Bitcoin Forum

Coinbase.com is a complete scam. I know that some users have been able to succesfully buy coins, but heed my warning.

It was my first purchase, I bought November 4th @ $224.99. The coins were suppose to arrive today, Friday November 8th at 7:24am PST.

Some Details.

I Used a bank account that has been open for 3 years and has never been used to buy any bitcoins. I confirmed my phone and identity with Coinbase.

Today right as my coins were suppose to arrive I receive an email saying my order was canceled. They would send my money back to my bank account soon. So Coinbase got a small loan with 0% interest for over a week.

What I think really happened?

Well the price of the bitcoins I purchased increased by over $100.00 a piece over the last week. I believe that they scammed me, if the price had gone down in price would my purchase still have been canceled? Who knows. AVOID THIS COMPANY AT ALL COSTS. They are a scam artists.

*Edit*

I have contacted support to indicate that I was incorrectly labeled high risk. If they do what they should and resolve this issue I will update this thread.

*Edit*

They took MY money to buy coins @ $224.99 and then they are giving MY money back after making over 45% on MY money.

I bought coins via Coinbase on 11/1 and received them yesterday (along with my nice value increase on them). Your theory of them scamming you is a stretch. I've bought from them the past several weeks and always have gotten my coins despite the consistent price increase since October.

Get level 2 verified and your worries are out the window. Or you can try to wire money to Bitstamp which will take 5 days and you won't be able to buy coins before the price increases.  You'll be in exactly the same boat you are in now. Life goes on. And I say this as someone who also had my first transaction with Coinbase flagged, losing profits as a result.

I would love to wire money to bitstamp, but Coinbase.com says it will take another 3-4 business days for them to send my money back. Throw in the fact that it is friday and I wont see that money for a week.

This has been happening since February.

Make sure you are level 2 verified, then contact their customer support to get your account whitelisted (to bypass their automated fraud checks) and you won't have that problem any more.

So your money arrived to their bank account and then they decided that you are a high risk customer?

That doesn't make sense...

The same thing happened to me.  I verified my bank account and phone, and initiated the credit card verification last week (the charges never appeared for some reason, though I hear that I have to use Visa DEBIT, and I used a credit card...whatever).  I figured that after all the good things I'd heard about Coinbase, I'd give them a shot.  I purchased a single Bitcoin at just above $200 very late Thursday night/Friday morning.  Everything seemed fine so far, and on Monday morning (11/4), the ACH transfer posted on my checking account.  Of course, shortly afterward, Bitcoin started shooting up in price, but I figured that wouldn't be a problem because I'd completed my transaction and Coinbase had my money.

Not so!  Bitcoin continued to rise in value, and suddenly yesterday morning I wake up to see that Coinbase has decided my order was high risk and will not be giving me the Bitcoin I purchased.  I reached out to support, but I have gotten no response back.  I have extremely good credit and a completely clean financial history.  They still have my money and who knows what they did with it.  I'm assuming they did actually purchase the Bitcoin with it to prevent risk from the floating exchange rate and now they can sell it for $100+ more to someone else, refund me, and make a quick buck.  Thanks a lot, Coinbase.   >:(

Is there any possibility of a class action lawsuit against Coinbase? They are reneging on contracts.

Hey guys, I'm Olaf from Coinbase.

Email support! We review transactions all the time and can push them through at the original exchange rate upon request. Sorry for the friction here!

Yes I am investigating what we can do. Ill have a solution by the end of the weekend if nothing is resolved.

Thanks for the response, you guys have a amazing service and I hope to be a long term customer.

Hi Olaf,

Awaiting your reply to my PM.

For their sake I'd hope it wouldn't be that easy.  Then again it's up to them how they run it.

If ones first transaction is flagged as high risk and they unable to buy bitcoins how can one become level 2? Why dont they require other proof of identity? I would gladly provide copy of a government ID and a bill.

Bitcoin needs a company with morals. If this was a first timers intro to bitcoin how do you think they would feel?

Bitcoin needs a company that stands by it's promises a company that believes in bitcoins.

Bitcoin doesn't need anything.  Companies exist to make a profit.  That doesn't mean that what they are doing is right just keep context in mind.  Bitcoin is very volatile and you can't expect them to honor a price when that price might have been just a blip on some exchange somewhere else.  As a company they probably should clarify if they are selling bitcoins already owned or are sourcing them after the sale.

Are you trying to say companies DONT have to follow through with their contractual agreements since bitcoin is volatile?

Also why is there not a review period if a transaction is considered high risk? Send me an email and ask me to confirm who I am. Bitstamp requires photocopies of a government ID and a bill. Believing you have successfully purchased coins only to find out 5 days later your order was canceled is a terrible business model.

I am also curious as to when in the purchasing process their security software flags transactions as high risk.

Yes they should.  I simply said bitcoin doesn't need coinbase.  Coinbase needs bitcoin.

Post a detailed Rip off report. Get some cheap SEO services. Push it to first page of Google :)

Contact if you need help with selecting SEO services

I most certainly will if I do not hear from Coinbase.com in a reasonable time frame.

I bought BTC from Coinbase on the 4th and received it it yesterday (8th) without a problem.  I was worried that they would do the same thing so I preemptively sent a Support Request after buying the BTC asking them how I could avoid being tagged a high risk account. They replied saying my account looked fine and whitelisted me. Not sure if the sale would have gone through if I hadn't preemptively contacted them, but if you are worried about them canceling your order try to contact them before the final date. It couldn't hurt.

On Coinbase, I could not get the credit card option to work (inexplicably would not recognize a Wells Fargo VISA credit card, definitely not debit) and that verify fail cost this newbie faster service. But I otherwise found an ACH-based purchase there of a single bitcoin to be a smooth, admittedly slow, process.  So here's one vote for Coinbase.  I read a couple threads elsewhere on bitcointalk about ventures that announce they were hacked, suffered a huge loss, and now will repay account-holders only a fraction of users' account value; I suppose one doesn't know how true any story here is.  Reputation is everything.  I went with Coinbase because of others' reports of successful use, including one responsible user (a national financial magazine reporter) who likely had too much to lose to be part of some scam to "salt the mine" with phony acknowledgements or testimonials.

That said, Coinbase would do well to improve communications with users at various stage of a multiday process so buyers have a better understanding of what is going on during that "black hole" period of ACH or other waiting time.  I hope Coinbase service and transparency will improve.  I would pay a higher fee to comfortably use reputable companies given the horror stories one reads on bitcointalk.  This guy Olaf jumping in on this bitcointalk thread is a step in the right direction, shows some concern for reputation management.  Even if those here with problems don't get the resolution or PM response they want, I'd still prefer to deal with a company that jumps in to engage users posting on bitcointalk than a startup that is a complete dark hole on communications.

Still Waiting a reply from Coinbase.com.

Still no reply.

I'm still waiting on a reply from support too, but it's only been around 48 hours for me.

they need to work on support for sure. Just be patient the few problems I had with them were annoying but all solved to my content. Try pming Olaf on this forum to expedite it

I got a message that they whitelisted me for future transactions, but there was no mention of the transaction I tried to make on 10/31.  That message came yesterday, and I replied saying I'd prefer to have the Bitcoin I ordered, but if they refuse to sell it to me, then they need to refund my purchase.  So far I've had no response from that and they still have my money (now over a week after it was ACH debited from my account).  Today was a Veteran's Day, so it's possible they've initiated a transfer of funds back to my account (which I still think is scammy...don't blame me for the price of Bitcoin rising and you not covering yourselves, Coinbase) but without communication I really have no idea what they're doing.

PMd him last friday, no response yet.

Well, I finally got an ACH deposit back in my account from Coinbase today (technically still pending).  So, despite the fact that they feel I'm sufficiently non-high risk enough to "whitelist" future transactions, they don't want to honor my first one, which I was using to test the waters.  I'll be sticking with other services from here on out and closing that account.  I don't have any faith in Coinbase and they just held my money for over a week (or used it to purchase the Bitcoin I ordered and sold it to someone else).  If Coinbase is looking to lose customers, they're doing a great job.  I'm closing my account.

Give them a second chance they could feel bad if they had to see you go especially when they already whitelisted your account.

They should feel bad.

I wanted to order a Bitcoin when they were around $200 and wanted to check out Coinbase at the same time.  I opened an account and gave them all the information they asked for.  They took my money, and then didn't fill the order.  They held my money for over a week, during which time the price went up almost 75%.  The opportunity cost (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost) of that transaction was huge.  I did no additional verification with Coinbase to warrant being whitelisted for future transactions, which I view as an implicit admission that their system for detecting "high risk" transactions is at least partially bullshit.

When I want to make interest-free loans to someone, I go to Kiva.org (http://kiva.org/), not Coinbase.

Still no reply.

I want to thank Olaf for resolving my order of 9.25 Btc. for the original price.

I also want to thank you for whitelisting my account. This will also make it possible for me to start selling bitcoins on the Big Island of Hawaii to other people interested in bitcoin as I now have a quick and easy way to refill my wallet.

Thank you Coinbase.

:D

This is good news! I however received an email saying I was whitelisted for Future transactions with no mention of the transaction at hand. I hope they resolve the few of us with this issue and are not shown to be PREFERENTIAL in their business.

I got several PMs this evening from Olaf where he said that he reason my transaction wasn't put through was that I didn't ask for it.  I did.  In my first message to customer support, I simply asked why I was "high risk".  The response from Coinbase, after several days, was that I wasn't actually "high risk" and I was now whitelisted for future transactions.  I took that to mean that they should process my first order, because nothing had changed, so I replied an hour after receiving their reply that I wanted my first order processed and not canceled.  Well, they ignored that request and just refunded my money today.  Get it together, Coinbase.  Keeping people's money tied up like that, making them jump through special hoops, and then ignoring their requests is a waste of time and indicates shady business practices.

Update on my end. After messaging olaf a second time he reinstated my original order. Thank you for doing the right thing. Coinbase.com has some serious issues they need to work out if they ever want to compete in the coming days.

This is a flat out lie.. You have been ignoring my emails and refused to honor the price..  You offered to whitelist me.. For next time.. Gues what.. There is no'ext time.. Hope your  scam is worth it..

As a US citizen, our reliable BTC exchange options are few and far between.  :-\

Yeah, emailing support doesn't always fix the issue.  The same thing happened to me.  It seems to depend on who picks up your ticket in support.  Perhaps only Olaf is authorized to do it.  Who knows.  In any case, I don't trust them.  They were perfectly fine denying my request to process the transaction until I started complaining here.

Still no response these guys are as
Clueless as a bag of dicks.

Well, if you're referring to them as a bag of dicks in your correspondence I can see why they're not responding to you.

That said, they haven't responded to me yet either and I've been very understanding and polite. Five days now for me.

To describe your unfortunate experience as a "scam" is a bit far fetched.  The majority of people that use Coinbase have had nothing but a pleasant experience.  I've been using them for the last 7 months and never once had a problem. 

While your experience has been negative, and is indeed frustrating, your definition of "scam" is not the norm.

This also happened to me, and it's just a precaution. Thankfully I didn't loose as much as you.

Scam gets thrown around very liberally here.

I sincerely hope this is true. I requested this on my message to Coinbase support, but the reply I got back a week later was a boilerplate response that I've seen posted verbatim on Reddit, making me wonder if they even read my message. So I replied back again and haven't heard anything yet.

I was always a big Coinbase supporter and have recommended you to several individual users and businesses alike, but lately I've been quiet about recommending Coinbase because this situation has me very worried and frustrated. I sincerely hope this is rectified for me and others whose orders have been erroneously canceled as high risk.

Does anyone know what name Coinbase uses when they place the charge against your checking account?

My statement says:

COINBASE.COM/BTC 8003435845

The withdrawal: ACH WEB-SINGLE ******** COINBASECOMBTC XXXXX5845

The refund: ACH CREDIT ******** COINBASE.COM/BTC REVERSAL

The *s are a series of 8 alphanumeric characters.

Now that bitcoin has had little bit of a drop can anyone confirm an instance where they tried to purchase bitcoins at approx $1200 and where saved from the the large drop because their account was deemed too 'high risk'

I really smell a lawsuit here.

Coinbase has possibly made hundreds of millions of dollars by what is essentially risk free gambling with our money.

If you email them you can easily buy at the price you intended to.

I have just posted in another thread about the same company. It always seemed that they were reputable and a fairly stable company. Am I wrong?

I keep hearing this, but I'm starting to wonder if it's just PR by plants and employees. I've been trying to get my situation resolved for over 4 weeks now, but I've only gotten a couple of boilerplate responses from support that fail to address my situation or tell me whether or not they can push through my canceled orders at the original exchange rate. Maybe it just takes three months to get stuff resolved over there now, but I sure as hell wish they'd send me a note saying, "We're sorry, we're in over our heads right now, but we'll probably get to you in three months or hope that you just stop emailing us and forget about it."

Something, anything. Seriously.

It seems like they're in over their heads and some people are getting screwed over, some aren't. If you're one of the lucky ones, sure, they're great, but it might be just a matter of time before you become one of the unlucky ones. I was singing Coinbase's praises to everyone in the beginning; now I'm warning people to avoid them or tread lightly.

Thanks a lot for the advice. I am sure most of us have seen this happen with online enterprises before but I just didn't think it would be the case with them.

Thanks again,
Paul.

They have a phone number, you can try calling them. Also you can try emailing the CEO directly.

we have all the same problem. Olaf try to help us here but there are too many complains about this high risk transactions and he can't handle it. And the high risk algorithm that suppose to help coinbase get unwanted transactions is way out of line. When the price goes to high they cancel everything except the instant orders that are non reversible and they must credit your bank account.

we all know that coinbase is a scam in some way

i've used them only once. I agree they are a wierd service. they say two days to your bank account, then it takes a week. they do all this wierd shit to confirm your identity, which includes random ass questions about some address you lived 10 years ago, and about random people from your town. fucking wierd as shit. then, you always fail the identity verification, its so fucking dumb, and an obviously rigged system to prevent you from getting to level 2 or 3 or whatever the hell it is. So in the end, they aren't exactly a scam, they are just a strange bunch of folks with odd ball ways of doing things and a misleading company line.

Those questions probably come from credit bureaus that have a history of your addresses, etc.  I'm assuming this means they check with them, however after they canceled my order I checked my credit report and it was completely clean.  The algorithm they use to catch "high risk" transactions is opaque and does not appear to be very accurate, so it's obviously open to manipulation for Coinbase's profit as well.  I don't know whether there is systematic or manual manipulation of the algorithm or flags in order to profit at the expense of their customers, but I can't rule it out either.  The additional problem of unresponsive and unhelpful customer service just makes me stay away.

Thanks for the Warning, we must inform each other to avoid their scam service.
sad story, but i cant hold back:

Coinbase - All your money are belong to us   ;D -> http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_your_base_are_belong_to_us


people must be warned.

CoinBase is forced to 'comply' with AML/KYC which makes it not much better than Paypal or GreenDot - they can (and will) seize your Bitcoins at the drop of a hat. They will report all your finances to the IRS, FinCEN and (probably) the NSA also.  Like MtGox, they are most likely using your Bitcoins to invest on their own.  It's a ponzi scheme just as bad as CaVirtex - maybe worse.

I wanted to buy Litecoin today.  I have cash finally showing up in the USD wallet at Coinbase.  8 Calendar days to complete this.  Money was gone Day 1 at my bank.

Bittrex Price: USD$97.65/97.99

Coinbase price: USD$101.50   plus an additional USD$15.16.

Just not even worth the hassle any more here.  If they could allow transfer of fiat then maybe

12/6/2017   11:45AM EST.    Just so there is no room for CB to swing an answer one way or another.

Hey last post of this thread seems on 2014 but you have many price speculation about the Coinbase and Bitrex exchange to buy the litecoin. For your information litecoin today dumps in the chart. I see that its value as 104 USD and within some hours it turns down to 100 USD.
You please avoid these kind of errors while you making posts in the forum.
If you check the when the thread has been created and when the last post has been made means you will not make these kind of errors. It is advised to any member of the forum.

thanks

Thankfully I have stayed away from coinbase and never had to use it. Everything about it is ridiculous. They are like the centralization of cryptocurrency. Not to mention they are incredibly slow. Everything about them takes away the beauty and power of a decentralized movement...