Topic: Bitrefill is now a scam! (Read 782 times)

It seems that you somehow missed to read the comments below OP. If you did, you should know that op is a newbie who misused the word "scam" after facing an issue with his transaction. I suggest you to read all the comments above, there is nothing to confirm Biterfill as a scam and here the response from official Biterfill representer quted from the first page of this thread:

The title is a little bit confusing and op didn't come back to edit his original post. Please read comments before posting .

Never used bitrefill until recently (and just the one trial for a small gift card) but I actually don't recall seeing the 0 confirmation message. Pretty sure judging from support's answers they just need to update something really old. Though I can't imagine anyone ever accepts anything with 0 confirmation if it's RBF. Anyway the benefits of registering is that you have an account to use up all the unused balances, so yes, I registered =D

Bitrefill's a good name in the business, and from what I can see, they're not scammers. But you're right. They could benefit from improved customer service.

It's definitely not safe for a service to accept a transaction with no confirmations because it is not even in a block. I think sending more bitcoins in a second transaction is safer than accepting RBF transactions but here I'm assuming you can change the outputs of an RBF transaction.

who registers to bitrefill?

lol at that douchey support response. based on my experiences, that guy must have started working there in the last few months. it sounds like they're gonna keep misinforming customers, not realizing how alienating this is. they should at least learn how to word their prompt in proper english and stop accusing customers of spending unconfirmed inputs when they haven't.

bitrefill should seriously consider having at least one person in the company who is well versed in communications and marketing. it's consistently obvious they don't.

Here's the support answer:


So as guessed, they probably forgot to update the pages for non-registered users.

Bitrefill is a good and useful service. I have been using it for years.
I respect it because they were on of the first to provide a practical use to Lightning Network.

IIRC, the 6 sats/vbyte message used to be displayed when depositing funds directly to the account, but it's no longer there. So It's possible that they forgot to remove it other places.

I've wrote to the support, and I'll be updating my post once I get a response.

i have to apologize to the OP for assuming bitrefill was correct re the allegedly unconfirmed parent transaction. bitrefill just did the same thing to me yesterday.

i used a non-RBF transaction (no unconfirmed parent) and paid considerably more than the required 6 sats/byte. they still made me wait until the transaction was confirmed before delivery, showing this message:



they should remove their promise of zero confirmation transactions because they obviously don't abide by it anymore. i dunno if their system is just broken or if they are being intentionally deceptive but either way, it was pretty damn annoying.

i might as well stick to bitpay merchants if i have to deal with this kinda bullshit on top of bitrefill's already huge markups.

i agree, it would be nice if they mentioned it with fine print on the payment page, or linked to a separate payment troubleshooting page that explains these things. i mentioned something to that effect to support at the time.

like the OP, i was pretty annoyed since i ended up having to wait a half day or so for confirmation, but i took it as a lesson learned---i didn't start throwing around scam accusations.

these words of wisdom from satoshi still apply today:



this would help.

Hello, Bitrefill here. You guys did a good job explaining, so I am going to paste the answer I put on the Trustpilot review this user posted:

Hello, your transaction was done from unconfirmed outputs. You shouldn't use a wallet that allows you to spend unconfirmed balance, it's risky for us to accept them with zero conf.
We will see if it's worth to include this requirement detail together with the minimum fee and no RBF.

If someone appreciates Bitrefill and wants to offset his bad review on Trustpilot, it would be very welcome: https://www.trustpilot.com/review/bitrefill.com

Something else. Instead of paying 30 sats per byte like you did, think in using a wallet like muun which is an onchain wallet that allows you to pay lightning invoices via swap, so you will get instant delivery at Bitrefill by paying only 2 or 3 sats per byte.

Don't worry about OPs accusation, It was a mistake at the user end not from the bitrefil, he made a mistake while transferring funds to the website and it got stuck, as the website does everything automatically, it didn't go well for OP as planned and he now lashing out here started accusing bitrefil project.

Based on what I've read and comments from other trusted members, OP should update the thread it's misleading it should be confirmed right now and the issue has been resolved, OP should change the title and lock the thread, it's bad for his reputation, he can be tagged for false accusations.
Anyway he is a newbie he can lose everything, but this accusations will not stand.

It wasn't the fact that OP used a low fee here that was the issue. The issue is that the transaction he made was spending an unconfirmed input.

It is not safe to accept a zero confirmation transaction with an unconfirmed input due to transaction malleability. Let's say I make transaction A which sends 0.1 BTC to address 1XXX, and then make transaction B which sends that 0.1 BTC from address 1XXX to BitRefill. Both transaction are unconfirmed. Due to transaction malleability, transaction A (after being broadcast, but before being confirmed), could be changed by a node or a miner in such as way that while the signature remains valid, and the transaction itself remains valid, the hash of the transaction changes. This does not make a difference to transaction A - it will still confirm normally. It does, however, make a different to transaction B. Transaction B knows which input to spend because it uses the hash of transaction A. If the hash of transaction A changes, then transaction B becomes invalid.

Even if transaction B had a huge fee of 1000 sats/vbyte, it could still effectively be cancelled due to the malleability of transaction A, and that's why BitRefill needed to wait for 1 confirmation.

As others have said, this is not a scam and is entirely down to OP's misunderstanding.

Now you receive the word on the users out here for sure you will be relieve for the word you post against them so better for you to extend your patience since the network by now is so slow and next time if you want to fasten your transaction much better to increase the fees, don't use low amount since expect long time delays from it.

I have been using bitrefill since 2018 and never at anyone point have they taken my money and the refused to provide me with what i purchased. Even at times when I sent them the wrong prepaid mobile number, they would provide a page to request for refund to my account.

Stop misusing the word SCAM.
This should not be a scam accusation but rather you being impatient and incompetent. To avoid suffering from double spend attacks which are easy to perform in such auto purchase platforms, They insist that your transaction must at least have 1 confirmation.

It's not their fault that your transaction took over 12 hours or 24 hours without getting confirmed. Next time learn to use higher fees if you want a quick purchase.

You probably need to stop throwing in the "scam" word just because you're having a bad experience on a certain service. Especially when you probably have no idea on why you're having this problem in the first place.


https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#0,24h

Anyway, your transaction is likely to be confirmed already.

Fees are higher than normal now.

 You said you paid  7sat/byte, which is pretty low. You will have to wait. I don't think they are scammers, they are not forced to accept an unconfirmed transaction.

the bold statement suggests you were spending an input with an unconfirmed parent. were you?

if that is the case, i'm not surprised they required confirmation since it makes confirmation unpredictable.

the same thing happened to me when i paid 7 sat/byte but opted into RBF. because i paid with an RBF transaction, bitrefill didn't allow for instant processing. the same rationale apparently applies to transactions with unconfirmed parents.

this is inconvenient compared to their normal process but it certainly isn't a scam.


has the transaction confirmed?

It was a good service until they started lying about paying just six satoshis to immediately confirm transactions. Also, their rewards program is a scam and customer service is non-existent. Stay away!

When you buy a gift card now it still says that you can pay six satoshis to immediately confirm transactions. Then after you pay it says:

"NOTE:
The transaction you sent is spending an unconfirmed transaction consider paying a higher fee if creating many transactions.

This means that we need to wait for one on-chain confirmation for this order. To speed up your order spend all your wallet funds and send funds to yourself with a high fee for faster confirmation."

Obviously this was written by someone who doesn't understand English or possibly they are trying to accuse customers of double spending. Anyway, I'm not creating many transactions... only one. I paid 24 satoshis and it still said the same thing! I have been waiting for my gift card all day and customer service is never around. Stay away!