Topic: Public Message for Tradehill - page 3. (Read 3629 times)

Let us say I am a bank. I have thousands of customers who use online banking for a variety of reasons. One day, as the CEO and decision maker for the company...I decide that to protect my users I must disable online banking as it is too easy for people to be keylogged and have their accounts hacked into.

So guess what, I am going to just pull the plug.

Oops. I just lost a large amount of business because my customers relied on online banking, and had no notice to prepare for the change. I know if I was a customer and that happened to me, I would be extremely angry at the bank and close my account the next day. Personally.

It's not that difficult to come up with that on your own.

You need to realize that what TradeHill did was for your benefit, not theirs.

Did they have a negative balance? Or is that speculation for the future? I didn't see that stated as a reason anywhere in their official blog post. If there wasn't an immediate danger, it still would be proper to give customers at least some notice before removing it.

They also should have sent a mass email to all customers regarding this major change. I looked at the USD withdrawal options and was absolutely puzzled. A blog, linked with a tiny link at the bottom of the page...is not the proper place to announce very major changes in service. At least email your customers. All major business institutions send notices to customers regarding changes in service. When your bank (and I am using this as an example because Tradehill at least acts like a "fund storage" service) changes rules on withdrawals or deposits, you receive an email with dates on when said policy goes into place...and also a postal letter in addition to that. They don't make a post on Twitter or some blog without using means listed above when they change their policies, do they?

Also, is Joel an official Tradehill employee? If this wasn't speculation regarding the negative balance, why does a non-employee have insider information regarding their situation with Dwolla?

I just requested my btc balance be sent to my wallet.

It was explained in the "Open questions..." thread that Dwolla withdrawals are also risky:

http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=33086.msg413909#msg413909

It sounds to me like Tradehill did what they had to do to protect both themselves and their customers.

I am disappointed that you have removed Dwolla withdrawals as per your blog post today, without any prior notice.

This is not a good business practice. When you have many customers with a USD balance in their account (and may not want to convert back into bitcoins for transfer), you want to give them ample notice that you are no longer accepting a cash out method.

It was reasonable that you took down Dwolla deposits into Tradehill as that was resulting in direct loss on your end, forged statements, etc. However, that is a different issue because you are talking about deposits, not withdrawals. Some people depend on one method of getting the money out of your system, like me. Liberty Reserve is too difficult to manage due the number of shady exchange sites and high wire fees. Regular direct bank wires are expensive.  Paxium charges ridiculous fees, seem greedy, are involved with some (at least in my opinion) shady industries, and require a large amount of personal information to be sent. Dwolla costs $0.25.

You feel the need to make your users safe, and that is fine. However, you have went about it the wrong way. You should have made an announcement stating that you planned on discontinuing all Dwolla withdrawals, and provided a date on which this change would take place (say at least a week or two out). Then you should process all of those withdrawals in that period before the cut off date. This gives customers ample time to prepare for the change. As far as I am aware (correct me if I am wrong), processing Dwolla withdrawals does not put you in danger of losing more money. Therefore, it was completely irresponsible to do this.

I am sure many of you think Dwolla is a total scam, and completely back Tradehill up. The problem with their decision was not the idea removing Dwolla withdrawals, but not giving customers any real notice ahead of time. It is a real shame.

You still have a chance to fix this. Reopen Dwolla withdrawals for a few days at the very least. Allow users to withdraw their funds using that method until a specific deadline/cut off date. At that point, remove it.

-DS

Additional Edit: They also should have sent a mass email to all customers regarding this major change. I looked at the USD withdrawal options and was absolutely puzzled. A blog, linked with a tiny link at the bottom of the page...is not the proper place to announce very major changes in service. At least email your customers. All major business institutions send notices to customers regarding changes in service. When your bank (and I am using this as an example because Tradehill at least acts like a "fund storage" service) changes rules on withdrawals or deposits, you receive an email with dates on when said policy goes into place...and also a postal letter in addition to that. They don't make a post on Twitter or some blog without using means listed above when they change their policies, do they?