Bitcoin Forum

I was stupid enough to try to pay for CheapAir ticket in Bitcoin. Transaction went through and confirmed but the merchant never received the USD. CheapAir support knows nothing about bitcoins, coinbase doesn't have phone support and doesn't reply to emails. Lesson: never pay BTC to any merchant that uses coinbase as payment processor.

EDIT: I don't have any account with coinbase, just CheapAir happens to uses them as bitcoin payment processor.

Another day and here is another reason to stay the fuck away from online exchanges.

Don't use online exchanges as online wallets people. If you are going to hold your coins, hold them in your own wallet.

If you decide to move to FIAT, use them and withdraw them asap. Don't hold anything there its too dangerous now.

Btw, Wtf? Coinbase don't have a phone number?

I will never trust any exchange that holds funds or any Web wallet. Just stop leaving your funds there and using their services. If everyone stops using them they'll be forced to shut down and from there we'll get much better options from someone else who wants to make a buck but actually gives a crap about security.

Nope, they think of themselves as some kind of Facebook.

I should have clerified that I don't have any account with coinbase, just CheapAir happens to uses them as bitcoin payment processor.

I don't think coinbase scam your bitcoins, it might be CheapAir support that don't know how to check if they receive Bitcoins from you, email them again to double check if the bitcoin address you sent is correct

I saw so many coinbase complaints this days.I suggest to everybody who is in coinbase registered company country to call police and report that site if they are stoling money together in deal with other sites.If they stole you big money in your place I would go to lawyer and send coinbase to judge if that happent to me and I would ask for damage penalty money to send me to my bank account +money which they stole and they would never repeat it again to me.They I would stop to use coinbase wallet forever and unsubscrite from their wallet but if they send me only 1 message I would call police or again call lawyer and send them again to judge for annoying me on my private email.So my point is if they want stole you then destroy them and take your money.

CheapAir support knows zero about bitcoins, they say only owner deals with Coinbase. All they see is payment not received.

I will consider that, the problem is there is no paper trace, everything is online.

Btw if you have a txs they have just to give the service. I think they will reply and solve your issue, but sounds really bad using a service and cannot get anything.
I think you need the ticket as far as you can, so this is really a bad issues for Coinbase.

Right, that's the issue, I need to book other things based on that ticket, and waiting days to resolve this is unacceptable.

Most merchants use BitPay and I never had any issue.

Strange situation, CheapAir accepts bitcoins as payment method, but they don't know anything about bitcoin? So what CheapAir support told about your issue?
And if Coinbase don't respond to your support tickets, try to ask about your problem on their Twitter.

Sent emails, asked on Twitter, no reply at all; guess they are having a sweet weekend.
Can't imagine paypal or any credit card payment processor behaving thus arrogantly when customer money is involved.

Thank you for sharing this bad issue already unresolved!!!
I don't use normally coinbase (thus I have some peanuts inside...)

One of principle of bitcoin is the own control of the money.
the same thing need to adopt also exchange, they can't be absent for a long period leaving the user without replies   :'( >:(

24 hours - no reply, nor to emails, nor on tweeter. Coins just disappeared into black hole.

This is the problem when a payment processor is used. Companies want to accept bitcoins, but they can't handle the headache of receiving bitcoins and converting them to fiat. Hopefully, more companies start accepting bitcoins directly.

What is happening in coinbase? There are lot of negative feedbacks from their users. I've been using their service for 6 months but I haven't encountered any problem except for buyig coins from their site. They also response in my e-mail instantly

I think you must be more patient because your problem less than 3 days
usually the exchangers will respond after 48 hours and i am sure coinbase will answer your ticket,
they are big market exchangers bitcoins to fiat my opinion they are still busy.

This is really really terrible. I can not think that coinbase or CheapAir can do such things like that. Have you sent a support ticket to them yet? Maybe they could solve the problem for you. It will be a big shame if they do not reply you about this issue. First lesson to all Bitcoiners:  Never use online wallet because they can take away your money at anytime

Weird. My advice, look for all your transactions in the blockchain that was involved in this purchase then try to contact Coinbase. Im sure if something went wrong its with Coinbase. If you want to gain their attention try contacting them on Twitter.

OK, the issue has resolved now, CheapAir found the transaction in their accounts. Turns out, it came 0.0002 BTC short (tx fee), that's why the booking didn't complete. CheapAir generously swallowed 20 cents loss and issued me a ticket. But the lack of response on Coinbase part is disturbing. 72 hours for urgent payment issue?? Come on. And what if resolving my question required several back-and-forth communications, wait 72 hours each way? That like communicating with Martians.

Too bad experience with coinbase. It is not really worth it to trust coinbase nowadays, there are a lot of issues against coinbase.

Just give advice to the merchant that don't ever use again coinbase. I can't believe on how did Coinbase handled your issue.

So when there is bigger money involve, don't expect that they'll help.

The concern is not about holding coins in Coinbase. Please read it carefully. OP used Coinbase as payment processor and got a technical problem on it and took longer time to got it being resolved.



Looks like it's Cheapair has the problem here. But at least Coinbase should give some update regarding your concern in short period of time. Good thing it was resolved now.

In my experience by i experience of pending even the confirmation almost done still pending in my bitcoin wallet account and they are trying to fool me on email before but they fix and give my bitcoin back after experience another problem in the same problem and heard many people are experience issue about coinbase is stop using it its not safe to coinbase right now but their wallet still working.. but ther possibility that you can experience more issue since the credit card issue and other issue still not solve from their community..  so beware guys of using coinbase.

Glad to hear everything was resolved and it worked out well for you. Coinbase is a bad service with a lot of issues like this concerning customer support taking very long to answer inquiries. The Coinbase CEO is also not very smart according to a lot of Bitcoiners.

Coinbase is famous for replying to customer emails slow and the no contact number on coinbase is really bad

If you payed money with btc, it means that you have transaction id, so show it to their support. You said that you aren't using coinbase so maybe problem was that you didn't pay from coinbase's bitcoin account. For example you can pay starbucks with bitcoins only with using foldapp bitcoin account. Good job if you asked them it but I can't explain why there isn't answer from them because they won't blemish their business for 1200$.

You probably missed this?
The issue this time was with CheapAir, OP was short 20k sat for the tx fee so their system didn't recognize the transaction as paid/valid.
@OP, good thing they were able to find your transaction, and finally resolve this. I agree that the lack of response from Coinbase is not a good sign. 3 days and they can't even be bothered to reply even once. Tsk.

Coinbase doesn't offer support in tons of countries (Like Nigeria for example) If you have a problem You'll simply have to deal with it yourself.  Coinbase isn't that Ideal Bitcoin Wallet we thought It is. Even with 2 Facter Auth, I wouldn't trust coinbase enough to leave my money in their hands. Another day, Another Coinbase Problem. It's getting too much. I'm glad OP got his funds back.

These past months coinbase faces many accusations. They didn't even reply to clarify what really is happening in their site. Mh suggestion is pull out all  your remaining balance if you dont want to dissappear.

Not good choice to choose coinbase right now since many people are confirm that coinbase is scam many people are not solving their issue many regulation added that honestly you can not use their wallet for gambling activity that is why bitcoin is here because of anonymity for bitcoin gambling but they are added this regulation.. before i trust them but when i was seen that my bitcoin was reduce i never trust them again..

I think call police or regulators it is financial fraud,I am sure thay will help you

Good to hear this, I was a bit afraid about the Coinbase legitimacy. It looks a good wallet, many posters here were fast to accusate Coinbase and all online wallets, but now they aren't too fast to come here and say something about the resolved issue.
Coinbase could just make their support better to prevent fear and despair from their users. I think we are safe to continue using Coinbase.

That's true, I don't know why many of the community in bitcoin world appeared of being stubborn, even they warned them earlier, they still get into it. I hope this will be an example to learn to our mistakes in things we don't like to be happen to us.

Bitcoin is not looked with "good eyes" from police or regulators and if OP calls or contact them further problems may arise. They may ask the origin of Bitcoin and maybe OP doesn't know the true origin of them , therefore putting himself into trouble. This is one of the worst advises.

What OP should do is sent a transaction ID (I guess it's confirmed now) to Cheapair and write a short description to them that he did pay them through this transaction and how to convert it to FIAT. Cheapair is the only responsible here in my view.

Also, always stay as far as possible from online web wallets like Coinbase,XAPO or blockchain.info

5$ Dissapeared in my coinbase wallet to, recevied the money, but it didn't show up and there was no outgoing transaction only that incoming 5$ transaction(got confirmed) and still no money , got diassappeared

Cheapair :-\
You know that Expedia accepts bitcoin as payment now don't you?
I am not sure what payment method they use but it better not be coinbase after hearing this night mare of a story.
What if the ticket that you booked was to fly the next day? Then you would lose your $1200 purchase via bitcoin and coinbase would not have refunded you at all from their lack of customer support and service from the way this story was portrayed.