Topic: Caveat Emptor: Coinbase problems (Read 604 times)

Well coinbase finally did add my girlfriend as an authorized user and I was able to w/d.  Trying to think of some nice thing I can say about the experience....

OK, it doesn't seem like their motivation was to nickel-and-dime me (aside from their standard exchange margins), and it doesn't seem like the problem was that they are out of money.

On the other hand, I can't say I'd recommend Coinbase to anyone or that I'm likely to continue with them myself.  That experience definitely left a bad taste in my mouth.

By the way, I should note that I did get a new e-mail from Coinbase (yes, strangely, in the wee hours, Sunday night... actually I think her last e-mail to me may have been at around the same time, which makes me wonder if I can expect to wait another week for her next reply).

The message says that I should be able to transact with my gf's bank account now.  It also asks me to re-add my gf's bank account (fake quote) "so it could be verified".  Unfortunately I suspect that kind of wording was used because the person didn't understand that her account was already verified.  I've asked for clarification so I guess in another week I'll find out whether or not I have to re-add her account for real.

I think I may still just quit while I'm behind, pay their margin in BTC, and cash out rather than continue like this with them.  It could be months before this is straightened out, at this rate....

I have a reddit account already; like I said, I probably won't bother taking this there.



Is there somewhere I can learn more about whatever kind of rift has developed between Coinbase and bitcointalk?  I am not a big fan of Coinbase, ATM, but if your description above really captures the essence of the story, I'd be quite disappointed.  I would sincerely hope bitcointalk is a place where dissenting opinions, esp. about technical matters, would be at least tolerated, so long as no TOS violations were involved, even if some flame-wars break out from time to time.

I am admittedly pretty paranoid, but part of me wonders if this is a subject about which you have a very strong opinion, and you are actually posting here to subtly convince me to hijack my own thread into one concerning your pet peeve?  As you read this, alyssa85, are you by any chance rubbing your hands together and laughing maniacally?

Well, I suppose I'm willing to fall into such a "trap," a little bit, anyhow, as I'd like to know whether or not bitcointalk remains a place that tolerates unpopular dissenting perspectives.  To be clear I'm not looking for the long version of the story but just a link or two where I can read up on what you're describing.

Coinbase don't come here because they arn't welcome (Coinbase is in favour of increasing the blocksize but the owner of this forum isn't and doesn't want them around).

It is easy to make a reddit account as you don't need to verify your email - just think up a username and password, click register and a second later you are free to post. Make a thread on their subreddit and they should be able to help you are resolve your issue.

You can sign in to r/coinbase with your  Coinbase account, just head over to reddit, it will ask you to sign in with your real name or a nick.
Thats as much as I remember, I left Coinbase a long time ago.
They are rubbish with any customer dealings.

10-4.  That's too bad as I would love to influence them to give me special treatment (or, concievably, to correct my unusual treatment) by providing some basic level of customer service.

I probably won't bother though.  I'm not much of a redditor.  I'm guessing folks trying to decide whether or not to use coinbase are as likely to check the temperature around here as anywhere, and tbh part of my motivation is to follow through on, for the lack of a better term, threats I made during the process of attempting to convince them to pay some attention to my situation.

Meanwhile, unless they fix their problem with me, pretty soon, I'm already resigned to write it off and move on -- it's just not worth it to me, to turn this into some kind of ongoing saga.

To be clear, I wouldn't "write off" the whole $200 without a bit more effort to recover it.  I just mean, writing off the marginal loss, compounded on top of the marginal loss I've already taken, I'd take by buying my way back from coinbase-usd into coinbase-btc and w/d-ing real btc into the blockchain, and then, perhaps, taking yet another compound marginal loss should I elect to continue my effort to purchase usd with it -- but since I've had to resolve my short-term usd shortfall by other means, at this point, most likely I'd only want to move a token amount to bootstrap a relationship with some new exchange.

The only thing that really irks me about that path is, I am effectively rewarding coinbase, for their massive fail, by paying their exchange margin, not once, but twice.

They no doubt would think it massive overkill to go to war, just over that.  And, I guess they're right, I'm not willing to go to war over it.

But OTOH, it really isn't fair at all.

If I had bought, say, a mobile app, for the same amount of money as my marginal loss, and the app publisher had decided to ignore my support requests, never deliver the license I'd paid for, and keep my money, I'd /never/ let them get away with it.   Of course, in that scenario, I'd probably have a powerful intermediary (powerful in the sense of "empowered to control the app-publishers access to customers and revenue," iow, Google or Apple), presumably taking my side of the issue.  Quite the opposite in the case of bitcoin.

I learned a long time ago that the mostly uncensorable and irreversible nature of transacting in bitcoin by no means protects me from getting ripped off.  Instead, I figure a higher risk of fraud is more like a price I have to pay, for an instrument of exchange that's in some ways harder to steal, and likely to be priced by a much "purer" market process than that of the markets pricing fiat currency.

In other words, I am prepared to assume that when I use bitcoin there is a certain percentage of the time I'm going to get screwed and there may not be much I can do to fix it.  It's for that reason, though, that I do think it's important for people to shout from the hilltops when they get robbed, even just a little bit, especially by casino-type environments such as Coinbase, where you cash-in/cash-out and customers are effectively wagering whatever benefits they hope to receive there against the odds the cashier will screw them somehow.

Coinbase won't be reading this. They don't come to this forum.

You need to contact them on reddit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/CoinBase/

Make an account on reddit, post up a thread with your problem in the coinbase subreddit listed above. If you are having problems, you can private message the mods (you'll find their usernames at the bottom of the right hand column of their subreddit.

Continuing the story:

After the above pointless exchange I got a response from the gentleman who'd closed my ticket, stating (again not bothering to quote the emails exactly, here, but just from memory) that my "request had been forwarded to experts who would be able to answer my question.  Please note that continuing to send messages will delay your response time, we'll get back to you as soon as possible."

Which sounded a lot to me like "If you keep trying to expedite things we will just punish you for it by dragging our heels," but, whatever.  I patiently waited until this and the next business day had come and gone and finally decided to ignore his "warning" about communicating on the 11th, stating that, basically I was tired of waiting, and was going to start expressing my dissatisfaction on social media.

I did so, posting to twitter that my money was tied up for a week and support didn't seem to be doing anything to help.  CoinbaseSupport on twitter did respond to me, the next day, asking for clarification, which I provided.  Then, nothing, despite a couple of polite attempts on my part to continue the dialog.  I couldn't help but feel that CoinbaseSupport was basically just replying in a perfunctory manner to create the illusion that my questionsmust have been answered or addressed in some way (I did my best to subtly make it clear that that's not what had happened so far).

Finally, on May 15th, a new person did reply to my trouble ticket, stating that my gf could indeed be added as an authorized user of my account and asking me to (this time a real quote) "please have [my gf] upload a photo of themselves holding their ID to https://www.coinbase.com/verifications/documents/new".  OK, we produced the photo in question and went to the url provided but there is no place there to upload just any old photo.  The process there is to upload a photo of the front of your card, then the back, and it's then automatically OCR'ed by their system.  So, now what?  I must admit, by this point I'd really started to get quite fed up, but, soldiering on, once my gf got back from work I scanned in the front and back of her card and uploaded it to the system.  However the system immediately rejected the uploads, stating basically that "those cards were for [my gf]" and the name on the account is [me]."  Figures.  Advice from the automated system for how to address any problem with the process?  Why, open a trouble ticket, of course.

If I'd thought I'd receive a response any time soon I would have just asked how to proceed but it was clear that wasn't likely so I attached all three photos to an e-mail that would flow into my trouble ticket and explained the situation.  I kept my frustration to myself, this time, and tried to play the good sport.

That, of course, is the last I heard from them.

I have noticed that they did finally return my cb-USD to me, so if I want, I can presumably, at least, finally buy back bitcoin at a huge loss (relative to the small amounts involved, of course) and get the fuck out of dodge.  That looks like what I'll eventually have to do, since they simply aren't doing anything to help me.  I was hoping against hope that there might be some better resolution to my problem offered, since they did say that what I wanted to do was basically something they supported, and I'd expeditiously provided them everything they'd asked for.  But, it's now the 22nd and they haven't made a peep.  But a -25% ROI or whatever I get back from this process is starting to look pretty good given the options they have given me so far (basically, none, but waiting for some indeterminate and plausibly indefinite period).

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If anyone from Coinbase happens to be reading this, by the way, and wants me to stop saying such mean things and go away, I'd like that too.  Just fix your lack of support by paying a bit more attention to me.  Since you do seem to support multiple authorized users per account, get my gf set up, I'll w/d, and, I promise: I'll update this post, and twitter, to reflect that Coinbase finally changed its tune and took care of business.

After realizing what kind of risk I seem to have been taking every time I transacted with you, I probably won't do any further business with you, to be honest.  But, frankly, unless I eventually wind up doing more Bitcoin stuff than I do now, Coinbase can clearly afford to lose me as a customer.  I simply don't do move enough btc around to represent a meaningful loss to your enterprise.  On the other hand, if you keep me sufficiently mad that I feel the need to hang out around here and continue bad-mouthing you, I might represent a disproportionately impactful -- if still fairly minor -- threat to your reputation.  My Issue# in your Desk portal is #915527.

Hello, I've been trying to get a modicum of attention from coinbase support for some time now, and they just don't seem to be willing or able to give it to me.  I'll describe the situation in some detail, and, although I'll editorialize a bit at the end, mostly I think folks just deserve to know that this is possible if you are doing business with Coinbase, and to decide for themselves what it means for their own decision-making.

Please be advised, I don't do a ton of transactions, don't have tons of bitcoin, and don't by any means have my finger on the pulse of bitcoin these days.  I'm sure coinbase has made just a miniscule amount of profit from my activities over the years... maybe $10 or so, or, I suppose, maybe $8 after the teeny tiny smidgen of support I've been able to coax them into giving me over the course of what I'm about to describe.

So, on the 4th of this month (iirc... maybe the 3rd at the earliest -- it's now the 21st, as I write this, ftr), I sold some bitcoin due to being short on cash and wanting to make ends meet.  Coinbase gave me a bit more than than $200 of coinbase-usd for my btc.  I have done this several times in the past w/o problem.. They just ship the money to my bank account, the money appears.  Nobody seems to freak out or give us a hard time about it although I'm always slightly apprehensive 'cause we bank with Satan Incarnate Bank of Manhattan.

That bank account technically belongs to my gf.  I'm not an authorized signer or anything -- it's never really been a problem, she simply signs the very few checks we write.  We both are fine with it that way -- the only downside I can think of has been that it makes it slightly slower for me to w/d from Paypal.  We don't use Paypal much, so, no biggie.  I don't even have a bank account in my name anymore, I closed mine years ago.

My transaction proceeded normally and I got the standard 3-5 business days (or whatever they promise) e-mail from coinbase.  But the next day I got an e-mail stating that my transaction had been rejected due to the name on the bank account not matching the name on the Coinbase account.  The message said to e-mail support or else they'd cancel my transaction.  If I'd just let them cancel the transaction I suspect this would have gone a lot smoother.

Instead, I did e-mail support, hoping I might find some quick way to resolve the matter.  The next business day, I finally got a reply at around closing time (Coinbase and I are in the same time zone).

The reply was to close my ticket, informing me (not a literal quote here, but this is more-or-less exactly what was said), "The accounts must match.  You should go into the list of accounts and delete your bank account from Coinbase, and add an account in your name, or send us proof you are an authorized signer on this account."

Basically whatever he said seemed extremely curt.   I'm pretty sure -- but definitely surmising -- that what he thought he was doing was "scolding me" for having "scammed" them, presumably because they have some policy forbidding what I had done.  Well, WTF?  Does he think we read all of that fine print?  I'm trying to move $200 here.

Anyhow, not appreciating that shit, when I reopened my ticket I requested that he please not close my ticket, in the future, until there is some reason for him to think my problem had been resolved, and that (again, not a literal quote) "What I wanted from him was to please advise us as to what our options were" (as if that wasn't obvious the first time).

I even included a number of specific questions, outlining possible ways to solve my problem, because, I must say, I had a bad feeling, if I just left it there, he would just reply "No options, delete account now!" or some kind of ridiculous soup-nazi thing.  So I asked, i.e.,, could my gf be added to the account as an authorized user?  Could she create a new account and have the money transferred to it?  etc.

I was hoping, if a new account was the best they could do, to avoid having to sell my cb-usd, screw around with the blockchain, and then sell the btc back to coinbase again, paying their vig at each step, and all the time having to wait, 'cause I kinda needed the cash immediately.  But I didn't go into all that, figuring I'd duke it out with the guy over that shit once he actually failed to do the obvious right thing, rather than start a fight preemptively over a question I might not need an answer to depending on what was Coinbase's policy about accounts and so on.

ugh, it just goes on and on... but I'm sick of typing.... to be continued soon.

Suffice it to say that 15 days later, this thing is by no means resolved and most of that time I have just been waiting on them to do their job and answer really easy questions.

It's important to understand that Coinbase offers NO phone support.  You literally can't call them.  I don't even see a business number that they publish.  They provide one official channel, only, to resolve any problems (the channel I was using, to be clear).  Their website claims they have some kind of real-time chat but I see no evidence that this is actually the case.   So, basically there is no real-time interaction possible, unless you want to show up at their office (which /is/ right down the block from me.  But I've decided I'd rather not find out what happens to customers who show up there uninvited, so, for all I know, they are all really nice there, and you can just show up and they'll help you out with your customer issues and send you packing with a gift-basket full of sunshine and rainbows).

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If anyone from Coinbase happens to be reading this, by the way, and wants me to stop saying such mean things and go away, I'd like that too.  Just fix your lack of support by paying a bit more attention to me.  Since you do seem to support multiple authorized users per account, get my gf set up, I'll w/d, and, I promise: I'll update this post, and twitter, to reflect that Coinbase finally changed its tune and took care of business.

After realizing what kind of risk I seem to have been taking every time I transacted with you, I probably won't do any further business with you, to be honest.  But, frankly, unless I eventually wind up doing more Bitcoin stuff than I do now, Coinbase can clearly afford to lose me as a customer.  I simply don't do move enough btc around to represent a meaningful loss to your enterprise.  On the other hand, if you keep me sufficiently mad that I feel the need to hang out around here and continue bad-mouthing you, I might represent a disproportionately impactful -- if still fairly minor -- threat to your reputation.  My Issue# in your Desk portal is #915527.