Topic: LocalBitcoins.com - Unfair dispute handling (Read 4824 times)

I am noting the opinions of the 'Hero Members' here and I would like to ask some questions:

What do you think about LocalBitcoins not releasing the BTC from escrow after the seller told them to release them on Nov 21?  At that stage he told them to release the escrow to me. "Gomerlin :  Please localbitcoins, return this buyer the bitcoins that was taken from her. I don't want them."
That was Nov. 21, 2013, 8:49 a.m. in the localbitcoins system.
If you check the BTC charts, well suddenly as the price went down temporarily, he was ok to release the escrow to me ..  
Who is the one changing his mind more than once about this trade?


Also, if you consider that if had I not told the seller about the split transfer before he received the funds, I would have received the BTC, because he could not have used it as a reason to complain in the first place. He would have had to continue his allegations that I am a scammer and tried that way to cancel the trade but it would most likely not have been sucessful since I uploaded all kinds of ID. It was not affecting the end result of the payment I made that the transfer had to be split unexpectedly.
Doesn't this mean that my only fault was to keep the seller updated?


Do you completely endorse the behaviour of the seller during this trade? The accusations, the threats, the overreacting, the lies and making up completely ridiculous stories? It was obvious to anybody that he just tried to cancel the trade because the price of BTC went up. Do you think LocalBitcoins should support this the way they did?


An Australian bank transfer could have taken 3 business days to be received and it wouldn't have been a reason for anyone to complain. The seller would have simply had to wait for it, no matter if the BTC price goes up or down. Equally I would have had to come to terms with it if the price had gone down, while waiting to recieve my BTC. But a trade is fixed and can not just be changed. Considering my funds arrived the next business day, it was a quick payment well within the expectations of the seller who did not post any other requirements in his trade details.


What would you have done in my situation? Not mark the payment complete and waive good bye to AUD $5000.00?


The other person who bought AUD $2000.00 worth of BTC from the same seller Gomerlin the day before I bought from him (also just before the big price increase), but forgot to mark the payment as complete still did not receive the AUD $2000.00 back.
Gomerlin first ignored the messages of the buyer completely for several days while being online and engaging in other trades and then finally replied that his account was hacked and the buyers BTC were 'stolen'.
Doesn't this show what kind of person he is. What a coincidence that right when he has some trades he'd rather like to cancel he claims his account was hacked. How would the 'hacker' have 'stolen' the buyers BTC out of escrow?  He tried to make up the same excuse during my trade at some point.

Exactly.

OP, it's unfortunate this didn't work out, and I don't entirely grasp the whole "your posting on reddit has consequences" nonsense, but you'll have to learn to get things right to the letter when working in systems that depend upon things being right to the letter. It may seem petty, but it's not, and neither would it be petty to learn how to get your ducks in a row for smoother deals in the future.

You are obviously completely unable to view this case from any other than your own extremely biased side, so this will be my last reply. You marked the transfer as complete before it was. That's really all that matters if you want to nitpick on the rules like you do. It doesn't matter that you updated the seller. The rules doesn't say that you can mark the transfer as complete when it isn't as long as you notify the seller. You should not have agreed to buy more coins than you could pay within the 90 minutes, but in this case it was very fortunate for the seller that you did.

Of course you could, all it would take is not doing the second transfer and come up with an excuse (like the seller did). There would have been some negative consequences, but if the price fell by more than 50% (which it has done several times before in that much time) you would certainly have saved money. Even if it fell by less you might have gotten something back from the dispute and been better off than if the deal came through.

Grinder, I did not lie about when the transfers were done at all. I always kept the seller updated via the message system as well as localbitcoins admins who could read the messages. As I said before the time zones of localbitcoins and the online banking screens were about 10 hours apart.
I could not have backed out of the deal at all. That is why the payment needs to be marked as complete. At that point I can not back out of the deal.  At that point the deal is sealed and if I would not pay for it, then I would not get any BTC, I would get a bad review and get my account banned and in my case, if I would not have sent the remaining amount out after midnight as I immediately informed them I would do, then I could have expected not only to receive no BTC, a bad review and a blocked account, but I could have also expected to lose the AUD $5000 of the first part of the transfer! So it is unreasonable for anyone to alledge that I was doing this on purpose or that it affected the seller negatively. 

What the seller then did, was trying to find any reason to back out of the trade due to the BTC price hike. He would have called his bank and told them he was going to receive a fraudulent transfer and to reject it, even tough he could see the ID I uploaded and even though I offered to give him a call.
Why is this very bad for the bitcoin community? If people cause the banks additional work this way (as if fraud was not already bad enough), it is clear why they come to dislike everything that's got to do with Bitcoin or other transactions related to virtual currencies.
My bank then blocked my account completely. I could not log on to my online banking anymore at all and try to get this fixed while being 16,000km away.

By making such allegations and involving banks fraud departments in disputes, even involving governemnt institutions such as police and courts of course they will start to regulate more because it is causing them a workload, they will want to find a way to tax and regulate. This can not be what we want to achieve. 

You marked the transfer as complete even though it wasn't.

You would still have had to lie about when the transfers were done in the dispute. It doesn't matter when he received the transfers or that it wasn't possible for you to do the complete transfer within the 90 minutes. All that matters is that you could have backed out of the deal if the price had gone down before the second transfer, and this gave the seller an excuse to do the same when the opposite happened.

Based on common sense I completely agree with your point of view. The seller didn't have the slightest bit of a disadvantage because of the bank transfer splitting and you did everything that could be expected of a buyer in your situation. In place of the seller I would have released the coins and rated it as a flawless transaction.

But... I understand the LBC decision as well. It is expected of a business not to make financially important decisions based on whatever they might perceive as common sense, they need to stick to the words of the contract. You marked the payment as completed although it was not, so they were entitled to cancel the trade. In my opinion it would have been reasonable to keep the coins in escrow until your fiat was refunded, though. Any news on that?

Can you quote where I lied?

Can you justify why I should be receiving any less than the traded amount of BTC when the seller did not suffer any delay in receiving the full payment from me?
He received the full payment just as quickly as it would have been received in one single transfer.

In fact, had I not kept the seller updated and told him about the split transfer, then he would not have even known until he received both amounts in his account on the next day. The only fault from my side seems to have been to keep the seller informed.

Which means you lied when you said you had completed the transfer. It wasn't very nice behaviour from the seller, and he probably didn't even know he had the rules on his side. Unfortunately this means you should have taken the first offer, and now your stubbornness has really backfired.

Yes, the payment is supposed to be marked as complete within 90 minutes, which I did, with a national bank transfer however there is no expectation for the funds to arrive within those 90 minutes.  

The purpose of marking the payment complete within 90 minutes is to prevent sellers BTC stuck in escrow forever if the buyer changes his mind or is simply unresponsive.
If the buyer has sent funds, the payment needs to be marked as complete, otherwise the BTC will not be held in escrow and the buyer could lose his payment.

When I sent the first payment (after being forced to split it in 2 parts), I had to mark the payment as complete, otherwise I would have potentially lost the money I already sent out. I marked it as complete well within the 90 minutes limit, too and I knew that I would be sending the second part after midnight and I also kept the seller informed.

Any reasonable seller in his right mind would not have had a problem whatsoever with the payment arriving in two parts (especially since they arrived within 1 business day, and both arrived at the same time), especially after I uploaded all kinds of ID, receipts, etc ..  and considering that I communicated with the seller constantly, even offered to call him.

The 90 minute window for doing the transfer is specified in the rules for using the escrow system.

To jook, no, the time zones don't match because I am not currently living in Australia. The time zone was either set to Localbitcoins default since I had not changed the settings, or if in any way auto detected, it would have been GMT or GMT+1, no idea if our current summer/winter time adjustment was taken into consideration.

The bank statements show the Australian time, NSW time I would say.

The first transfer was sent out right after opening the trade. I went straight from the trade where the sellers bank details were displayed to me to my online banking, I also wrote this in detail in the original post how the events unfolded.

The payment window was not 90 minutes because the trade was advertised as National Bank transfer, and the seller did not make any further specifications.
It is common knowledge that transfers between any two different banks in Australia take around 1-3 business days. The seller resides in Australia and so he would be well aware of this. He could have advertised Cash deposit as the payment method or same bank transfer otherwise.

I would also like to add that there was no expectation from my side to receive the BTC before my funds have been credited to the sellers bank account and I also made this clear to him from the beginning.

Data taken from OP's screenshots in post #1:

LBC Trade request:    Nov 18, 5:18 am
Bank transfer #1:      Nov 18, 3:47 pm
Bank transfer #2:      Nov 19, 1:00 am

If...

- you have set the correct timezone in your LBC account, and
- the contractual payment window was 90 minutes, and
- the seller had not agreed to modify the contract

...then you failed to comply with the contract and the seller was rightfully allowed to cancel the deal. Your first bank transfer was already 9 hours too late. LBC clearly states the time window in which the payment has to be initiated.

The seller has to refund your $7367.23 AUD immediately, of course, but that's a seperate case. I don't see how your bank transfers could retroactively have an effect on a contract that had already been breached. Or am I missing something?

jook, the details have been published in my first post. There is a full description of the events and there are links to the screens in the text.
There should also be screens of the seller confirming that both transfers were received the next day.

Does it boil down to a disagreement over whether the fiat transfer finished in time? They buyer claims that the bank transfers of the full amount cleared on the day following the trade request. LocalBitcoins claims that the payment has not been initiated within the requested timeframe. This looks contradicting to me.

It might help if both parties published the exact times of:

- Opening of trade request on LBC
- Initiation of bank transfer #1
- Initiation of bank transfer #2
- Receipt of bank transfer #1
- Receipt of bank transfer #2

These can be compared to the official contract to come to a conclusion.

not really. You want him to adhere to the contract despite him taking a huge loss because a contract-is-a-contract, and you want him to stick to it, even if he wants to back out of it (which IS bad faith IMO. I've had similar situations where I at least split the difference when there is a huge price change).

Yet, you feel that you can slightly bend your end of the agreement and its 100% justifiable. Nope, sorry dude - a contract-is-a-contract.

I wouldn't sell to you either. I think localbitcoins did an excellent job moderating the situation and this actually makes me feel better about doing business with them.

Then explain to me where did the seller have any disadvantage that justifies me receiving less BTC than originally traded?
Where was his loss?

Had I not been so kind to keep him up to date via the message system, he would not have even known that the amount was split into two transfers. Next day the money was in his account very well in line with what could be expected of a national bank transfer in Australia.

He only took it up as a reason to hold on to, because he wanted to cancel the trade during the BTC value surge and he was being proven wrong in his accusation that I am a scammer. He needed something else to hold on to and to make a big deal of.


Also, in legal terms: I acted in good faith during this trade, the seller acted in bad faith.

I read the entire thread, including what localbitcoins wrote you, and I find that they tried to be fair. You didn't have all the money in on time. The fact that your bank had a limit and you couldn't send it all in time isn't the seller's fault. You can make justifications and say that the money came in over night and it didn't make a difference, but it doesn't matter.

It has nothing to do with greed, there was no justification to get less BTC than the 13 BTC I paid for. 

cryptoanarchist, I have the impression you might not be completely up to date with this case to be able to make a judgement as yet.
The reason I believe this is that you refer to me using the masculine pronoun, where it could already be established that I am female after reading the complete story.

I understand that the entire series of events and messages is a lot to read, and that the minority of people will have the time to read it all. Even in this post, only the critical events are shown in screens, and of course screens are cropped, otherwise it would take even longer for people to understand the case.
I am happy to put the complete dialogues on pastebin or somewhere else. If anyone would like to check on any details. It would only get more embarrassing for the seller and for localbitcoins. I had previously gotten into trouble for trying to protect myself in case something happens to me by posting the real name of the seller gomerlin on reddit, even though anybody could find his real name from his website. The posts containing the real name were removed, but the other posts should still be there.

Yes, I was told by one of localbitcoins employees (nikolaus) while talking to him on IRC to ask the public:



Then a while after I did this, he himself replied to my support ticket via e-mail (and I have the full email including headers if anybody cares):

I'm not sure we're getting the whole story about that from the OP. Notice how the message he copied was cropped. I have a feeling it had to do with information he was disclosing on reddit. Either way, he wasn't being "punished".

Wait, wasn't he told to go talk on forums about it by one of their employees?

The part about punishing OP for taking the issue to reddit was pretty bad, at a minimum.

Sorry, I fail to see how this was bad support from LocalBitcoins. If the buyer didn't have the funds in by the deadline that was originally part of the deal, than it is what it is.

I think you should have just taken the 12.7 BTC and not been so fussy, ginbank. You still would have gotten a great deal. Shouldn't have gotten all greedy.

Just to note, there may be something to the hacking story. I had my sell price changed on it once to a way lower price, but I only do cash deals and just canceled it.

Pathetic handling by LBC, good luck ginbank. And def stay safe although I can't admit I fully understand what's going on with strange men trespassing on your property. I won't ever be using LBC's escrow service.

It's been ridiculous from the start, anyone who takes the time to review everything I posted can see it.

Gomerlin, if you are wondering how anybody would contact you on your personal gmail.com address, your blogspot page could easily be found with a google search and your gmail address is listed on the page. Since you took down your personal blog, it can still be found via web.archive.org ... (waybackmachine) as well as google cache. You can not permanently delete your blog.  

This is getting ridiculous.

What? Now in this post you just informed him that you live alone. please find yourself a companion he obviously is a dangerous person
lol

Gomerlin is continuing to make up stories about hackers accessing his account on LocalBitcoins.com, indirectly threatening me. The stories he is coming up with are ridiculous and don't make any sense, he is just trying to make it look like he had nothing to do with the person who came to my house. 

Please _Gin_Bank_ you have my personal email. contact me ASAP it's very important!

Update

Dec 3 - LocalBitcoins.com have released the remaining ~12.7 BTC out of escrow back to the seller.  The case is with my lawyer.

Wow that sucks!

What?
So, the deal will be cancelled even though you have sent the seller money on time?
That is just unbelievable.

Thank you Garizzle for sharing this information! 

The advantages of making this public become obvious. 


I will not get LocalBitcoins and the seller Gomerlin get away with this.  Obviously LocalBitcoins are aware of at least one more person who was having trouble with this seller.

Garizzles case it a little different, because the BTC are not even secured in escrow since the payment was not marked complete. The seller should at least have the obligation to return the bank transfer in Garizzles case.

 

I'd just like to chime in that I also had a bad experience with user "Gomerlin" on this site. In my case, it was my mistake in that I somehow forgot to click "Payment Complete" after I had transferred him $2,000AUD. Once I realised (unfortunately it was the next day, I think), I immediately requested him to re-open the purchase, but this was futile as obviously he had the bitcoins returned to him. He kept ignoring me and trying to mislead me in various ways, but I knew that he had received the funds. Anyway, eventually he agreed to "return my money" (this was several days ago), and since then has ignored all my attempts to contact him, including directly via email. I had even attempted to cut a deal with him (via email), to at least send me 1 BTC back, otherwise I would pursue the matter with appropriate authorities. As he still has not replied, I have begun taking action. We will see how this goes.

Note: I also filed a dispute to Localbitcoins, but I don't expect there to be any resolution. It seems Localbitcoins staff are either extremely busy or just hold disputes in contempt because they didn't even think it worthy to respond at all. This was a few days ago already.

You should definately do that if you think that they harmed you in any way.
Also it seems that i missed the part that someone trespassed your property. wtf  

Can you explain what was fair about cutting the amount of BTC I bought down to ~12.7 for no reason?

Yes it would have been more economical, taking a 0.3 BTC loss at this stage as opposed to paying my lawyer. But considering the threats and accusations and the unprofessional behavior by the seller and localbitcoins, I will rather give my lawyer the money.

My physical security was threatened, and having a man trespass on my property has affected me badly as a female living alone.
My funds are being illegally withheld, I will sue for damages, lost income, lawyers fees, whatever my lawyer recommends. I have enough evidence and the stupid comment by localbitcoins stating that they would have already released my BTC from escrow had I not made the case public, _after_ localbitcoins staff himself suggested to me to make the case public and ask the opinion of the community will be a good indication of their behavior to anyone reviewing this case.

I agree. I believe that LBC's resolution was more than fair to the buyer.

Judgment of Solomon. I say take the deal and run. And be carefull from who you buy in the future 

I could tell you from the start that this will be their solution but didn't want to be the bringer of bad news.

update:

Nov 26 - LocalBitcoins admins are still supporting the seller to back out of the trade (I bought 13 BTC with $7367.23 AUD on Nov 18),
saying they will return the amount of BTC that is remaining in escrow to the seller, and let him return the AUD to my bank account!  This would be outrageous.
 
If I had to buy the 13 BTC today with AUD bank transfer, they would cost me $13000 AUD or more.

Let's not go off-topic about cash trades, that was not an option in this case.

The warnings & lessons to be learned are:

• When trading on localbitcoins.com, only deal with sellers who have a lot of good reviews and have had their account for a long time.
• Do not upload any ID that shows your home address because your trading partner can see it and not just localbitcoins staff. In case of a dispute, you are vulnerable!
• LocalBitcoins.com does not have a lot of staff to deal with disputes, expect that your money or BTC are stuck for a long time in case of a dispute.
• Do not expect disputes to be handled fairly by localbitcoins staff!
• If you trade on localbitcoins, keep screenshots and receipts of everything , you might really need them later.
• Trade with someone who is online and before sending money, chat with them first, clarify every detail, find out what their expectations are.
• If you are selling with bank transfer, protect yourself against mitm (man in the middle) fraud by requesting a URL to be part of the payment description. On this URL you post a warning.

In the most part of the world carrying a gun is illegal.
Having said that, i agree that someone must take precautions when trading in person.

I have the same impression before, but no longer now.

have a gun in your pocket just in case Are we some kind of Mafia? . F2F aren't comfortable at all since there are physical risks when meeting a total stranger and each of you holding x.xxx$ or more.
I always though doing bank transfers through LBC was safe/least issues and apparently it's not.

Best way to trade bitcoins...
Face to face , in a safe place , preferably in a restaurant or hotel lobby where they have guards , have a gun in your pocket just in case , ask him for the id and hold it until the transaction is completed.
Also , avoid a seller/buyer that tries to do the same to you )))).

 

The whole dispute system is worthless to the site if this is the reputation they intend to hold up.
Thankfully I've only had smooth..ish transactions (delays in release) for bank reasons, and have not had to come to a dispute.

Also hurts the escrow part of the site if the value can be altered on such a weak excuse. What is a few hours difference going to make when we are talking net banking. It's never quick in AUS unless you have your bank trust an account which requires authorization, at which point you may as well just do a cash deposit.

GL to the Buyer in at least getting his 12.7 BTC and LB come to their senses and save their rep a little by upping it back to 13.

The story of the sellers account getting hacked, isn't really your problem. You paid and agreed upon an amount, sounds like a contract to me.

Sounds like the seller was just but-hurt about the recent price hike in BTC.

Still, at this point. Poor form LB.

update:

Nov 25 - I still did not receive any of my BTC.

The amount in escrow is still the reduced amount of 12.7304645 BTC instead of the 13 BTC originally traded.

No further statement from localbitcoins admins.

I told the seller to release the 12.7304645 BTC from escrow and provided an address to send me the remaining 0.2695355 BTC.
He is online, but not releasing the BTC.

They did actually provide an explanation as to why they deducted the amount, I do not agree with the way of thinking though. They deducted it basically because I had to split the amount in two bank transfers. However those two bank transfers arrived on the same day at the sellers bank account (the next business day after the trade), the split transfer did not cause a delay in payment, so it was no difference for the seller. So I don't accept to have anything deducted from the 13 BTC.  

My only fault seems to have been that I was so kind to inform the seller of the split transfer via the message system. He took it up as a reason to cancel the trade, saying I have to pay within 90 minutes. He simply tried to find a reason to cancel the trade.

He should have advertised his trade with another payment method, if he needed the money within 90 minutes, like cash trade, cash deposit for example.
There is no reasonable expectation to receive a bank transfer between different banks within Australia immediately, it is impossible.

True, if OP has chosen a reputable trader, he would probably never need to contact the admin at all.

But the big problem shown here is how the admin on localbitcoin is trying to resolve a conflict.
The OP has provided lots of (IMO, way more than enough) proofs showing that he did send the money but never receive the bitcoin.
Yet, somehow the admin changes the escrow amount randomly (no explanation to OP), and later even refuse to release the escrow at this moment because of OP's reddit post.

This kind of support service is completely unacceptable.




OP, please keep updating your situation.

This is shocking

I have used them several times, and it always went off flawlessly...

Maybe you pissed them off more by posting here as well 

update:

Nov 24 - I still did not receive any of my BTC.

No further statements from localbitcoins.com

Please do not write off dozens of honest businessmen because of a support person's ill-chosen words. Just be cautious in choosing a trader. Traders' policies and feedback reputations are open and visible to the public. Some of us even offer no-questions-asked money-back guarantee when requested within 24 hours, thus bypassing the LBC dispute system entirely.

wow, this really is bad.
I would probably never try localbitcoin.

This is toal BS by localbitcoins and make me never want to use them. Pay the man his coins!

I agree. Giving that excuse was a bad business decision by LBC support. They might have a legitimate reason to delay your refund. I cannot imagine any reason to blame a delay on your publicly complaining.

That "tiny" amount of BTC is worth 10k usd right now , that email response is making me think 10 times before using localbitcoins again.

Yes, it was in an e-mail, via the support ticket system of localbitcoins, here it is: http://postimg.org/image/83durg4zf/ 

wording: "Please also note that we  would have released the escrow
for you already, if that reddit post would not have happened. Now it can
take quite a time to get a peaceful resolution here."

Oh alright, Goodluck then.

+1

I think this is the dumbest excuse I have ever heard.
If indeed they said this I think it's time to start avoiding them.

According to https://localbitcoins.com/fees  only the person who created the advertisement pays fees. In my case the seller advertised, and I responded to his advertisement, so I should not be liable to pay any fees.

If you would post an ad to buy, then you would pay fees as the buyer, this was not the case for me.

Nothing should be deducted from my BTC amount.

Do you have a screenshot of them telling you that they are not releasing because you posted it on reddit?
I mean wtf? Thats childish to say the least...

I will in the future. That day it was hard to find a good deal so I could not be too picky, I agree I should have noticed that the sellers account was only 2 weeks old.

I am not able to leave a review / feedback, because the trade is still in "dispute" stage.

At this stage, localbitcoins admins have the power to do release the BTC, but are not doing so.

LBC merely enables each buyer to choose a seller. They are not an exchange. In future:

1. Choose a seller with over 400 customers and a spotless record who offers a no-questions-asked money-back guarantee. For example: https://localbitcoins.com/accounts/profile/coqui33/?ch=4ja

2. If you are dissatisfied with the seller you chose, write a negative feedback to warn off others.

you are asking your self to be scammed if you dont use escrow , lol

I dont use LocalBitcoins escrow, too many bad feedback from friends.

No, buyer pays fees. for example
I bought 1 BTC but got 0.99 in my wallet.


12.87-12.70 = 0.17 BTC Difference.
I think you should have accepted that.

No, the buyer does not pay a fee, I think the seller does. This adjustment was not because of a fee. 

Localbitcoins staff changed the amount because they think this is a fair solution to the sellers dispute! The seller claimed he had a disadvantage because I had to split the transfer in two parts. In fact he had no disadvantage, he received both the next day. Quickly even for a transfer between two different banks.

"National bank transfer" on localbitcoins.com means a transfer between two banks within the same country, where the accounts do not have to be at the same bank - A national bank transfer between two banks in Australia can vary between 1 - 3 business days, depending on the banks. This is common knowledge - A seller who does not want to wait 1-3 business days would only offer payment methods such as "cash" or "cash deposit" or at least a "transfer within the same bank".

Oh shit yeah it's 12.7 something on image.. :O

1% fee would be 12.87 BTC, down from 13 BTC. Why would the admins be scamming like this? This makes no sense. If everything is correct, why do the admins not release escrow? Are they butthurt that they got called out?

They did not adjusted amount. You are forgetting that they charge 1% Fees.


EDIT: Yeah they have changed amount.

LocalBitcoins.com - Unfair dispute handling
Do admins support fraud? Is there a bias towards sellers?


Short version:

I bought 13 BTC for $7367.23 AUD via advertised payment method "National bank transfer".
The seller received the full payment in his bank account the next day. 
The seller acknowledged that the payment was received.
The seller did not release the 13 BTC from escrow.
The seller opened a dispute instead.
Localbitcoins admins adjusted the BTC amount in escrow from 13 BTC, to ~12.7 BTC, effectively changing the terms of a fixed deal.
Localbitcoins.com admin stated in an email to me that they have no doubt that the money was received by the seller.
My bank has confirmed to the sellers bank that the bank transfer was legitimate after I called my bank.
Localbitcoins.com have not released my 13 BTC from escrow. The seller has not released my BTC from escrow.
Localbitcoins.com staff stated that they did not release the BTC from escrow, because I posted the case on reddit.
As of now, my BTC have not been released from escrow.



Longer version:

LocalBitcoins.com - Do admins support fraud? Is there a bias towards sellers?


Nov 18 - I bought 13 BTC for $7367.23 AUD from the seller, the payment method he requested was "National bank transfer (Australia)"
 I sent the money from my St. George bank account to his Westpac bank account in two payments (due to a daily limit, I had to send $5000.00 immediately (afternoon Australian time) and $2367.23 after midnight, I was not aware of this limit in advance, I kept the seller updated via the message system, he received the funds the next day without delay.).

The BTC price went up a lot (check the charts between Nov 18 - 20).

The seller requested that I cancel the trade, even after I told him the money has already been sent.

I sent my ID documents to the seller as well as the banking receipts 1 and 2 and offered to call him. He did not provide his phone number.

The seller made threats and accusations towards me, partially in broken German language, after he saw my German ID.

The seller called me a scammer and a man 

The seller claimed his account was hacked.

The seller announced that he will return the money once it is in his account.


Nov 19 - The seller confirmed via the messaging system that he received the money in his bank account (both transfers) while claiming that his localbitcoins.com account was hacked.

The seller did not release the BTC from escrow, instead opened a dispute.

I uploaded several other ID documents as well as bank statement and transaction receipts via the dispute form to localbitcoins staff. Including credit cards from my St. George bank account, government IDs and more.

I had conversations with localbitcoins admins on IRC and one staff suggested I "ask forums what the community thinks".

Localbitcoins admins asked me for my bank account number so that the seller can return my money and cancel the trade. By doing this they supported his goal not to honor this trade and sell his BTC for much more.

I stated that I would like to receive the 13 BTC as per the trade.

Nov 20 - My bank confirmed that the money was sent out, I can also see it via online banking.

Localbitcoins admins change the BTC amount in escrow from 13 BTC to ~12.7 BTC - effectively changing the terms of a trade that was fixed, this was their solution to the sellers dispute request, they called it "fair".

I disagree with changing the terms of a trade that was fixed previously and fully paid for by myself.

There was an incident at my residential address.

Nov 21 - I post the story on reddit to get feedback from the community as suggested by localbitcoins staff, to protect myself (because an unknown man came to my house the day before), and to warn other people about the slow & unfair dispute resolution taking place on localbitcoins.com

The seller begs me to remove the post because it damages his reputation.

Reddit removed the post.

The seller asked localbitcoins staff to give me what I want and to release my BTC from escrow.

Localbitcoins staff state that because I posted the story on reddit, they can not release the escrow now.

Nov 22 - Localbitcoins admins write to me that "Regarding to the money transaction, we have no doubt that it have been successfully conducted and credited to the seller's account".

Yet localbitcoins admins do not change the escrow amount back to 13 BTC, neither do they release the escrow to me.

My bank confirmed that they have informed the recipients bank about the transfers being completely legitimate.

As of now I still did not receive any of my BTC. The seller is not releasing the escrow, localbitcoins admins are not releasing the escrow.

Localbitcoins admin requests that I send them a photo of myself holding a utility bill.

Seller alleges that he spoke to police in Australia and that they told him I have a "history".

I provide localbitcoins admins with a photo of myself holding a utility bill next to my face.

I provide localbitcoins admins with a police clearance certificate from the Australian Federal Police as well as employment reference letters.

Nov 23 - I still did not receive any of my BTC.

I have had a couple of very stressful days and sleepless nights.



By now the entire message history, conversations and sequence of events would be too much to read for anybody, however I have everything saved and can back up every single statement I am making. There was more to the entire story, including a threat to my physical safety, when a stranger (male) trespassed on my property on Nov 20, 2 days into the dispute, observing my home, walking around my house, in my garden, waiting for me to get back home. I saw him, concerned neighbors informed me about this as well. - The ID I provided to the seller included my home address.


My original reddit post was deleted, there is another one here.