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I know several good people that have been locked out of Coinbase permanently - without any explanation of why - for over a year despite repeated unanswered requ
by spaceandthyme 8y ago
I know several good people that have been locked out of Coinbase permanently - without any explanation of why - for over a year despite repeated unanswered requests to have accounts reinstated. I watched those people turn from advocates for coinbase into critics. Just a simple explanation would have helped prevent that scenario.
This company is a terrible example of how to do business. It's as if they watched how Google handled AdSense publishers in the early days and decided to copy that model for customer service.
I wonder how well that strategy will play out.
- pavlov 8y agoCoinbase is basically the PayPal of cryptocurrency. Arbitrary unexplained account freezes are part of the model.
- kennxfl 8y agoCouldn't have said it better!
- A2017U1 8y agoThe first two sentences of the Bitcoin whitepaper: > A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution. Digital signatures provide part of the solution, but the main benefits are lost if a trusted third party is still required...
- adyus 8y agoIs it better to have reduced fraud and disgruntled customers, or viceversa? I'm genuinely curious. I suppose it depends on the ultimate goal, but seeing as Coinbase is VC-funded, well...
- existencebox 8y agoTo add to sister comments, I'm also one of these people. My account became re-locked behind a 2 factor validation step, at some point, asking me for a token they claimed to have sent me. Asking to resend results in a server error. I went through 3 support ticket trains before I got "blacklisted." All 3 support agents stopped responding eventually, and after the third, I never got another response back to an initial bug (made with ~1 month increments). This was ~ a year ago. I made similar posts in the past and will echo the sentiment now. Coinbase is a fantastic example of how we've gotten into this state of the world where businesses, including ones touching the most sensitive aspects of your life (financial, private communication, private data storage) have almost no accountability to their users if you fall under their "not enough to care" epsilon. Unfortunately, that epsilon was likely derived by looking at the impact of failed tickets, so I'm pessimistic there will _be_ an impact. If there was, they'd be incentivised to change their behavior.
- cc-d 8y agoI am one of those people. While I could still login to my account, I was unable to deposit/withdraw any usd/crypto. After repeatedly attempting to contact coinbase support for months, I never got any further than automated responses or if I was lucky "We'll look into it" (that was never followed up on). Perhaps with the recent spike in interest in cryptocurrency, coinbase is more concerned with institutional customers who are depositing 5+ figure amounts frequently, and no longer have any interest in people such as myself who only occasionally deposit $100 or so.
- yani 8y agoIt usually ends with someone in handcuffs.
- merinowool 8y agoAdSense has been a success. There is a saying - if you start don't copy what company is doing now, but what they were doing when they started.
- rogual 8y agoI'll say this in every Coinbase thread: They did this to me, then I contacted the CFPB -- it's quick and painless via their website -- and within a couple of days Coinbase's support team became coincidentally responsive again. I got my money back quickly. I was surprised because I'm 1) a cynic, and 2) not a US citizen. But it worked!
- jonhendry18 8y agoI don't think that'll work any more under current mismanagement.