A few weeks ago our company requested a wire withdrawal from our Bitstamp corporate account.
After a week the money came back into our bitstamp account (at a $45 cost to us) with bitstamp saying: "The reason for the failure was stated as a breach of a recipients bank's Terms of Service."
This is quite worrying so we contacted our bank, and no they had not seen or rejected any transfer; and said they'd need to see the SWIFT transfer form (MT103) to check it out further.
Bitstamp then had the nerve to ask us to pay $40 extra just to get the proper receipt of the transfer; which we paid.
The receipt, that we paid $40 for, shows only that they transfer money between Raiffeisen Banka d.d. to Raiffeisen Bank international....and the RBI had rejected to process the transfer saying that they do not execute transfers related to Bitcoin...
Talking to Bitstamp is like talking to a brick wall...in their opinion Raiffeisen Banka is their bank and Raiffeisen Bank international is an intermediary; therefore we have to pay all the costs of this botched transfer and can seemly no longer withdraw funds (because of this intermediary that is supposedly totally unrelated to Bitstamp or their bank)
End of story we paid $85 for a transfer that was never sent to our bank; and we have no way to receive any transfers because bitstamps bank/intermediary will not send to Bitcoin related companies...
HOW CAN A BITCOIN EXCHANGE NOT BE ABLE TO SEND TRANSFERS TO BITCOIN BUSINESSES?Bitstamp support seems to see no real problem with this situation.
Notes:
- We have previously done many successful wire transfers with the last one being about a month ago with no problem.
- Our company name has "Bitcoin" in it.
Here is a Memo from Bitstamps intermediary (basically Bitcoin hate mail):
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/22i768/raiffeisen_bank_international_internal_memo/its simple really banks have to work within the laws. right now changing BTC to FIAT is a no no. Most any smart person would have told you this would happend. If you are looking to buy BTC with a bank account or even sell BTC and get FIAT for it then playing with a BANK is going to get your burned.
It does not matter if you did not even put the word BITCOIN on the statement. why you might ask because the computer system has already FLAGGED the company that you are exchanging with. Once the computer picks up on that they will close your account and you will be stuck.
I'm sorry for the lost of the $85 but most everyone should have thought it was only a matter of time.
Banks are getting cracked down on for tons of stuff and BTC is just the new thing to add to the list.
BTC = (i.e. money laundering, drug trafficking or fraud) = Thats all folks
MY ADVISE STAY AWAY FROM BANKS