I deposited money to CEX.IO last Monday. I made a same day wire transfer, however it took until Friday before the funds were available. (Other exchanges have made the funds available the same day)
I then decided to withdraw the funds immediately since the market was so thin, and would require buying at much higher prices than available elsewhere. I advised CEX.IO immediately that I had decided not to trade, and that I wished to have my funds returned. However, their compliance team replied that I had to fill in various AML/KYC forms that had previously been sent to me, in order for them to allow me to make further deposits (!) and marked my request as 'solved' (!)
I replied immediately that I was not asking to make further deposits, as I had decided not to trade, and was simply requesting that they refund my funds to the bank account that I sent it from, which should not require any AML/KYC, the laws of which I am very familiar having worked in the financial industry myself.
I subsequently received an acknowledgement that my withdrawal request "has been processed", and we'll see how it progresses.
I sincerely hope CEX.IO will in fact refund the money, although it is very disheartening to hear the problems experienced by others, posted here and in other forums.
I'm glad to report that I did get my money back from, but lost about £70 in wire/fees etc and about 10 days in the process - which is a long time in crypto-investing world - especially now. It's a big shame they have such high margins (compared to many other exchanges), very demanding compliance requirements, and slow deposit/withdrawal times etc. Otherwise they could be a top-class Exchange - I truly hope they evolve into that. Just a word of advice to anyone else using them, or having issues, that you WILL get your money back, but it may take longer than hoped, and will require patience... and if you're considering a GBP deposit, perhaps reconsider and make a USD or EUR deposit instead until their GBP market fattens up!
I wish I wasn't here right now writing this, but I feel I need to share my experience for anyone else who happens to stumble across CEX.io...
I'm on DAY #14 OF WAITING just to be APPROVED to withdraw on cards I can ALREADY DEPOSIT WITH! This is really starting to feel like a bottleneck strategy purposely put in place by CEX.io to delay the withdrawals of customers to an indefinite time-frame. I have no idea if this will take days, weeks, months, years, never? It's just completely obscure. They have no problem taking your money, but GOOD LUCK getting that money out easily!
This is really becoming old. It makes Kraken's website almost tolerable; at least they respond to their customers in a timely manner and actually process withdrawals. At first I thought CEX.io was amazing because it just works, it's damn CEXY and new coins are being added. I didn't mind paying a premium for the service. But now I'm starting to wonder why I'm paying a premium for this service if they are so slow to process withdrawals. It's highly suspect.
I've played online poker for decades and CEX.io is starting to act like the insolvent websites that collapsed over the years (Lock Poker, Absolute Poker, Ultimate Bet, Full Flush Poker, etc). To me, there's only a few scenarios that are playing out right now for everyone:
POSSIBLE SCENARIO #1 - CEX.io has a capital liquidity problem, meaning they don't keep enough money on-hand to pay people's withdrawals. This is why they would be delaying people's withdrawals and telling them that they're "looking into it". It's easy to pay a support team to keep customers "at bay" by being nice in support tickets and letting people know that they're "looking into it". It's a delay-tactic which allows them to float money for whatever reason. There's no transparency into the WITHDRAWAL VERIFICATION TIME-FRAME which was conveniently left out of their website anywhere :/
This is a HUGE problem if this is what's going on.
Why else would delays not be fulfilled within their timeframes like some people in here have mentioned?
Why else would it take WEEKS for a human being to look at a picture, and click an 'Approved' button?
POSSIBLE SCENARIO #2 - CEX.io is massively understaffed. They maybe have a handful of "Compliance Officers" who are backlogged on requests and are likely taking their time. It's likely that their #1 priority is not the speedy processing of withdrawals.
POSSIBLE SCENARIO #4 - ALL 3 SCENARIOS ARE OCCURRING
Every day I stray further and further away from being a promoter of CEX.io to becoming a detractor. At this point, I'm sure they could care less if they lost my business