Bitcoin Forum

UPDATE: May 29, 2013, 02:26:20 PM

Today I got refunded!!!

I got 1.78BTC back.

End update

I was ordered a 5gr bar from them 3 days ago, but after I placed my order I came here to check the opinions about Coinabul.

Then I changed my mind and claimed a refund.

I wish I was doing it inversely. Tried to contact them numerous times. I sent them messages through their contact page, I emailed them to Jon@coinabul.com and to contact@coinabul.com then I messaged to user Coinabul here.

I didn't get any answer yet. ???

That sucks. Let us know if they make things right.

How long has it been? It is kind of rough to start calling scammer if you have not waited a few days for a response, many emails =/= faster response.  ;)

My point is just try not to jump to conclusions.

You may very well be right, refunds are really just based on rep. with bitcoins, once you send em that decision is final.

Isn't 3 days a little quick to be calling someone a scammer? Maybe there are extenuating circumstances and hopefully this all gets sorted and everyone is happy. =)

Not yet  ;)

It seems reasonable for him to protect himself from people who would get the gold if gold price goes up, or ask for a refund if BTC price goes up.

Bitcoins are designed so people can't do chargebacks. It's in the vendors favor, so you must be sure before you order. You can't really just change your mind and request a refund.
Some vendors have kind of taken advantage of refunds when it comes to bitcoins, if the value of bitcoins has gone down they will refund the bitcoins paid, if the value of of bitcoins has gone up they will refund
the usd amount paid in bitcoins. They means when it comes to refunds, heads vendor wins, tails vendor wins. But as mentioned if their explanation is correct then they are just protecting themselves.

I cant see how you decided to spend 3.3 btc without checking for references first...anyways please be more careful. I am sorry to hear this happened to you ...

Coinabul seems to have been scammed a lot of people from what i read all around.
I have no personal insight on this matter except for what I've read...and imo he was once an honest and big trader and than boof ...decided to scam close his shop by taking lots of orders and not honoring none...unless im mistaking :)

Everyone...I doubt OP would be calling Coinabul scammers after 3 days if it was the first incident of them acting shady. If you ask me, not hearing anything for 3 days alone would be a red flag. All the stuff I've read about them on here makes that x 10. And Coinabul was one of the foremost companies accepting bitcoins before they turned scammers, so I have pity on you OP. I hope you get it figured out. Nearly ALL my dealings in precious metals w/bitcoins I do with amagimetals.com. Yet to be disappointed.

IMO this is a HUGE BITCOIN risk ... really well established sellers abuse the fact that Bitcoin is anonymous and hard to track/regain back ...and after a time of legit biz they seem to turn darkside and boom ...take all of a sudden 20-30 big orders and than poof vanish into thin air....

most likely they will also open up a new exact same biz and repeat this again after being established....
same happens with some sellers on silk etc etc..

huge bitcoin issue... its protection and anonymity motivates some established sellers to close shop with a big scam after a while :( ...

I think that this is fair (except that long response period -  the reputable merchant should give you answer within 24 hours).


Did you answered to the message from coinabul? And what you choose - gold or bitcoins?

If this is a small business (one man show) it is normal to wait for several days for response. Especially if this merchant is very popular and have many customers.

Maybe the owner of this website is very busy (many Bitcoin based businesses don't have employees beside the owner).

It seems a lot of the 'We accept bitcoins' sites that deal in precious metals etc have a bad habit of 'holding BTC hostage' when value increases or decreases quickly. I guess it's a form of 'douchebag arbitrage' where they hope to make money on the diff if you want refund etc.

I would vet seller VERY carefully before shopping with BTC, especially in valuable goods.

You changed your mind. How is that grounds for labeling someone a scammer?

The way I read it, they are way too kind even offering to buy your metals back. The reason bitcoins are cheaper for merchants is because transactions are final.

Volatility would make refunds especially tricky. You could just order and then change your mind every time bitcoins got more valuable, and let the transaction proceed every time bitcoins got less valuable. That way the merchant would only be on the losing side of the forex risk every time, and it would be a sure way to scam them of their money.

Always do your research first
Your poor research into what you were getting into is not grounds for calling anyone a scammer

Oh noes!! They offer to buy back at MARKET RATE! That is clearly the mark of a scammer!

It's nice of them to let you change your mind, but you also want them to buy back over market rate? Please.

this thread is kind of an example why btc is not great as currency

what? lol

hmm , just wanted to buy something there...

Quite sucks, sorry to hear that :(

c4th you don't know what you're talking about, get back to us when you graduate high school and learn a thing or two about real economics.

I think that is the problem with bitcoins :( Where you have anonymous payment there will be scammers :(

Why did you cancel your order?

I've ordered from coinabul and only had pleasant experiences with them. They are slow, but they will get you your gold.

In recent months we have heard many complaints regarding this service...

You haven't been scammed, you've simply been stupid. Are you aware of how most merchants accept BTC? They never touch the BTC itself, it is immediately sold and they receive USD or Euros or whatever. Therefore they don't have the BTC immediately on hand to refund.

Coinabul has done good business with me, slow but reliable. I don't know who has been complaining lately, but most of them are of a similar nature. It sounds more like you are trying to scam them than them trying to scam you. Here is what I hear from your complaint:

"I changed my mind and Coinabul refuses to lose money refunding me in BTC so they are scamming me."

I can tell you didn't read their schedule on their website as to how their process works.

I can tell you're new to this board, but I wonder if your account is a sock puppet for one of the other people that tried to slander Coinabul.

In my opinion, they offered to work with you on a fair deal and you decided to try to gouge them for more BTC.

Thralen

I agreed with the quoted post. My experience has been the same with coinabul. The fault here is with the buying 'changing his mind' - coinabul is being very gracious even offering the OP the buyback option, if I had been the seller I would have shipped the gold and simply told the buying 'I'm sorry, it's already been shipped'

I have had nothing but good experiences with coinabul.  I agree with their stance here.  You bought at a bad time and now you want to renege on the deal.  If they allowed such things, they would be the victims of scammers.

Virtuall, I'm afraid to say but you are obviously not very educated with the practices of bitcoin businesses, and unfortunately that is no-one's fault but your own.

Firstly, you should see this post (funnily enough in another Coinabull thread), explaining how a metals trade works; https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=152575.msg1619768#msg1619768 (credit: rptiella)

Frankly, as others have said, you should consider yourself lucky that Coinabull are offering to buy the metal back off you, seriously. The fact that they are doing so at market rate is quite obiviously the correct course of action as any other would cause them to unnecessarily lose money, and they have done nothing wrong.

Secondly, before spending a large amount of money, and especially if you are spending it on somthing you know nothing about (precious metals), in a way you obviously do not fully understand (bitcoins), you should first seek information on the product and on the company. This may -shock horror- involve typing their name into google along with the word "review". Also, skim reading the terms of service (ToS) doesnt go amiss usually, when you have selected your business of choice.

You should, at a bare minimum, always read a companies return policy - it amazes me how people act surprised when a business quotes their own ToS, which was and always will be, freely available to the customer, both before and after the sale.

You have also been pretty immature about the whole thing; you "changed your mind" 18th April, which you are entitled to do, demanded a refund, which you are not entitled to, at which point this request was granted kindly by coinabull and your options laid out to you. So after 3 days you have started a SCAM thread, which is very childish and a blatent attempt to exploit coinabulls public rep in order to have your request dealt with faster, basically blackmailing them.

You were responded to April 21st (he's obv working Sundays) which is 5 working days after you originally requested a refund. This is not ideal, but they are not obliged to respond any faster (AFAIK). This does not denote a scam. Far from it. 24th April you are still claiming that you have had "nothing", which again is not strictly true.

It seems to me, you made a bad trade, lost some money and now you are being a petulent child about it, bitching on forums etc because you are upset that you got burned trading somethign you didnt understand.

Perhaps for future bitcoin purchases you should understand one thing; bitcoin is not yet a currency, it is more a commodity (although it can really be thought of as both). Vendors accepting bitcoin are really taking it as they would gold, silver or coco pops: you charge them the amount of commodity at market price to get equivalent (example) dollar price, then, upon recieving gold/silver/coco pops/bitcoins, immediately cash them out to desired currency.
In this way, bitcoin is really facilitating, free, fast, (anonymous) payment.

In the same light, you do realise coinabull's prices fluctuate in bitcoin, in real time, in line with the BTC/USD echange rate. This is because hey are really working in dollars, like all other vendors (for now), or did you think they were randomly charging for gold?

If anything, Coinabull need to have faster customer service response times, granted, but in this exchange, to me, you appear to be the bad guy.

Sorry bud, I don't feel sorry for you at all, and think that you shoudl take this as a lesson.

/rant

Edit: Spelling

Also, *no* precious metals dealers allow refunds for reasons described above.  People would just cancel orders if the price changed to their benefit:

http://www.apmex.com/MarketLossPolicy/Default.aspx

http://www.providentmetals.com/faq.html#change-order

http://www.gainesvillecoins.com/policies.aspx

Virtuall, how exactly have you lost your money? You bought gold, which is a non-refundable sale. And you will recieve gold. Unless you changed your mind AND Coinabull decides to agree to purchase the gold back off you. How can you not understand this?

Coinabull have not scammed you. You can easily check their delivery times etc on the site.

Their customer service seems shoddy, but again, this is unrelated to whether or not you have been scammed.

If you check some other Coinabull threads, you will see I have weighed in with contrasting views; the thread where someone's package got lost after he paid for insurance, this should earn Coinabull the scammer tag, pure and simple.

In this way you can be sure that I am not just some Coinabull shill. I am merely judging the information presented to me in the threads on its merits, on a case-by-case basis. I'm afriad yours does not warrant even further discussion.


Do you see the parallel?

Earlier you stated that they DID offer you a refund! Did they or did they not? You have to be clear about this.

It's just that you wanted them to buy back your metal in bitcoins again not for today's exchange rate but for an older exchange rate which they would lose a lot of money on.

That's just crazy. You can't milk retailers by asking for refunds to yesterday's rates. They would be bankrupt in an instant if they let their customers do that.

OK mate, glad we are on the same page in the end!  :) thanks for changing the title too; it will make it clearer for new readers.

Coinabull should have the scammer tag for other reasons (IMO) but in your case, unfortunately you have just suffered from their infamously poor customer service.

Hopefully this thread will get the recognition you want at the company so that you can get matters resolved quickly.

<3

:( HATE scammers with a passion!

Andy B

Dude, drop them an email and link this thread. Nothing a company hates more than bad pr from a disgruntled customer with a voice, especially to a market that is their customer base (here).

Trust me corporations hate it when your treated badly, turn to YouTube and post them a link. Surprisingly things get settled pretty quick with a promise to remove it.

Most companies, but not Coinabul. Take a look on this forum.

Shame they should give a damn, it costs them. I was looking at using them as I had heard of them. You've saved me a lot of hassle, I will now take a wide swerve. Their loss!

Update:  it took exactly 1 month to receive my order...
So, they do ship what you order but absolutely lack on customer service and keeping you in the loop...
They should add more statuses, things like your coins have been ordered by us, we expect to receive our order on such and such date... then begin stating your coin is here, we are packaging, then we ship etc.. etc...
if they could communicate more steps along the way and tell us where our order is with respect to the expected life cycle of the order, coinabul would skyrocket with satisfied customers... but in my opinion, they aren't run by folks who give a shit about customer service...

was received via fedex. was shipped to me from california

When you say slow, how slow have they been in your experience?  I am 3 weeks out and my oder is still listed as "processing".  I have emailed 3 times with not response.  This is actually my second order, last time it shipped after 2 weeks and they responded to emails (not fast, but at least they responded). 

I suspect that they don't keep an inventory. Instead, they take your BTC, convert to dollars and then order the gold from some other online site. Then they wait for the gold to arrive and then send it to you.

made a fairly large order last week and now im worried I wont get it this year lol.  If it takes him months+ to ship a couple grams wonder how long it will take for an ounce.

Virt. did you ever get your gold?

anyone else noticed problems with the homepage?

http://www.coinabul.com/ seems down or gone...anyway no good news.

(btw i can recommend bitcoincommodities.com for all you gold/silver bugs ;-) )

It's up and I respect that site, for now.

Here's an old joke:

More unsavory business practices from Jay Shore/Coingenuity/Coinabul

Rumor has it that Jason Shore is a piece of shit.