Beware of BitPlastic
Yet more trouble with Bitplastic for me... BTC being literally stolen by the site owners after they admittedly saw it "Stuck" in the system... they did a "server upgrade" a few days ago, now they act as if the conversation we had never took place, and my BTC is gone. The amounts that DID eventually make it to the card (after depositing the btc about 2 weeks prior) was skimmed yet even more... well beyond and after they took their their "Fee" .6 is .53 after their fee. of which they loaded the card with $371.(fine) I was expecting more like what they advertised... 5%, not 5% plus whatever they can siphon from you...
ended up more like 50%
Totally a rip job.
out of the one whole btc I sent... $371.00!
Also beware of BTC-e if you are American. Although they advertise 24 hour USD Deposits... It does not exist! I have about 20+ emails to & from support on it, and they always act stupid, like they don't understand what I'm saying. They don't even accept US Bank International transfer!
So far, Bitstamp and CampBX are the only ones I have been able to successfully deal with, barring Gox in the old days when they had Dwolla... now that was a really sweet deal...
Ahh, fond memories of buying my first bitcoins. I figured a round $25 slapped down at a Walmart with Zipzap to MtGox would be the way to go, found an extra charge so it was something like $27 or $28 and I got like 1.6btc as a result. Then Dwolla was much better but at the rate btc was rising in value I went with max ATM withdrawals directly to BOA and into a Bitfloor account, then when half my 401k was in, I drove home from the bank thinking, Okay now I just wait and no more buying until next year - that afternoon after getting home the crash happened.
I held fast, not selling, and it hit a low of $56 or so. As it was coming back up I was thinking, damn that was a huge transfer of wealth to those lowlifes yelling SELL SELL on the forums and BFL chat (where reverse pump and dump seems well supported). It started down again and looking at another loss, I tried selling some, only some. When I did it was like they were out to get me, the price rose again and I bought back for a loss.
I decided to ignore the day to day price fluctuations and focus on mining. I watch the price, true, but with the resolve I'd not sell in response to the manipulative highs and lows the speculators cause.
In for a penny in for a pound, the Merc and upgrade module saved my bacon. I'm in for a Neptune and will decide how many Jups if and when they again become available.
I know mining is probably causing darkhorse ASIC development and implementation. There will come a time that even the most efficient and best priced miners will turn out to have been bought at a loss. Maybe this year.
Of course if our fantasies are realized and Bitcoin becomes impossibly high valued, like it replaces petrodollars, or Chile demands btc for copper ore, or Greenland wants btc for rare earths, or btc for bauxite, then not. But of course even with that, there will be a time that miner purchase btc won't be returned.
Who knows, maybe 3M will decide to cover all the bases and start stockpiling BTC.
The ease of it does, the pre-order bit...not one jot unless there's a massive bonus. Bit late for that though. 
