Withdrawal on Sunday the 5th 2014 to a JNB acct here in Japan, for a six-figure yen amount. Mt.Gox said it was a holiday until the 6th but Japan Net Bank is only closed for three days, through the second. I can only assume they refer to other banks (if they were being honest). Of course I had heard about some problems with their withdrawals. Assuming they are honest, what they were saying made some sense. There is a long New Years Holiday here.
The withdrawal changed from pending to confirmed the next day. I thought this would mean a fast processing. JNB is supposed to be automatic. Anyway when Wednesday rolled around and nothing happened, I asked about it in an already open support request, and additionally created a NEW request about the withdrawal times.
Cut this all short, the new request was never responded to. The old request was responded to, but very shiftily. I was told at one point "it looks like your withdrawal went through" when it ... hadn't. In fact the status still read "confirmed" so that was bull on some level or another. That freaked me out. Why would they say that? I'm still puzzled over that because either the women DIDNT know that and said she did, or she was given wrong information, but either way my account status was misrepresented. At minimum, MtGox has RIDICULOUSLY sloppy customer service. It would be laughable except that I know many people here aren't laughing, because its not fun when your money is on the line.
I DID get my money. It read "processed" on the 15th and 7:35AM the next morning bam, in the account. My experience with JNB itself has been nothing but extremely snappy. Its essentially a purely-online bank account, very un-Japanese and by that standard, far less bureacratic and much more efficient. I suppose that goes without saying for a bank, but I guess when things concerning Mt. Gox are concerned I have gotten paranoid.
Looking back though, I was mostly paranoid because of reading stories from forum threads like this one. Though the wait was ridiculous (yes, I know there are many worse, but my situation is different than yours), I had to admit their excuse is semi-valid (regarding the holiday, there was also a three-day weekend the Sat-Mon following that). The wait time, the lack of detailed information regarding the withdrawal process, its all totally unacceptable for a company that wants to be legitimate.
Okay, now I'll inject my opinion even though this thread seems to have become a lot of insult-hurling. I'm not an expert in anything, but no need to call me a moron either.
Mt. Gox is sketchy. It seems reasonable to assume that Mark is willing to burn the whole thing to ground and walk away with some fat pockets. Given their trading volume and fees, they make a nice boatload of cash every day. They should have hired 40 more customer service reps. I have opened 6 support tickets and gotten only 4 different support rep names (if those are real). They supposedly have 4 floors of the Medio Bldg in Shinjuku, but I'm not sure about the number of employees. On the Tibanne website they are hiring coders but not CS reps. So, Mark may be a crap CEO sitting on a goldmine. I saw a couple of his tweets and I wasn't impressed.
Japan is a good place for a sketchy business to be. Don't get me wrong, if he breaks the law, they'll probably do something about it. But bitcoin is new, he hasn't been charged with anything yet, and Japan isn't the kind of place that changes laws very soon. Nor are they above exploitation for a profit; their involvement in Myanmar is public knowledge for instance. I could speculate that some of that Iranian oil that managed to find its way out of Iran during the heavy sanction last year may have had the help of bitcoins. Not that that's related to Mt Gox per se, but after the tsunami/Fukushima meltdown, I thought gas prices would soar since they shut off all nuclear power. Actually they were suspiciously low all of last year. Anyway thats just speculation really though I wouldn't put it past this country. I like Japan, I live here, but there is no Christian moralization here, and its been interesting for me to live here and every once in a while take notice of things like Myanmar. Or you could watch the documentary Girl Model. Or The Cove. I'm not sermonizing ya'll, just telling it like it is. If you wanna run a sketchy business that runs in the gray area of law, this is a damn good place to do it. Bitcoin isn't in the news here (okay I've seen a blurb or two, but compare that to say CNNMoney), no one knows about Mark, or really cares. In Japan, if you are into something sketchy like bitcoins and get burned, its your own fault for not being a regular salaryman "like the rest of us."
If you have pending USD withdrawals, I offer my heartfelt sympathy. I'd be raging. I was raging myself for a while there. But to be clear, I only made my withdrawal because I have a Japanese bank account. DONT TRY TO WITHDRAW FROM MTGOX IN USD. Wtf r u doin? They are processing USD withdrawals BY HAND. I don't know what an intl transfer is like in other countries. Here, its a pain in the ass, I suppose you could get to be a pro at filling those forms out but dudes, there is a nice long form to fill out, the guy at the bank has to fax (yes, fax!!!) a request to another office for an up to date exchange rate (because mtgox has to send jpy into usd for an intl tfer I dont know about where you live, just saying what happens here), then confirm it with you, then more bull, yada yada... I wouldn't be surprised if they have some dude who does this all day. And there may in fact be a daily limit like Mark suggested, wouldn't surprise me at all, this country adores and abides by meaningless rules. DONT WITHDRAW USD.
Lucky for me I live in the country this guy is accountable to, and apparently (according to a tweet of his) he doesn't speak Japanese, which means he is at a serious disadvantage to me, who does. I always wondered if this was a working number or not... http://www.tokyo-cci.or.jp/english/ibo/2353440.htm
I get the feeling one of you may check up on that. Skype calls are cheap these days.Anyhow I can register a complaint with the police in his district if I felt I had to, be enough of a pain in his balls (cops are nice here but he'd still be plagued by bureaucracy and suspicion, etc) that obviously my petty cash is better off with me than with him, as far as he is concerned. But honestly, if you really look at it rationally, here is a ridiculously profitable business run by a lucky schmuck who is NOT Zuckerberg. He is just a nerdy computer guy who really needs an HR and CS specialist. Someone who is a known figure, somewhat portly guy... I just don't see him running off with $100 million dollars. Why? Any country that will take him has shitty cuisine. Dude like that will miss himself some Krispy Kreme.
There are a host of other factors involved here. Americans sending in more than $2000 into a US bank account have a SAR report done by their bank. Its mandatory and the bank isn't allowed to tell you they did it, but they DO, gentlemen. Its to prevent money-laundering, which, if you are an honest person, is understandable. However I can only IMAGINE the accounting hell a company like Mt. Gox has become for any number of agencies in DOZENS of countries, haha. The SAR is done by your bank but I wouldn't be too surprised if the American govt has their fist in Mark's ass about all sorts of transactions going on.
tl;dr My domestic transfer was slow in coming but was processed in 8 business days. I wouldn't use Mt. Gox for withdrawals outside of Japan.
(how can you be at all sure of both?)
