Hello, I'll summarize my experience with them, and then copy the entire conversation with customer care and then let you decide if this should be normal. In brief, I made a mistake in transferring BTC to the previous BTC adress they provided, not the new one. I contacted them right away and asked if they could help me out that they should also have access to old BTC addresses. The response was "sorry we can't help because our system automatically deletes old private keys, so that sum wil stay in limbo". Well, that is plausible, so I cursed at my mistake and went on with life. The next day I checked if the sent BTC is still in this address and in limbo, and what I discovered, the BTC was moved couple of hours after and is now part of an active wallet! I e-mailed them asking about it, and now got a totally different answer, that the bitcoins are being held by their supplier and they still can't return them. I asked them if they could contact their supplier or at least give me their contact so I can contact them myself, so I can ask back the money that doesn't belong to them. I even offered them a 15% penalty of that sum for my mistake. But I was only ignored and repeated that you have been informed that we can't return your bitcoins, without any logical reason given for it. To me it is the same if I start to pay in the store, and accidentally hand a 200€ bill instead of 10€, right away discovering my mistake and asking back the over payed bill, but the clerk will just pocket it and say "sorry, I no longer can take this 200€ bill out of my pocket" "why you ask? well, just because..".
I will not take legal action against them because if they are experienced scammers then it will not take me far. But I will make this experience as public as possible so people could know what can be expected from them. Any feedback is welcome!
Here is the entire conversation with customer care:
Customer name May 11, 13:24 CEST Hello, I discovered the mistake. This is my fault, I accidentally used the old adress, the previous adress I used 2 days ago. Could you please help? Your system should have access also to this aadress.
Customer Care (Bitnovo) May 11, 13:29 CEST Dear customer, Our recharge system change the wallet for every request of the recharge. In this case, we do not have any access to sent tokens as once the recharge is made, the private keys are destroyed. Even if the transaction has been sent correctly, it stays in limbo. We are really sorry but we cannot help you to solve this problem. Please, be more careful when making recharges so we can avoid similar problems. Kind regards
Customer name May 12, 16:13 CEST Hello, I just discovered that the bitcoins have moved from this address! So you did have access to the private keys of this address!
https://blockchain.info/address/1Pi3gJkYutcDBJdHT7TTPvkJzUrY6AWzuL Please, return the amount of bitcoins to this address: *****
On 11.05.2018 14:29, Customer Care (Bitnovo) wrote:
Customer Care (Bitnovo) May 14, 09:18 CEST Dear customer, As you have been informed before, we do not have private keys since the wallets are not of ours but from external supplier. The movement you can see has not been realized by Bitnovo. Kind regards
Customer name May 14, 11:18 CEST Hello, in the previous replies, there were no mention of an external supplier. The mention of the external supplier contradicts your previous reply where you told that it is YOUR RECHARGE SYSTEM, and the problem was in PRIVATE KEYS BEING DESTROYED. Now the reason given for not sending back the coins is totally different. No more talks about money being in the limbo, but instead it being in the hands of your external supplier. Quote from your precious reply: "Our recharge system change the wallet for every request of the recharge. In this case, we do not have any access to sent tokens as once the recharge is made, theprivate keys are destroyed." Do you understand how this looks to anyone, when after this reply, the same bitcoins moved? Now, please give me a contact of that "external supplier", that supposedly has access to my bitcoins, that are not his. If that "external supplier" stone-walls me without answers, then I will work hard to make this entire situation public. This is a matter of principal, that customers shouldn't be fooled like this. If I won't get help from anyone, then the only thing left to do, is to send our correspondence to every forum, blog or web portal, that deals with the subject of cryptocurrency and who could be interested in a story. I hope that you will stop playing with me and actually help me. I'm not an easy guy to just push over. 300€ doesn't mean much to me, but someone trying to fool me, means a lot to me. I'm willing to forget all of this if you will really help me solve this situation. So, please, take this more seriously. 300€ should not be worth all this highly suspicious activity.
Customer Care (Bitnovo) May 14, 11:41 CEST Dear customer, Wallets used for recharges are constantly changed for the security reasons. Once the wallet was used all the enter details are destroyed in our system so Bitnovo does NOT have access to them. If you ever have worked with Exchanges you would know that the wallet to store your coins is not really yours but it is owned and managed by the Exchange house. However, you still use it and say it is yours. The same happens with "our recharge system", as we work with it we call it ours even if it really does not belong to us. The coins were sent to wrong wallet. We are sorry but we cannot restore it. Kind regards
Customer name May 14, 12:38 CEST If that is true, then it means that the Exchange house has access to my bitcoins. At first I was told that it is impossible to return my bitcoins because the private keys are destroyed. In that case, it truly would have been impossible. But it turned out that the private keys weren't destroyed but were added to someones active wallet. You are saying that the wallet is in the hands of "the Exchange house" that is a supplier of Bitnovo. That is good because this can be fixed easily by contacting them and telling that they have this many BTC in their wallet, that were transferred by mistake. This can be confirmed easily by seeing that this address had 2 transfers instead not 1, like usually. I'm willing to offer 15% of 300€ as a penalty for my mistake and have no more objections. This would be fair. It would be great if you could contact your partner Exchange house yourself and say that this many bitcoins were given surplus and should be sent back. Should be a quick and easy process, a lot quicker then this conversation we're having. But if you aren't willing to do that, then please give me their contact e-mail, so I can speak with them myself and see if they are pocketing money that shouldn't belong to them. And if they are thieves, then I'm more then obligated to make this situation as public as possible. Any respectable company should be warned about an Exchange house like that. If they have access to bitcoins that were sent to the wrong address, then there is no justification to just pocket them and refuse to return them. It would have only made sense if the private keys would have been destroyed, and that didn't happen.
I truly hope that we will find a solution here, and none of us have to waste any more time on this situation.
Customer name May 15, 10:33 CEST Hello,
could you please tell me if this situation is being dealt with or am I now being ignored?
Customer Care (Bitnovo) May 15, 10:53 CEST Good morning, As you have been informed before, we cannot restore the coins. Kind regards
