13 ms·

Sent $10,701.03 to Coinbase. Still missing bitcoins.

343 points by permanence 13y ago

I placed an order for bitcoins early last week and was slated to receive them on Friday. Not only did I not recieve them, the transaction disappeared from my account, even though the ACH withdrawal had already clearly happened from my bank account. Now, I'm still missing bitcoins in my account for transactions that have already been cleared and I've received a portion of the $10,701.03 in bitcoin at the price that I was was locked in at if I was to receive them on Friday, December 13th. I received them 5 days late and at the price locked in on December 8. Coinbase is at fault and they've violated their own terms of service. I've asked for a similar resolution that the other gentleman on HN got from Brian, and this is the response I received from their customer support: "I'm not sure how that guy got the CEO of the company to intercede on his behalf, but that's definitely not a normal handling of that case. I simply do not have the ability to do that, I'm sorry. None of the admins do. That guy must have been one of our extremely high volume VIP users or something in order for something like that to have happened. I...don't really know how to respond further. That does seem somewhat unfair. Very sorry, but I just don't have the ability to push through such a request. Nor is it possible to forward a ticket to our CEO. My apologies, but I'm just not able to be of further help here..." What's wrong with Coinbase right now? I'm a huge fan of them, but this is terrible customer service. I can't get a fair resolution because your ticketing system doesn't allow you to send a ticket to Brian or any of your other superiors? What kind of customer service is this? I would even love an acknowledgment that Coinbase violated its TOS and is in the wrong here. I'm just looking for a fair resolution.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
swombat 13y ago
"I don't have the ability to forward this to the CEO"? Fix that even before fixing the reconciliations...
- kapkapkap 13y ago
  Seems safe to say that the customer support person could have surely emailed the CEO if they really wanted to, according to [1] they have a total of 8 employees as of thier recent funding last week. Also, a 2-second google search shows that it is brian@coinbase.com [1] http://www.vcpost.com/articles/19649/20131212/bitcoin-focused-coinbase-nabs-25m-andreessen-horowitz-led-round.htm http://www.vcpost.com/articles/19649/20131212/bitcoin-focuse...
  - flebron 13y ago
    It just lends more credibility to the "this is just a mgrunin sockpuppet" hypothesis elsewhere in this thread. No way in an 8 person company, you "don't have the ability" to talk to one of them.
    - d23 13y ago
      I'm guessing it's someone just spreading FUD, for whatever reason. I don't know that it's mgrunin, but they probably just imagined the company being some monolith that is actually quite small. That's also an incredibly unprofessional response that completely throws their company under the bus, which I have a hard time believing anyone who isn't a complete moron would do. Seems quite convenient that it fits the poster's narrative perfectly. -- Edit: after doing a bit more digging, mcgrunin has been very respectful toward the CEO of coinbase after his mishap. So let's not go libeling people needlessly. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6933058 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6933058 The rest of his comment history is the same.
      - permanence 13y ago
        Surprisingly this is word for word the response I got from customer support. Rees from Coinbase reached out to me after this post and they've resolved 1 of the 2 transaction problems. I'm still missing bitcoins.
        sjp 13y ago
untitledwiz 13y ago
Well then, third post in week or so, I see HN has become the official support system for Coinbase ...
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- beedogs 13y ago
  An interesting pivot, for sure.
- squigs25 13y ago
  Yeah. While it sucks that HN has been commandeered for coinbase support issues, at the same multiple people seem to have lost 10k+, and if this is what it takes for them to get their funds back I fully support their posts. But damn, wouldn't it be nice if coinbase did some kind of simple error checking to see if transactions are being handled properly? This is a downstream simple check - does the monetary transaction correspond with a similarly sized bitcoin transaction, and do the bitcoin transactions add up to the reported balance? I opened a coinbase account a week ago but haven't used it yet. I'm glad I didn't!
p4vl1n 13y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6929705 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6929705
patrickg_zill 13y ago
Wow, that is pretty surprising. First thing in support is, YOU are the face of the company as far as the person you are in contact with, can see. Second thing is, if you don't know, don't guess; tell them you will check into X and get back to them about it. Third, empathize with the person - wouldn't you be worried over the disposition of $10K if you took it out of your bank account and then had problems getting what you ordered?
- pbreit 13y ago
  While I'm inclined to believe the OP, the text posted does set of my spidey sense.
  - permanence 13y ago
    Word for word the response I received from customer support. Another customer support person, Rees, reached out to me this morning and we've resolved 1 of 2 issues.
codebolt 13y ago
This is exactly why I'm not buying bitcoins in the current dip. Counterparty risk on the exchanges. http://fc13.ifca.ai/proc/1-2.pdf http://fc13.ifca.ai/proc/1-2.pdf
pbreit 13y ago
You posted here at pretty much the exact wrong time (11:30pm PT) but I would still be surprised if you don't eventually get taken care of (assuming a legit situation).
jackgavigan 13y ago
Before the $25m round that was just announced, CoinBase had raised $6.71m. What have they spent that money on?
- PeterisP 13y ago
  It's a tiny amount of money for a financial services company - because they need money not for expenses & salaries (as a software company), but as a pure instrument in their everyday transactions. I can easily imagine Coinbase needing ten times more working capital than that simply to function properly (i.e., not as they seem to function now).
  - samastur 13y ago
    I would love it if you could elaborate on this. Since most exchanges don't do anything before they received money from buyer, what would they need the money for?
    - k-mcgrady 13y ago
      The huge fluctuations in the price of BitCoin probably cause problems. Taking an order, locking the price in, and waiting a few days for the transfer gives BitCoin time to drastically change in value.
      - yebyen 13y ago
        Presumably you had the opportunity to buy the coin at the price you offered when you offered it. I am a small potato with no customers. I bid on an auction a few days ago for more BTC than I had. Why? Well, at the time, I hadn't planned to make up the difference at Coinbase, but that was my first plan. The due date of the payment would have been after the closing date of Coinbase transactions on that date. I could probably still buy more coins before they were due, if I was still winning the auction for 6BTC. But the real plan? SatoshiDice. I'm not talking double, I had most of the BTC needed for my bid, and the difference between what I had bid and the next bidder (split the difference) was even smaller. So, if I just need to win 0.9BTC, it's pretty easy to do that at SatoshiDice with 4.5BTC bankroll. In fact I won 0.7BTC yesterday, after someone outbid me. I could have made it up in cash at Coinbase, but then there would be no Christmas. This however is a small auction for another speculative asset between friends. I am not a financial services company! I can't imagine the size of the spreadsheet required to predict whether Coinbase will be able to meet all of its obligations to every customer at each point in time given the possibility of price fluctuations. Certainly a harder problem than "can I maybe win 0.9 at SatoshiDice." But certainly also, within striking distance of solvable.
jamestnz 13y ago
"I'm not sure how that guy got the CEO of the company to intercede on his behalf" Well, he did so by raising a public fuss about it, that much seems obvious. The OP of this thread seems (quite reasonably) to be attempting to achieve the same outcome by the same method. Taking this OP’s claims at face value, it seems like the support person quoted was trying to be helpful (or at least empathetic). Unfortunately, on a basic customer-service level, the response fails spectacularly. I fail to believe that a company such as coinbase would neglect to have some mechanism where staffers can escalate support tickets (as is apparently being claimed). Jeez, it doesn’t even have to go directly to the CEO skipping all intermediate steps: just bump it up the chain! That CEO intervention should be necessary to achieve basic customer satisfaction is crazy to begin with. Either empower the hierarchy to solve problems, or give them access to someone who can. OP did you try emailing brian@coinbase.com directly? (I’m not revealing any information here that a quick googling doesn’t).
- permanence 13y ago
  Thanks for this message. I didn't email Brian directly. Rees from Coinbase reached out to me. He's fixed one of my problems and I'm waiting on the second to be resolved.
Tarang 13y ago
I think Coinbase ought to be aware we know their customer service needs work & when stuff comes on HN and it looks bad for them its just damage control to give a false impression of competence when they respond.
kjackson2012 13y ago
Why are people even posting on HN? The easy answer is do an ACH chargeback and be done with it. Do it quickly as well since the price has plummeted. Don't even bother with contacting customer support.
- qq66 13y ago
  Could Coinbase be arbitraged this way? Just running ACH chargebacks every time the Bitcoin price falls before fulfillment?
  - tlrobinson 13y ago
    Surely there are repercussions for issuing chargebacks for non-legitimate reasons? I imagine Coinbase would just cancel your account pretty quickly.
  - eterm 13y ago
    That would be fraud. I'm sure there are plenty of ways to make money if you're willing to commit fraud.
    - wtvanhest 13y ago
      I'm not sure if it is fraud or not. Maybe an attorney can comment, but here is how I look at it: Fraud: (1) a false statement of a material fact, (2) knowledge on the part of the defendant that the statement is untrue, (3) intent on the part of the defendant to deceive the alleged victim, (4) justifiable reliance by the alleged victim on the statement, and (5) injury to the alleged victim as a result. The attempt at buying coins on coinbase while selling coins outside of coinbase, then if the coin price falls… If Coinbase doesn’t deliver the coins according to their TOS and you say to the bank that you want to do an ACH chargeback due to them not delivering, it doesn’t fit the definition of fraud in multiple ways: The statement you would make to the bank would be: “Coinbase did not deliver the coins based on their TOS so I request my money to be sent back to me via ACH chargeback and if they do send the coins, I will send them back to Coinbase” 1) it isn’t a false statement 2) doesn’t apply since it isn’t a false statement 3) not deceiving anyone 4) they are relying on it, but it isn’t false 5) no one is injured since Coinbase waited to fulfill the transaction, they can just resell the coins at the current market price, assuming they are able to actually sell coins.
znowi 13y ago
When it takes a public outcry on HN for a company to do their job, I no longer deal with such a company. Simple as that. I don't care if you raised $25 million - if you can't treat your users fairly, you deserve neither.
- seferphier 13y ago
  Agreed. When there is a public outcry, it means that there is inadequate processes are put into place for protect their customers. This happened twice today. This means something is fundamentally broken in Coinbase's customer service. Many famous VCs and founders browse HN. This will hurt their reputation.
  - DanielRibeiro 13y ago
    Yes, Coinbase is a YC company[1], yes YC hosts this site (Hacker News is, after all, https://news.ycombinator.com https://news.ycombinator.com), yes their investors do comment on Hacker News threads[2]. Also, the CEO of Coinbase is on HN[4]. He is the top response to the other indignant thread[5], where he seems to be trying to fix this issue. Also note that you can easily find the CEO's email from his GitHub account[6] I understand there are many people who are very angry at the whole situation (just look at the conversation on Reddit[7]). I can only imagine how many other cases he is facing. The timing on this whole thing is just awful (1 week after funding announced, BitCoin crashes), which makes the whole situation very very awful. And giving support on public forums with angry customers is super hard, particularly because you start encouraging more people to do it, which escalates the situation to impossible terms, which sucks your time, which could be used to helping all the customers, including all the ones who are not being loud on Hacker News / Twitter / Reddit (also note that it is almost 4 AM where these people live, and they are probably sleeping). I honestly expect Coinbase to do the right thing[8], and that you'll get your money back (or your money's worth of BTC). [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4177605 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4177605 [2] Marc Andressen is https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=cdixon https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=cdixon , Chris Dixon is https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=cdixon https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=cdixon and they both commentd on their investment announcement thread[3]. Ben Horowitz is https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=bhorowitz https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=bhorowitz, but he has not ben very active here. [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6893658 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6893658 [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=barmstrong https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=barmstrong [5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6929705 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6929705 [6] First response on Google for me: https://github.com/barmstrong https://github.com/barmstrong, also the same username on HN: barmstrong@gmail.com [7] http://www.reddit.com/r/Coinbase http://www.reddit.com/r/Coinbase [8] Brian Chesky told the story how Marc helped AirBnb during one of their worst crisis, on this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=6yPfxcqEXhE#t=5784 http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=6yP...
jnardiello 13y ago
Seems like Coinbase wasn't able to create a viable and sustainable process. To me, they will just fail as long as their processes become scalable. Surely i won't deal with them anytime soon :)
Saus 13y ago
The problem what I have is 'fairness' (not just Coinbase, mostly all companies with customer service). OP tried to solve it without making a fuss, without causing trouble for CoinBase but they couldn't help him and they didn't want to help him. Now he is creating negative press (exactly what you don't want) and see the response from last night. CEO probably comes in and saves the day. The problem is that the people who 'behave' will get shafted, and those who seek 'social media' will get a prompt resolution. That is a disappointing trend that with Twitter/Facebook only became worse (before those it was mostly threatening with consumer advocate programs on TV). Try it yourself, send an e-mail and a tweet to a company. E-mail gets a reply within 48h, twitter within 1h. Companies are creating their own monster this way....
simias 13y ago
HN is not a Coinbase support group. There must be better ways to deal with this.
- booruguru 13y ago
  I think losing 10k through a computer glitch is something worth talking about...especially since it's becoming a trend.
grimaceindex 13y ago
To the OP: if Coinbase provides terrible customer service but you still publicly declare you're a "huge fan", what incentive is there for them to change?
- Einstalbert 13y ago
  Isn't the incentive to show them that you're still willing to work with them in the future so long as they get their crap together? I'm honestly not impressed with this stuff happening to people, even as a mistake, but at the same time I don't see people writing off entire companies that have otherwise acted in good faith. Of course, if it happens to many more people, you can only do so much with so little.
aidanlister 13y ago
Does anyone else get the creepy feeling that this is mgrunin posting to stroke his own ego? "That guy must have been one of our extremely high volume VIP users or something in order for something like that to have happened." That just does not sound right. And it's not the first time he's tried a sockpuppet account [1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6930297 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6930297
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- permanence 13y ago
  Hah - good guess, but incorrect. Coinbase reached out to me this morning from this post. They've reconciled a transaction for 10 bitcoins, but there's 2 bitcoins from an old transaction that are still "missing" despite it being marked as completed, more than a week old and the withdrawal cleared from my bank.
- mgrunin 13y ago
  I don't really understand why I've been hearing the whole "sockpuppet" issue ever since my thread. What exactly do people think I am doing? Creating shill accounts? What is my purpose in doing so. I already had my matter solved in my thread successfully. This is my fist and only account YC.
brentm 13y ago
That is one of the worst responses from a customer service agent I've ever seen.
learningram 13y ago
Bitcoin news... I have no interest in Bitcoins. Is someone gaming HN ?
- BlackDeath3 13y ago
  Check your URL. Perhaps you're looking for news.learningram.com?
- dragontamer 13y ago
  In this case, Coinbase is a YCombinator company. Even if you aren't interested in BTC, Coinbase and its business dealings are very much a good topic of conversation on these forums.
rdxm 13y ago
Ever wonder why there are not 100 different exchanges out there providing services to the equities/options/bond markets??? Simple, it's fairly costly and complicated to 1) meet regulatory requirements, 2) achieve a level of liquidity/transaction volume to make the exchange viable, and 3) take business away from the incumbents... moreover, as soon as you attach the word 'exchange' to your service you immediately set an expectation in the consumers mind that you will provide a similar level of service/liquidity as that which they would receive if they were working with a real exchange operator. coinbase currently lists a team which has zero experience in the exchange operations world. the closest they come is a guy who did some foreign exchange trading at GS. net-net they have a looooooong way to go to get to being a viable exchange in the traditional sense of the word. and that's before you get to the whole topic of whether or not bitcoin is really something that will be a viable exchange model asset. that has yet to be tested outside of a very, very small base (relatively) of ecosystem participants..
ziko 13y ago
Hi, <name> from Coinbase here. Sorry for the delay on that - definitely not the customer experience we are striving for. <some phone shit right here> Edit: <we actually did our job and made it work. we also gave you 0.01% on top!>
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
andersthue 13y ago
Did anyone say Ponzi Scheme ?
- BlackDeath3 13y ago
  Plenty of people say "Ponzi Scheme". Many of them don't know anything about Bitcoin (or Ponzi Schemes).
colanderman 13y ago
1. Chargeback. 2. Better Business Bureau. 3. Federal Trade Commission. 4. Lawyer/lawsuit. All of these are better options than whining on some Internet forum.
- lisper 13y ago
  1. You can't chargeback a completed ACH withdrawal. (It is possible to revert an ACH transaction, but that generally happens only if the original transaction was unauthorized, which is not the case here. ACH/debit transactions do not have the same level of consumer protections as credit card transactions. That's why Coinbase doesn't accept credit cards.) 2. The BBB is a corporate shill. 3. Rotsa ruck. 4. Will cost more than the amount lost, and legal fees are rarely recoverable.
  - imsofuture 13y ago
    In all fairness, Coinbase doesn't accept credit cards because that same consumer protection can be abused into defrauding them. Which, seems reasonable :)
    - lisper 13y ago
      CB could accept credit cards without too much risk if they chose to by e.g. putting a 60-day hold on all BTC bought with credit cards. My guess is they don't take credit cards because they have their hands full dealing with their business as it stands, and adding the extra business logic to accept credit cards would just be too big of a PITA. Another possibility is that the credit card companies won't allow them to do it.
  - colanderman 13y ago
    2. Shill or not, I've gotten results via them on multiple occasions. 4. I don't believe this. You're basically telling me if I pay for a car from a dealership, and they fail to deliver, that I or a lawyer can't sic law enforcement on them.
    - 13y ago
sergiotapia 13y ago
Unfortunately this is a trend for Coinbase: http://www.reddit.com/r/CoinBase/comments/1t6326/customer_support_ignores_my_tickets_for_a_month/ http://www.reddit.com/r/CoinBase/comments/1t6326/customer_su... Just don't use them and protect your hard earned money.
streptomycin 13y ago
Just a fun anecdote to throw in: I never bought through Coinbase, but I did sell some coins there recently for like $7k. They deposited the $7k in my bank account twice, and then a few days later took the extra $7k back. So although ultimately it all worked out fine, they do seem to be ridiculously reckless in their dealings with thousands of dollars. I can't imagine my bank doing something like that. Made me very wary of dealing with Coinbase in the future.
- imsofuture 13y ago
  Are you sure that's the case, or could it have been ACH or reporting weirdness?
  - streptomycin 13y ago
    I guess it could be reporting weirdness? Never seen anything like it before, though, and I've made withdrawals and deposits to my account from many different sources. One $7k deposit soon after I made my sale. Another distinct $7k deposit a couple days later, reflected in my account balance which was now up $14k. And then a $7k withdrawal a few days after that. Both deposits and the withdrawal still show up in my transaction history.
    - ahlatimer 13y ago
      It happened to me recently, but it was my paycheck. Googling around, it seems to be something that happens with ACH transactions somewhat rarely, but it does seem to happen.
- mrb 13y ago
  Same thing happened to me. I sold $35k of coins a few weeks ago. Coinbase did 2 ACH transfers by accident to my bank, a few days apart. They reverted the 2nd one 4-5 days later.
- sneak 13y ago
  > I never bought through Coinbase, but I did sell some coins there recently for like $7k. They deposited the $7k in my bank account twice, and then a few days later took the extra $7k back. Me too.
sheetjs 13y ago
The same class of problems (questions regarding account balance, money taken out but BTC missing, support went dark) happened earlier this year and there was another front page conversation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5427985 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5427985 Sadly, it seems that the key takeaway (the importance of customer support) was lost upon the Coinbase staff. Based on the last response, its clear that they have not learned their lesson. I recommend pulling all money and BTC out of Coinbase before the next crisis. And I say "next crisis" because there is no indication that steps were taken to rectify the underlying issues here. For example, as speculated in both threads, do they need to move off of MongoDB?
- robinhoode 13y ago
  Using MongoDB to process payments is a double facepalm fail.
  - mathattack 13y ago
    I'm not an expert, but it seems risky to trust MongoDB for that. Isn't it the wrong tool for that space?
    - robinhoode 13y ago
      MongoDB commits are asynchronous and fail silently by default. This is in opposition to ordinary SQL databases, which are synchronous and fail noisely by default. You can enable that behavior for MongoDB, but then you're just getting ordinary SQL-style behavior, so why were you using MongoDB in the first place?
      - emin-gun-sirer 13y ago
        You mean "ACID transactions" and not SQL databases. Some NoSQL databases, such as HyperDex, provide ACID transactions.
juanbyrge 13y ago
LOL it seems that Coinbase has a lot of junior developers that are too superior for unit tests . Try the magic the gathering site?
tlongren 13y ago
Glad I don't use online bitcoin wallets.
mattmaroon 13y ago
Can we make a new rule? HN is not an end run around companies' bad customer support (even YC ones). We could probably fill this site with these pretty easily.
- RokStdy 13y ago
  Matt, I think these posts are valuable. The readers of HN seem to be exactly the type of people who might be early adopters of Coinbase. It's helpful for those people to know how the service works from a customer's perspective. Then you also have the benefit from the entrepreneurial side. These posts can serve as a cautionary tale to other would be founders as how not to do customer service. I think where this crosses the line from inane bitching to useful discourse is the gravity of these issues. It's not like these people are posting with complaints about the page layout of the company or <insert minor nitpick here>. The issue is with the core function of the company, and that's work discussion. Just my $0.02.
- pg 13y ago
  We already have that rule. The site guidelines explicitly ask that people not use HN as a support forum for companies we've funded. http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html We let this and the last one go lest people think we were censoring bad news, but we're going to kill these in future.
brandon272 13y ago
Assuming this post is legitimate, what kind of organization of that size (an article published today indicates that there are 8 employees!) has a hierarchy and culture where if an individual working in a customer support role sees something wrong they have no way of communicating with the CEO? Scary, if true.
- permanence 13y ago
  I don't know how else to prove this is legitimate. Not that I feel I have to. Rees from Coinbase reached out to me this morning and we've resolved one of the two issues. I'm still missing bitcoins from my account and will update this when it's resolved.
- permanence 13y ago
  Just to clarify what the problem is now. Coinbase reconciled my purchase of 10 bitcoins by giving them to be at todays market price. I'm still missing 2 bitcoins from an old purchase that says it's been cleared.
simonebrunozzi 13y ago
I have a question that is related to how Coinbase deals with situations like the one on this thread: I have a Coinbase account, and I am verified with a Credit Card. This means that I can instantly buy bitcoins. What happens if they fail to get the money from my bank account 2-3 days later? Would they charge my credit card instead?
steeve 13y ago
They are 8 people. He can surely push through.
permanence 13y ago
UPDATE: I've been in touch with Coinbase support and they've corrected the larger of the two transactions in question. I'm still waiting on the second transaction to be fixed. I'm still missing some bitcoins from transactions that are well beyond complete (more than a week old, ACH withdrawal completed and marked as complete in coinbase).
- Derpbase 13y ago
  How to use Coinbase: 1. Try to use coinbase 2. Contact customer service when that fails. 3. Post to HN when that fails. 4. Still get screwed because they don't know what they are doing at Coinbase. Got it.
j_s 13y ago
Sounds like it's time to start the process of reversing a fraudulent ACH transaction.
barmstrong 13y ago
Coinbase founder here. We'll reach out via email to discuss the details of this case with you.
- sjp 13y ago
  can you perhaps tell us if everyone - even those with smaller amounts - will be receiving the same consideration? ie should we also be stomping our feet or is it just a matter of patience before you address smaller mistakes?
- permanence 13y ago
  Sent you an email, Brian.
T3RMINATED 13y ago
thanks for the headsup i was going to do a 1300$ bc exchange on coinbase... aint gonna happen..
kaonashi 13y ago
"There's a sucker born every minute" - P.T. Barnum
permanence 13y ago
UPDATE 2: Still waiting to receive two missing bitcoins that were purchased on December 11 and promised delivery for December 17. I mentioned the issue to them days ago and it's still hasn't even been acknowledged. Sent them a message this morning and again right now. Coinbase has been kind enough to resolve the issue with 10 bitcoins being delivered nearly a week late. But I'm not sure why 2 bitcoins disappeared from my account and they have yet to acknowledge the issue.
permanence 13y ago
UPDATE 3: Still missing bitcoins purchased on December 11. No acknowledgment of missing bitcoins yet from customer support or Brian.
permanence 13y ago
Final Update: I've finally got my missing bitcoins from Coinbase. I'm squared up. Thanks for responding Counbase.

343 points by permanence 13y ago

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

swombat 13y ago

"I don't have the ability to forward this to the CEO"? Fix that even before fixing the reconciliations...

kapkapkap 13y ago
Seems safe to say that the customer support person could have surely emailed the CEO if they really wanted to, according to [1] they have a total of 8 employees as of thier recent funding last week. Also, a 2-second google search shows that it is brian@coinbase.com [1] http://www.vcpost.com/articles/19649/20131212/bitcoin-focused-coinbase-nabs-25m-andreessen-horowitz-led-round.htm http://www.vcpost.com/articles/19649/20131212/bitcoin-focuse...
- flebron 13y ago
  It just lends more credibility to the "this is just a mgrunin sockpuppet" hypothesis elsewhere in this thread. No way in an 8 person company, you "don't have the ability" to talk to one of them.
  - d23 13y ago
    I'm guessing it's someone just spreading FUD, for whatever reason. I don't know that it's mgrunin, but they probably just imagined the company being some monolith that is actually quite small. That's also an incredibly unprofessional response that completely throws their company under the bus, which I have a hard time believing anyone who isn't a complete moron would do. Seems quite convenient that it fits the poster's narrative perfectly. -- Edit: after doing a bit more digging, mcgrunin has been very respectful toward the CEO of coinbase after his mishap. So let's not go libeling people needlessly. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6933058 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6933058 The rest of his comment history is the same.
    - permanence 13y ago
      Surprisingly this is word for word the response I got from customer support. Rees from Coinbase reached out to me after this post and they've resolved 1 of the 2 transaction problems. I'm still missing bitcoins.
      - sjp 13y ago

untitledwiz 13y ago

Well then, third post in week or so, I see HN has become the official support system for Coinbase ...

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
beedogs 13y ago
An interesting pivot, for sure.
squigs25 13y ago
Yeah. While it sucks that HN has been commandeered for coinbase support issues, at the same multiple people seem to have lost 10k+, and if this is what it takes for them to get their funds back I fully support their posts. But damn, wouldn't it be nice if coinbase did some kind of simple error checking to see if transactions are being handled properly? This is a downstream simple check - does the monetary transaction correspond with a similarly sized bitcoin transaction, and do the bitcoin transactions add up to the reported balance? I opened a coinbase account a week ago but haven't used it yet. I'm glad I didn't!

p4vl1n 13y ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6929705 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6929705

patrickg_zill 13y ago

Wow, that is pretty surprising. First thing in support is, YOU are the face of the company as far as the person you are in contact with, can see. Second thing is, if you don't know, don't guess; tell them you will check into X and get back to them about it. Third, empathize with the person - wouldn't you be worried over the disposition of $10K if you took it out of your bank account and then had problems getting what you ordered?

pbreit 13y ago
While I'm inclined to believe the OP, the text posted does set of my spidey sense.
- permanence 13y ago
  Word for word the response I received from customer support. Another customer support person, Rees, reached out to me this morning and we've resolved 1 of 2 issues.

codebolt 13y ago

This is exactly why I'm not buying bitcoins in the current dip. Counterparty risk on the exchanges. http://fc13.ifca.ai/proc/1-2.pdf http://fc13.ifca.ai/proc/1-2.pdf

pbreit 13y ago

You posted here at pretty much the exact wrong time (11:30pm PT) but I would still be surprised if you don't eventually get taken care of (assuming a legit situation).

jackgavigan 13y ago

Before the $25m round that was just announced, CoinBase had raised $6.71m. What have they spent that money on?

PeterisP 13y ago
It's a tiny amount of money for a financial services company - because they need money not for expenses & salaries (as a software company), but as a pure instrument in their everyday transactions. I can easily imagine Coinbase needing ten times more working capital than that simply to function properly (i.e., not as they seem to function now).
- samastur 13y ago
  I would love it if you could elaborate on this. Since most exchanges don't do anything before they received money from buyer, what would they need the money for?
  - k-mcgrady 13y ago
    The huge fluctuations in the price of BitCoin probably cause problems. Taking an order, locking the price in, and waiting a few days for the transfer gives BitCoin time to drastically change in value.
    - yebyen 13y ago
      Presumably you had the opportunity to buy the coin at the price you offered when you offered it. I am a small potato with no customers. I bid on an auction a few days ago for more BTC than I had. Why? Well, at the time, I hadn't planned to make up the difference at Coinbase, but that was my first plan. The due date of the payment would have been after the closing date of Coinbase transactions on that date. I could probably still buy more coins before they were due, if I was still winning the auction for 6BTC. But the real plan? SatoshiDice. I'm not talking double, I had most of the BTC needed for my bid, and the difference between what I had bid and the next bidder (split the difference) was even smaller. So, if I just need to win 0.9BTC, it's pretty easy to do that at SatoshiDice with 4.5BTC bankroll. In fact I won 0.7BTC yesterday, after someone outbid me. I could have made it up in cash at Coinbase, but then there would be no Christmas. This however is a small auction for another speculative asset between friends. I am not a financial services company! I can't imagine the size of the spreadsheet required to predict whether Coinbase will be able to meet all of its obligations to every customer at each point in time given the possibility of price fluctuations. Certainly a harder problem than "can I maybe win 0.9 at SatoshiDice." But certainly also, within striking distance of solvable.

jamestnz 13y ago

"I'm not sure how that guy got the CEO of the company to intercede on his behalf" Well, he did so by raising a public fuss about it, that much seems obvious. The OP of this thread seems (quite reasonably) to be attempting to achieve the same outcome by the same method. Taking this OP’s claims at face value, it seems like the support person quoted was trying to be helpful (or at least empathetic). Unfortunately, on a basic customer-service level, the response fails spectacularly. I fail to believe that a company such as coinbase would neglect to have some mechanism where staffers can escalate support tickets (as is apparently being claimed). Jeez, it doesn’t even have to go directly to the CEO skipping all intermediate steps: just bump it up the chain! That CEO intervention should be necessary to achieve basic customer satisfaction is crazy to begin with. Either empower the hierarchy to solve problems, or give them access to someone who can. OP did you try emailing brian@coinbase.com directly? (I’m not revealing any information here that a quick googling doesn’t).

permanence 13y ago
Thanks for this message. I didn't email Brian directly. Rees from Coinbase reached out to me. He's fixed one of my problems and I'm waiting on the second to be resolved.

Tarang 13y ago

I think Coinbase ought to be aware we know their customer service needs work & when stuff comes on HN and it looks bad for them its just damage control to give a false impression of competence when they respond.

kjackson2012 13y ago

Why are people even posting on HN? The easy answer is do an ACH chargeback and be done with it. Do it quickly as well since the price has plummeted. Don't even bother with contacting customer support.

qq66 13y ago
Could Coinbase be arbitraged this way? Just running ACH chargebacks every time the Bitcoin price falls before fulfillment?
- tlrobinson 13y ago
  Surely there are repercussions for issuing chargebacks for non-legitimate reasons? I imagine Coinbase would just cancel your account pretty quickly.
- eterm 13y ago
  That would be fraud. I'm sure there are plenty of ways to make money if you're willing to commit fraud.
  - wtvanhest 13y ago
    I'm not sure if it is fraud or not. Maybe an attorney can comment, but here is how I look at it: Fraud: (1) a false statement of a material fact, (2) knowledge on the part of the defendant that the statement is untrue, (3) intent on the part of the defendant to deceive the alleged victim, (4) justifiable reliance by the alleged victim on the statement, and (5) injury to the alleged victim as a result. The attempt at buying coins on coinbase while selling coins outside of coinbase, then if the coin price falls… If Coinbase doesn’t deliver the coins according to their TOS and you say to the bank that you want to do an ACH chargeback due to them not delivering, it doesn’t fit the definition of fraud in multiple ways: The statement you would make to the bank would be: “Coinbase did not deliver the coins based on their TOS so I request my money to be sent back to me via ACH chargeback and if they do send the coins, I will send them back to Coinbase” 1) it isn’t a false statement 2) doesn’t apply since it isn’t a false statement 3) not deceiving anyone 4) they are relying on it, but it isn’t false 5) no one is injured since Coinbase waited to fulfill the transaction, they can just resell the coins at the current market price, assuming they are able to actually sell coins.

znowi 13y ago

When it takes a public outcry on HN for a company to do their job, I no longer deal with such a company. Simple as that. I don't care if you raised $25 million - if you can't treat your users fairly, you deserve neither.

seferphier 13y ago
Agreed. When there is a public outcry, it means that there is inadequate processes are put into place for protect their customers. This happened twice today. This means something is fundamentally broken in Coinbase's customer service. Many famous VCs and founders browse HN. This will hurt their reputation.
- DanielRibeiro 13y ago
  Yes, Coinbase is a YC company[1], yes YC hosts this site (Hacker News is, after all, https://news.ycombinator.com https://news.ycombinator.com), yes their investors do comment on Hacker News threads[2]. Also, the CEO of Coinbase is on HN[4]. He is the top response to the other indignant thread[5], where he seems to be trying to fix this issue. Also note that you can easily find the CEO's email from his GitHub account[6] I understand there are many people who are very angry at the whole situation (just look at the conversation on Reddit[7]). I can only imagine how many other cases he is facing. The timing on this whole thing is just awful (1 week after funding announced, BitCoin crashes), which makes the whole situation very very awful. And giving support on public forums with angry customers is super hard, particularly because you start encouraging more people to do it, which escalates the situation to impossible terms, which sucks your time, which could be used to helping all the customers, including all the ones who are not being loud on Hacker News / Twitter / Reddit (also note that it is almost 4 AM where these people live, and they are probably sleeping). I honestly expect Coinbase to do the right thing[8], and that you'll get your money back (or your money's worth of BTC). [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4177605 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4177605 [2] Marc Andressen is https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=cdixon https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=cdixon , Chris Dixon is https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=cdixon https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=cdixon and they both commentd on their investment announcement thread[3]. Ben Horowitz is https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=bhorowitz https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=bhorowitz, but he has not ben very active here. [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6893658 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6893658 [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=barmstrong https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=barmstrong [5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6929705 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6929705 [6] First response on Google for me: https://github.com/barmstrong https://github.com/barmstrong, also the same username on HN: barmstrong@gmail.com [7] http://www.reddit.com/r/Coinbase http://www.reddit.com/r/Coinbase [8] Brian Chesky told the story how Marc helped AirBnb during one of their worst crisis, on this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=6yPfxcqEXhE#t=5784 http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=6yP...

jnardiello 13y ago

Seems like Coinbase wasn't able to create a viable and sustainable process. To me, they will just fail as long as their processes become scalable. Surely i won't deal with them anytime soon :)

Saus 13y ago

The problem what I have is 'fairness' (not just Coinbase, mostly all companies with customer service). OP tried to solve it without making a fuss, without causing trouble for CoinBase but they couldn't help him and they didn't want to help him. Now he is creating negative press (exactly what you don't want) and see the response from last night. CEO probably comes in and saves the day. The problem is that the people who 'behave' will get shafted, and those who seek 'social media' will get a prompt resolution. That is a disappointing trend that with Twitter/Facebook only became worse (before those it was mostly threatening with consumer advocate programs on TV). Try it yourself, send an e-mail and a tweet to a company. E-mail gets a reply within 48h, twitter within 1h. Companies are creating their own monster this way....

simias 13y ago

HN is not a Coinbase support group. There must be better ways to deal with this.

booruguru 13y ago
I think losing 10k through a computer glitch is something worth talking about...especially since it's becoming a trend.

grimaceindex 13y ago

To the OP: if Coinbase provides terrible customer service but you still publicly declare you're a "huge fan", what incentive is there for them to change?

Einstalbert 13y ago
Isn't the incentive to show them that you're still willing to work with them in the future so long as they get their crap together? I'm honestly not impressed with this stuff happening to people, even as a mistake, but at the same time I don't see people writing off entire companies that have otherwise acted in good faith. Of course, if it happens to many more people, you can only do so much with so little.

aidanlister 13y ago

Does anyone else get the creepy feeling that this is mgrunin posting to stroke his own ego? "That guy must have been one of our extremely high volume VIP users or something in order for something like that to have happened." That just does not sound right. And it's not the first time he's tried a sockpuppet account [1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6930297 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6930297

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
permanence 13y ago
Hah - good guess, but incorrect. Coinbase reached out to me this morning from this post. They've reconciled a transaction for 10 bitcoins, but there's 2 bitcoins from an old transaction that are still "missing" despite it being marked as completed, more than a week old and the withdrawal cleared from my bank.
mgrunin 13y ago
I don't really understand why I've been hearing the whole "sockpuppet" issue ever since my thread. What exactly do people think I am doing? Creating shill accounts? What is my purpose in doing so. I already had my matter solved in my thread successfully. This is my fist and only account YC.

brentm 13y ago

That is one of the worst responses from a customer service agent I've ever seen.

learningram 13y ago

Bitcoin news... I have no interest in Bitcoins. Is someone gaming HN ?

BlackDeath3 13y ago
Check your URL. Perhaps you're looking for news.learningram.com?
dragontamer 13y ago
In this case, Coinbase is a YCombinator company. Even if you aren't interested in BTC, Coinbase and its business dealings are very much a good topic of conversation on these forums.

rdxm 13y ago

Ever wonder why there are not 100 different exchanges out there providing services to the equities/options/bond markets??? Simple, it's fairly costly and complicated to 1) meet regulatory requirements, 2) achieve a level of liquidity/transaction volume to make the exchange viable, and 3) take business away from the incumbents... moreover, as soon as you attach the word 'exchange' to your service you immediately set an expectation in the consumers mind that you will provide a similar level of service/liquidity as that which they would receive if they were working with a real exchange operator. coinbase currently lists a team which has zero experience in the exchange operations world. the closest they come is a guy who did some foreign exchange trading at GS. net-net they have a looooooong way to go to get to being a viable exchange in the traditional sense of the word. and that's before you get to the whole topic of whether or not bitcoin is really something that will be a viable exchange model asset. that has yet to be tested outside of a very, very small base (relatively) of ecosystem participants..

ziko 13y ago

Hi, <name> from Coinbase here. Sorry for the delay on that - definitely not the customer experience we are striving for. <some phone shit right here> Edit: <we actually did our job and made it work. we also gave you 0.01% on top!>

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

andersthue 13y ago

Did anyone say Ponzi Scheme ?

BlackDeath3 13y ago
Plenty of people say "Ponzi Scheme". Many of them don't know anything about Bitcoin (or Ponzi Schemes).

colanderman 13y ago

1. Chargeback. 2. Better Business Bureau. 3. Federal Trade Commission. 4. Lawyer/lawsuit. All of these are better options than whining on some Internet forum.

lisper 13y ago
1. You can't chargeback a completed ACH withdrawal. (It is possible to revert an ACH transaction, but that generally happens only if the original transaction was unauthorized, which is not the case here. ACH/debit transactions do not have the same level of consumer protections as credit card transactions. That's why Coinbase doesn't accept credit cards.) 2. The BBB is a corporate shill. 3. Rotsa ruck. 4. Will cost more than the amount lost, and legal fees are rarely recoverable.
- imsofuture 13y ago
  In all fairness, Coinbase doesn't accept credit cards because that same consumer protection can be abused into defrauding them. Which, seems reasonable :)
  - lisper 13y ago
    CB could accept credit cards without too much risk if they chose to by e.g. putting a 60-day hold on all BTC bought with credit cards. My guess is they don't take credit cards because they have their hands full dealing with their business as it stands, and adding the extra business logic to accept credit cards would just be too big of a PITA. Another possibility is that the credit card companies won't allow them to do it.
- colanderman 13y ago
  2. Shill or not, I've gotten results via them on multiple occasions. 4. I don't believe this. You're basically telling me if I pay for a car from a dealership, and they fail to deliver, that I or a lawyer can't sic law enforcement on them.
  - 13y ago

sergiotapia 13y ago

Unfortunately this is a trend for Coinbase: http://www.reddit.com/r/CoinBase/comments/1t6326/customer_support_ignores_my_tickets_for_a_month/ http://www.reddit.com/r/CoinBase/comments/1t6326/customer_su... Just don't use them and protect your hard earned money.

streptomycin 13y ago

Just a fun anecdote to throw in: I never bought through Coinbase, but I did sell some coins there recently for like $7k. They deposited the $7k in my bank account twice, and then a few days later took the extra $7k back. So although ultimately it all worked out fine, they do seem to be ridiculously reckless in their dealings with thousands of dollars. I can't imagine my bank doing something like that. Made me very wary of dealing with Coinbase in the future.

imsofuture 13y ago
Are you sure that's the case, or could it have been ACH or reporting weirdness?
- streptomycin 13y ago
  I guess it could be reporting weirdness? Never seen anything like it before, though, and I've made withdrawals and deposits to my account from many different sources. One $7k deposit soon after I made my sale. Another distinct $7k deposit a couple days later, reflected in my account balance which was now up $14k. And then a $7k withdrawal a few days after that. Both deposits and the withdrawal still show up in my transaction history.
  - ahlatimer 13y ago
    It happened to me recently, but it was my paycheck. Googling around, it seems to be something that happens with ACH transactions somewhat rarely, but it does seem to happen.
mrb 13y ago
Same thing happened to me. I sold $35k of coins a few weeks ago. Coinbase did 2 ACH transfers by accident to my bank, a few days apart. They reverted the 2nd one 4-5 days later.
sneak 13y ago
> I never bought through Coinbase, but I did sell some coins there recently for like $7k. They deposited the $7k in my bank account twice, and then a few days later took the extra $7k back. Me too.

sheetjs 13y ago

The same class of problems (questions regarding account balance, money taken out but BTC missing, support went dark) happened earlier this year and there was another front page conversation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5427985 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5427985 Sadly, it seems that the key takeaway (the importance of customer support) was lost upon the Coinbase staff. Based on the last response, its clear that they have not learned their lesson. I recommend pulling all money and BTC out of Coinbase before the next crisis. And I say "next crisis" because there is no indication that steps were taken to rectify the underlying issues here. For example, as speculated in both threads, do they need to move off of MongoDB?

robinhoode 13y ago
Using MongoDB to process payments is a double facepalm fail.
- mathattack 13y ago
  I'm not an expert, but it seems risky to trust MongoDB for that. Isn't it the wrong tool for that space?
  - robinhoode 13y ago
    MongoDB commits are asynchronous and fail silently by default. This is in opposition to ordinary SQL databases, which are synchronous and fail noisely by default. You can enable that behavior for MongoDB, but then you're just getting ordinary SQL-style behavior, so why were you using MongoDB in the first place?
    - emin-gun-sirer 13y ago
      You mean "ACID transactions" and not SQL databases. Some NoSQL databases, such as HyperDex, provide ACID transactions.

juanbyrge 13y ago

LOL it seems that Coinbase has a lot of junior developers that are too superior for unit tests . Try the magic the gathering site?

tlongren 13y ago

Glad I don't use online bitcoin wallets.

mattmaroon 13y ago

Can we make a new rule? HN is not an end run around companies' bad customer support (even YC ones). We could probably fill this site with these pretty easily.

RokStdy 13y ago
Matt, I think these posts are valuable. The readers of HN seem to be exactly the type of people who might be early adopters of Coinbase. It's helpful for those people to know how the service works from a customer's perspective. Then you also have the benefit from the entrepreneurial side. These posts can serve as a cautionary tale to other would be founders as how not to do customer service. I think where this crosses the line from inane bitching to useful discourse is the gravity of these issues. It's not like these people are posting with complaints about the page layout of the company or <insert minor nitpick here>. The issue is with the core function of the company, and that's work discussion. Just my $0.02.
pg 13y ago
We already have that rule. The site guidelines explicitly ask that people not use HN as a support forum for companies we've funded. http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html We let this and the last one go lest people think we were censoring bad news, but we're going to kill these in future.

brandon272 13y ago

Assuming this post is legitimate, what kind of organization of that size (an article published today indicates that there are 8 employees!) has a hierarchy and culture where if an individual working in a customer support role sees something wrong they have no way of communicating with the CEO? Scary, if true.

permanence 13y ago
I don't know how else to prove this is legitimate. Not that I feel I have to. Rees from Coinbase reached out to me this morning and we've resolved one of the two issues. I'm still missing bitcoins from my account and will update this when it's resolved.
permanence 13y ago
Just to clarify what the problem is now. Coinbase reconciled my purchase of 10 bitcoins by giving them to be at todays market price. I'm still missing 2 bitcoins from an old purchase that says it's been cleared.

simonebrunozzi 13y ago

I have a question that is related to how Coinbase deals with situations like the one on this thread: I have a Coinbase account, and I am verified with a Credit Card. This means that I can instantly buy bitcoins. What happens if they fail to get the money from my bank account 2-3 days later? Would they charge my credit card instead?

steeve 13y ago

They are 8 people. He can surely push through.

permanence 13y ago

UPDATE: I've been in touch with Coinbase support and they've corrected the larger of the two transactions in question. I'm still waiting on the second transaction to be fixed. I'm still missing some bitcoins from transactions that are well beyond complete (more than a week old, ACH withdrawal completed and marked as complete in coinbase).

Derpbase 13y ago
How to use Coinbase: 1. Try to use coinbase 2. Contact customer service when that fails. 3. Post to HN when that fails. 4. Still get screwed because they don't know what they are doing at Coinbase. Got it.

j_s 13y ago

Sounds like it's time to start the process of reversing a fraudulent ACH transaction.

barmstrong 13y ago

Coinbase founder here. We'll reach out via email to discuss the details of this case with you.

sjp 13y ago
can you perhaps tell us if everyone - even those with smaller amounts - will be receiving the same consideration? ie should we also be stomping our feet or is it just a matter of patience before you address smaller mistakes?
permanence 13y ago
Sent you an email, Brian.

T3RMINATED 13y ago

thanks for the headsup i was going to do a 1300$ bc exchange on coinbase... aint gonna happen..

kaonashi 13y ago

"There's a sucker born every minute" - P.T. Barnum

permanence 13y ago

UPDATE 2: Still waiting to receive two missing bitcoins that were purchased on December 11 and promised delivery for December 17. I mentioned the issue to them days ago and it's still hasn't even been acknowledged. Sent them a message this morning and again right now. Coinbase has been kind enough to resolve the issue with 10 bitcoins being delivered nearly a week late. But I'm not sure why 2 bitcoins disappeared from my account and they have yet to acknowledge the issue.

permanence 13y ago

UPDATE 3: Still missing bitcoins purchased on December 11. No acknowledgment of missing bitcoins yet from customer support or Brian.

permanence 13y ago

Final Update: I've finally got my missing bitcoins from Coinbase. I'm squared up. Thanks for responding Counbase.