Topic: Bitinstant investigation - community effort. - page 2. (Read 5151 times)

It's still A to B, with intermediaries. Still not rocket science.

What about halting new orders until you've cleared the back log, and then when you start accepting orders, only take a volume you can handle in a reasonable time frame?


You're welcome, and best wishes!

Look thru this thread and you will find plenty of resolved issues!  

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=128314.0;topicseen

I hope you can actually sort out all these issues.


I have seen many threads in the forums about bitinstant 'scamming', at first I thought it was because was not patient enough. However I have read loads of different threads stating the same as this one.


I would like to hear from anyone who have had any past experience with bitinstant and if they resolved the issue.

Our new website which launches soon will address many of the concerns you address here.  In the meantime I need to continue supporting the old website.  Most transactions are not as simple as point A to point B as you state but rather they involve more steps with many other companies.  Thanks for your concern.

Personally I do not have any money outstanding with BitInstant, but they're complaining about growing pains, but that complaint is getting old now. To me it starts to look like incompetency, or a scam. If it's a scam or a ponzi, it's not sure everybody that works for BitInstant even knows this at this point in time.

The way I see it, their operations are not complicated. All payments leave trails. And their aim is to move money from A to B. A customer complaint should be able to be investigated in 15 minutes, if all the info required could be extracted from available resources, now if there's only one person having access to exchange-accounts, bank acocunts and so on, and everything is just forwarded to him (Charlie ?), then it's understandable that people complain because things are resolved slowly.

What there need to be: A ticket system that is updated by the support representatives where a customer can follow his case. There should also be some information about just how many unresolved tickets there are in the system, so customers can get a sense of that something is actually done.

When a customer submits a ticket, he should get a response as quickly as possible, and if his order cannot be resolved there and then, it should clearly state why this is the case, and what's further done with his order.

Also, it's technically trivial to check for available balances on exchanges, and deny customers business (ie. not letting them put in new orders) when and if this is the case.

I would advise all customers to give Bitinstant 14 days to resolve their case, if after this time, the case is not solved, then criminal charges should be brought towards Bitinstant, and complaints should be filled with any relevant trade and consumer organizations. As enough complaints starts coming in, these organizations WILL take action, and Bitinstant WILL face consequences.

If I ran or worked for Bitinstant, I would do my best to ease all the worries of customers, and even limit the incoming order volume until things calm down and the backlog is cleared. At the moment Bitinstant is running their own reputation down the drain.

I was a big fan of BTC before I ever started working at BitInstant.

I would not want to be working here if I thought we were trying to scam anyone.  I am only interested helping this company grow in a manner that we can better handle the incoming volume and keep ALL of our customers happy.  Bitcoin is not always an easy ride but we are all in this together.  BitInstant has a long history in Bitcoin and I hope that in the near future you will see that we will only help Bitcoin and it's community become stronger.

If your ever in NYC and you'd like to discuss the issues we face in person I would love to speak with anyone of you further.  That is...if you can handle me communicating on the forums WHILE we meet in person. 

Ursay, I will say that you are good at attempting to spin all of this.  After the Bitinstant offices are raided and it all comes crashing down, perhaps you should get a job with a PR firm spinning news about dirty deeds done by corporate or political clients .

I understand what a ponzi scheme is.  BitInstant is a technology company under great stress due to the recent rise in demand for BTC.  Just like any technology company we log issues on a daily basis and solve existing issues.  Issues in our queue are not waiting for an influx of new deposits for resolution.  Many issues are customer error and involve various other technical issues which we are always working to fix.

Try adding any positive info to the website you mentioned.  It is not allowed.  You are blocked from the site when you try to do so.  On the flip side of the coin we are not trying to cover up any negative press in a similar manner.  We would rather be fair and resolve the issues that our customers face.

We do a lot of volume.  Your favorite exchange may not still be around.  WE ARE and I am here to help.  You have 300 pages of issues here and eventually they all see a solution.

We are working on improving the company on a daily basis and I thank you for hanging in there while we improve and grow to meet your needs. 

Ursay, whether you know it or not, you are involved in a  Ponzi scheme.  That is the reason such "issues" take so long to resolve.  Come on man.  This isn't "where there's smoke there's fire".  The building is burning down and the flames can be seen for miles.  As you can see on Bitinstantscam.com, nearly half of all transactions are NEVER received.  I suspect that some of these probably will be resolved as cash comes in from new orders and fills the hole from existing orders, but that's a PONZI SCHEME.

Bitinstant's code works programatically.  It used to and it still does whenever you have money.  Blaming technical issues is false and transparent.  People would be much more lenient if they were told the truth.  Maybe Charlie or whomever is responsible for the massive hole in your books would be arrested or sued if the truth came out.  But the company might survive and you might get to keep your job if a public mea culpa is issued and those responsible for the mess are publicly tarred and feathered.  For whatever reason, people still have blind faith in Bitinstant despite overwhelming evidence of misappropriation of customer funds.  There are literally 300 pages of complaints in the main support thread and yet people are still sending money.  That kind of trust is rare and shouldn't be squandered.  But the tumor - whomever it is - must be removed from Bitinstant quickly or you'll all wind up listed on an indictment.

Have you logged your issue with our main support channel?

bitinstant.com/contact

Your order ID # is not coming up in our system so I need more info about your order to help you.

That's exactly what I do. 

new thread in scammer accusations. they might get a tag if they ignore you for a couple of months.

because they've been stalling for over a week.  they probably can't fix the problem, but won't admit it.

i've been waiting 11 days now for a simple mtgox to bitstamp transfer paid with a mtgox coupon code.  they could have just refunded my mtgox coupon code, but didn't.  i've contacted support via the web form, email, telephone(left a message), pm'd Charlie(Yankee), and posted in threads like this one(for example, a reply in this thread on april 12).  i have not even received an acknowledgement that my issue exists--not a single word from support.  i'm literally being ignored on these threads.

see my signature for order information.

URSAY, this is going around in circles, why don't you just look up the reference numbers and check what happened and sort it out ?

yes

Thank you for providing the quote ID with the problem.  We are dealing with a lot of volume and working on improving our customer support.  I apologize for any confusion.  Did you log the correct/BAD issue at bitinstant.com/contact ?

I placed two orders.  I told you this many many days ago.  This is a PM that is in your inbox....

Timeline of my (recent) experience with bitinstant.

April 8th: between 2:20 PM and 2:40 PM Central time I deposited money at a local CVS Moneygram as per the instructions from Bitinstant.com.  I have used Bitinstant many times in the past and am very familiar with the process (no error was made on my part).  I made two deposits, one for ~$400 and another for ~$500 USD.

I went home and realized that I had only been sent ~500 worth of BTC and that the other order did not go through.  I waited a couple hours.

Naturally I tried to get some support from bitinstant.com.  Unfortunately NONE EXISTED.  There was no phone number listed (except one stressed "ONLY FOR EMERGENCIES" and it went to voice-mail) and a button for "live support" that was broken and actually did nothing.  I believe I sent an email to their customer support at this time (if not, I sent one on April 9th... regardless I got no response...not even automated).

Next I found my way to the support forum here...
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=128314.3680    I also PM'ed URSAY and Yankee about my problem.  Here I was assured, by URSAY, that "i was on a list" and that "my order would be escalated.

I waited 1-2 days.  Nothing.  

April 11th (2-3 days after I emailed them...)  I received this:

Thank you for contacting BitInstant support! We are working hard to process your order and resolve your problem. If we need more information from you we will contact you. Otherwise we will process issues in the order in which we received them.

Please understand that increased volume, both on our site and on our partner exchanges, will influence the amount of time that it takes to complete your order. But please rest assured, your funds are safe and will be queued and processed securely. You should expect your funds within 12 hours of depositing
your cash or initiating your transfer. If you have still not received your funds within 24 hours of your transaction time we will escalate this issue for immediate attention.

Please refrain from sending multiple support queries regarding the same issue, it will not expedite our ability to help you and might requeue your request in our system.

Thank you for your patience! Be sure to follow @bitinstanthelp on Twitter for updates about our system queue and any problems we might be having.

I continued to watch the forums for updates, and continued to communicate with URSA and Yankee.  No money for the next couple days.

April 13th  I received this email


Hello Wufoo,

Sorry for the delay. We've been experiencing some technical issues resulting in slight delays. I'm going to forward this over to tech support where they can manually process your order. Please allow for one business day to resolve. Thank you.

---
Sincerely,
Mandrik

This was odd, because my name is not Wufoo.  He also gave me a link to my "open ticket" which is basically a list with all of the information about my failed order. Anyways... So I waited some more.


April 15th

I had continued to communicate with URSAY, Yankee, and the "live support" but nothing was being done.  So I filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau of New york and the Federal Trade Commission.  The BBB said they were waiting from a response from Bitinstant, and I doubt Bitinstant intends to respond.  Ironically BBB and FTC replied to my email (an automated response, but still) immediately... something it took bitinstant 2-3 days to do.


April 17th
So here I am today, still without money and still pissed off.

Yes you just provided me with your successful order info again.  I've shown you proof that you had the funds on the same day you placed the order.  

https://blockchain.info/address/1fiY3FCc8TVDufmxB7q7Hxhz8dHsaLajT

If I am missing something here?  Please point it out to me.

Since we have a dissatisfied customer in this thread, and URSAY is here claiming to help, it would be interesting if the affected customer briefly could outline what he was trying to do.

Ie. money paid from where, supposed to go to where in which form, and how long it is since it was initiated, and when he's been in contact with support and what response he has received.

Likewise it would be interesting to hear from URSAY the response as to why there's been a delay in this particular case, given that URSAY can confirm that it is a legitimate case, I guess he can confirm that by looking up the appropriate Order-ID, also the customer could give proof by showing receipts of some sorts, but that should really not be necessary if he has a valid Order-ID and can confirm that.

Also, if there are cases were a payment is not processed, it's not good enough to state that this has been escalated. It actually needs to be solved, and if it's not solved in 24 hours, the customer should get an automatic note telling him that it's being worked on and is assigned to [employee name], also if there's a holdup, this should be communicated directly to the customer or on the Bitinstant webpage, preferrably both, so if they lack funds on say BTC-E.COM, they should say that all orders pending to fund BTC-E.COM has to wait as much as 3 business days before it will be credited because of lack of funds on that site. This was just an example.

I think the support representatives should have access to the monetary tools to finalize cases on a come-as-is basis. If it's only Charlie that has super-access to everything, I'm afraid that cases will be delayed and even forgotten. Trust needs to be distributed to support employees in the Bitinstant business, escalating a case is simply not enough. Cases must be solved promptly, and if they cannot be solved promptly, the customer needs to get a message as to why this cannot happen.


Immediately upon getting an Order-ID, the customer representative for BitInstant should be able to check the status, and then give feedback to the customer immediately.

For example: We have sent funds to our bitstamp account today, and as soon as it arrives, we will credit your account. We estimate this to happen within 72 hours, and of course the quote you got with us (if applicable) will be honoured.

For example 2: I cannot find your order in the system, it appears to be a problem with our technical routines, it can however be fixed manually, and therefore I have forwarded your case to [insert name] who has the technical ability and permissions to solve the case, and we expect the case to be solved within 48 hours. Please do not inquiry further about the case until that time has elapsed and the quite we gave you will be applicable.

Simply giving a response: "Case has been escalated", leaves the customer in the blue, and he does not know if he should expect a resolution in 4 hours or 4 days.

Also this is damaging your reputation, as we may start to believe that you're not honouring some orders. Which may happen if you stall orders, then some customers may simply just give up. If this is the case, it really is very very bad. I hope it is not the case. But it seems like you need to restructure your current business, or limit the amount of customers that you take on, until the backlog is cleared. I would think most customers would accept the fact that your daily limit has been reached and that you can't take more customers that day. It is better to have 'sorry we don't accept more customers at this poing, try again in 24 hours', than to be accepted and having funds sent in limbo.

Also, it should be quite possible to program the system such as that you don't run out of funds for particular exchanges. If you accept orders 300% larger than the current funds you have in an exchange, you set yourself up for failure. Now, if you accepted 110% or 120%, that would be another thing, as I am sure some of the customers doesn't go through with their orders.

Now - I do not have intimate knowledge about your operations, but I have a very strong sense for logical things, and a good sense as to how to organize stuff. And at the moment, it's quite obvious that your system is not working well, hence all the angry customers.