simply not responding to any emails to [email protected]

I am curious on this one also.  I mean the textbook example (I mean that literally as in any database textbook) of ACID is banking.  NoSQL has a lot of advantages but one area where it doesn't shine is financial transactions.

"Coinbase uses MongoDB for their primary datastore for their web app, api requests, etc. Coinbase is a decentralized, digital currency that is changing the world of payments."

I'll be damned... I am big fan of Mongo but I'd never ever use it for a financial backend. Please, someone from Coinbase come out and refute this for the sake of your company: Are you actually using mongo for the storage of the financial records themselves?

MPEx beta ran February to March 2012. It also had no fees.

What exactly do we need to understand, the perpetual beta with fees? Just more bullshit. You're not ready to serve your userbase, don't release. Externalizing your costs on the users may work for bs webapps nobody cares about, but Bitcoin is different. (This, incidentally, is a lesson the garden variety "web entrepreneur" is more than happy to learn on your coins.)

cmon guy that isnt fair. They are in beta, users should understand that there will be some bugs in the code that need to be worked out.

No. It's a tiny start-up with no competence, no capital, a lot of cheek and the apparent complete obliviousness of the environment they operate in that is so very typical of failures.

It's not a matter of "not being perfect yet" just like the random rapist isn't "not a perfect husband yet". He's not a husband at all, to begin with, and it's by now too late for him to become one. Who marries their rapist?!


Practically speaking this can't happen. Let me explain for the general benefit how the Ycombinator freakshow works:

Step 1. Some strippers / party actors (those guys that show up at preschooler birthday parties dressed up as Ronald McDonald/molest unattended children at Disneyworld) are hired by the hour by some modern equivalent of the ghetto slumlord/slave runner.

Step 2. Partyvan delivers the freaks at a "conference", which is practically speaking a large empty unfurnished room filled with US' version of unemployed youth. These are the kids with no skills and no abilities that push up the unemployment figure to 30% or more in places like Spain. In the US they are nominally "employed" doing things like "social media consultancy", journalism, "research" and the eternal "I'm in a transitional phase right now". Just as long as there's some free chips at the buffet, they've "not had time" to have breakfast yet.

Step 3. The spammers at the head of the ring (such as, for instance, Paul Graham) start their arduous work trying to parlay all this nothing into some money. A representative sample, (email spam):


Step 4. Fund managers have a lot of useless fiat on their hands. A lot means something like a hundred million per partner capita as an absolute minimum. In fact they can't even practically sit down and discuss "small" deals (< 10mn say), because it can't justify their time. So they'll gladly throw a few tens of ks at the spammers, which gets split up among them. The ring leaders will be getting the lion's share, obviously, but even so it pays the freaks' rent (most months) and that's all they really need, the freakshow continues endlessly.

Any sort of improvement, actual or attempted, that may put the fund managers in Step 4 above in the uncomfortable situation of realizing that they've just paid some strippers/costume boys for one evening's entertainment and nothing more is by far too dangerous for the business model to even entertain. Consequently, the freakshow will continue to be a freakshow for the indeterminate future. They won't be doing anything useful ever, but they will forever maintain the impression that who knows, they may be. Next week or something. Just like a Central Casting "hot lawyer chick" looks sorta-lawyery with her glasses and briefcase even if she's never in this life going to win an actual case in an actual court or for that matter even make a legible argument.

You can't make silk purses out of cows' ears, and the freakshow circuit is never breeding any entrepreneurs. Much like the school system, bright people at the end of it get there in spite, not because of the entire process.

I can attest to this being a solid fact.

3 days ago I had 5BTC just show up on my balance with no actual incoming notifications. I checked and checked for two days even on the phone app and it was still there. It disappeared just as quickly. So basically never believe what the balance says~no problemo.

They are a bitcoin selling service that hasn't been able to sell bitcoin in a month or more. I think they need to pull the plug, regroup and figure out a plan. Then when they are ready to roll back out. Only take on customer's they are able to and not anymore. I do like their service but I also get frustrated when you hear/see nothing on a company that obviously has problems.

Coinbase is still in BETA. Dont forget this.

This isnt a huge multinational corporation with hundreds of employees.

Its a small startup with a few employees and some big ideas. They are doing very well to promote and expand BTC.

Coinbase isnt perfect yet, but its getting better day by day - they are figuring out a lot of complex stuff for the 1st time. 

Don't be silly.

lol. knew that was coming


welcome to bitcoin...startups facing too much growth for their own good      and people running to forums to cry wolf just to update their thread a few hours/days later to say ohh nevermind "problem" solved.

SPAM

I logged in the other day and it said I owed them $890. Jut logged in today and it appears fixed. Also got an email a couple days ago from an old transaction I made a couple months ago. Looks like they are getting things figured out.

Yes. MPEx.

gadsdengraphics: They're using MongoDB. You can search for "coinbase" here to verify: http://www.mongodb.org/about/production-deployments/ Using a non-ACID compliant database for a financial application seems like a poor choice; hopefully they aren't using it keep logs of their financial transactions.

That stuff destroys both fiat and bitcoins.

Man im signed up and verified but havent ran a bunch of transaction.. you guys have me worried!

Is there any BTC company out there that is not riddled with problem.. Hope they fix it up.. i was rather thinking they were decet before i say these dialogs here and other threads..

I'm having a similar issue. Just started using coinbase and purchased a small amount of btc on the 12th. Transaction was fine last night I checked still there. today I sign in and it's gone 0.00 btc balance. Sure hope they get these issues fixed and fast. With everyone giving them positive press they're going to get more and more people moving to them because of the ease of use, but problems like this will turn away customers.

I heard, that antiBitcoins emit Bruce-Wagner-radiation.

During the last screw up, was it last weekend?, I got about 8 emails about all of my BTC purchases all at once.  My accounts has not had the correct balance since.  It's often up 30BTC, when it should be at zero.  I honestly think I broke it when I cashed out the first time.

They do not have the know how to run the business they are running.  They are learning on our time and money.

Sounds like a replication/data consistency issue to me.

Anyone know what database backend they're using?

As disconcerting as it would be, this doesn't necessarily mean there's a fundamental problem. Using something like redis to keep details on hand to show the user and handle emails - transactions where money does not move - would make sense. As long as they are using a platform that ensures data consistency for verifying actual transactions, then all is well in terms of the service itself.

Don't get me wrong, though - it's a piss-poor practice from a customer experience standpoint. They *need* to fix it, pronto.

Oh, and the above assumes that they're basically competent and are simply using an immature front-end. I've not used them and don't know enough about them to say if this is true or not. Using a sharded database for the web interface hits my preconcieved notion of a YC-funded startup, though.

Those are the often theorized but rarely seen antiBitcoins.  When an antiBitcoin and a Bitcoin collide they annihilate each other and are converted into energy.  Little known fact is that rogue antiBitcoins are the most common cause for wallet "corruption".

A serious question: why do people use this service?

seems their email notifications is sending out a backlog of notifications  

i woke up to emails saying i had a total of 40ish btc  was      then saw they were emails for transactions in February  


edit: not sure on the negatives though lol. ask them? i'm sure they'll reply... but im also sure you came straight to the forum (maybe you waited an hour after sending them an email?) 

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/possible-phishing-involving-coinbase-160127

I just got an email in saying that someone had transfered in 10+ bitcoins, but when I logged in to check, I think it was sending about an old transfer I made months ago. As it did not show any bitcoins :-(

Phil

this just happened to me too. . . says I owe them 11.1 btc... (but balance should be zero). it's like they are summing all of the withdrawals without considering the deposits/purchases! not exactly reassuring. . . .

I don't know, I withdrew 4 coins the other week, but it says I withdrew 4 more on the 19th, which I didn't.  I also have more on the way so I'm interested to see how it reacts.  I trying to put a ticket in but server always laggin.  Must be getting hit hard...

How did that happen?

How big can they screw it up?