Bitcoin Forum

It has been 10 days since their blog post about suspending checks and wires, and 5 days since they were to re-commence operations.  I have written multiple e-mails and have recieved no response, and I have not seen any posts by the Tradehill team on the forums for several days.  

Since the initial news of no wires or checks, it seems that Paxum withdrawals are also suspended.  This has not been confirmed by Tradehill, but I have had a request "in process" for a week.  Finally, I am now unable to even do a BTC transfer from my account, as this also shows "in process" for days.  This is particularly alarming, as the whole point of BTC is seemless payments with no outside interference.  Banks giving Tradehill problems should have ZERO impact on their ability to continue taking in BTC and transferring out BTC.  

I would like to put together a list of other Tradehill customers currently experiencing these issues, and perhaps others (I have only tried Paxum and BTC transfers).  Please post on this thread similar issues or others you are having.  Maybe it is just my account that is on the fritz, but I doubt it.  

Message to Tradehill:  I want to believe there is nothing nefarious going on, but the lack of communication and failure to complete BTC transfers is making it very hard to maintain trust.  Please come out and at least update everyone on the situation, and address why BTC transfers are now informally suspended.

Thank you.  

Even CLP withdrawals are delayed. I wonder what happened.

Subbed?

Yep.  I am not having any problems with tradehill myself, only used them once or twice, but I am curious so I have subscribed to this thread.

Ahh, gotcha.  Try a btc withdrawal and report back if it works!

I have done a SMALL BTC withdrawal (under 1btc) and it worked last night.  Not trying to minimize the problem you are having, just saying there is some automation working. 

Giving it a try here, will update :)

I was able to successfully withdraw BTC from TH.

Haven't tried a Paxum withdrawal but I don't have any $$$ in there right now, only had BTC.

how much did you withdraw?

5BTC

FFfffff.....perhaps I should have broken my 200+ withdrawal up into smaller amounts.

Now I have to wait and hope.  I hate the fact that TH does not have a cancel option. 

I have had poor experience with their customer service previously but in the end the problem was fixed so hopefully that is the case here too.

I have had similar experience, but this is by far the longest they have taken to respond.....they seem to have fallen onn the face of the earth. 

I know any withdrawals over 100 BTC need to be manually approved by their staff, so that could be the holdup.  There should really be a note on the site mentioning that.

Usually I break my withdrawals up into several smaller ( < 100 ) withdrawals just to avoid that.

I just recieved a PM from Jared at Tradehill.  He indeed had o approve it manually, and he did.  The BTC is now in my wallet.

I retract my criticism of tradehill, and I really appreciate them working to make things right.  They have my apologies for thinking that perhaps things were not on the up and up.

I won't fault you at all for calling us out when there is a substantial delay. We're the ones that owe you an apology. Please bring it to our attention so we can prevent it from happening in the future whenever possible. When something goes wrong with the banks it increases our workload tremendously but we're working on new processes to both streamline it and increase reliability.

The manual approvals aren't fun for either us or our customers but if something does go horribly wrong manual approvals combined with cold storage will seriously mitigate loses.

If anyone still has BTC locked up please let me know and I'll look for it specifically but they should all be on their way at this point.

Thanks again for the comments they're truly appreciated.

Jered

Sorry to be asking this here, but I guess I'm not the only customer with this question (and I haven't really gotten any e-mail response to this either):

I wired 300 USD just before the bank problems were announced. It bounced back as 217 USD, meaning some $83 got lost to accumulated overhead *somewhere* (no, it's not due to a sudden jump in currency rates)

Firstly, I'm not willing to finance whatever bank issues Tradehill is having, and ask that my account be credited with the outstanding amount (please make a statement on this Jared).

Secondly: WTF! $83 in overhead!! Now my excitement and motivation about Bitcoin just reimbursed!

that's a problem with banks/wires
they charge you for a wire, then if wire can't get through for some reason it travels back and new wire fees being deducted along the way through intermediaries plus your own bank takes a cut for receiving it back too. you can't blame bitcoin or Tradehill for this and banks will just tell you it's the way wires work.  unfortunate situation to loose that much on a small wire

yes my bank charges a flat $40 to wire, no matter the amount.  most economical way for large sums but not so much for small sums.

yup, international wires cost $40 to send from US. receiving wire fees $15-25 in US and in some countries they take ~1% on top of flat fee too.
anything below 1k is very expensive to wire

Lets get back on topic:

Jered (and the rest of the TH staff), WHAT IS GOING ON? Please put out a public statement on tradehillblog.com with the estimated time needed to recommence operation so at least I can stop pressing the F5 button.

We'll put out an official statement tomorrow but we have new accounts and we will begin sending money out.
In regards to wires banks don't really like to see high volume. It's fine if we send 2million in a wire every month but sending 20 wires for 2k is concerning. I'm meeting with them again in the morning to speak more about wires. At the very least we'll have funds going out soon. They're not quick to adopt to change or to clear our checks when we move from one account to another. I'll apologize on their behalf.

Essentially it comes down to the banks being extremely slow moving creatures (I hesitate to use the term creatures, I don't want to imply they have souls) and essentially while we use the traditional financial system we and our users are at their mercy. Personally my least favorite part about operating an exchange is being that meeting point between the two systems or the past and the future if you prefer to call it that.

Jered

Glad to hear something, Jered.

You guys are my favorite exchange and you've been killer in terms of customer support with me individually.  I understand you are overworked and running into tons of problems, but please remember that security of our assets correlates to our ability to sleep easily at night.  The no-checks thing was the first time I've been worried, and the lack of a timely response (I've been observing) made me question whether my funds are in the right place.

That being said, I'm glad to hear you have new accounts in place.  Keep up the transparency and security and I can easily see myself using you guys long into the future.  You guys really have the potential to pull in many more users, and it's your history of security and transparency that, in my opinion, could really allow that to happen.  Please don't blow it :)

Edit:  Even if the banks are fucking up behind the scenes, you're the guy on stage.  Nobody in an audience wants to see the guy on stage blaming the stage and prop guys, even if the the backdrop is crumbling before our eyes.  It makes for that awkward feeling :)

Thank you for the kind words and you're exactly right. Ultimately it's on us, I want to use the banks as an explanation not an excuse.

In regards to sleep, believe me the security of your assets affects the quality (quantity) of sleep I get as well.
We're very public about who we are and anyone that happens to be in San Francisco is welcome to grab lunch with me.

Jered

Couldn'tve said it better myself :)

A bit off-topic,but when will Sepa be back Tradehill?
 

"In regards to sleep, believe me the security of your assets affects the quality (quantity) of sleep I get as well.  We're very public about who we are and anyone that happens to be in San Francisco is welcome to grab lunch with me."

OK Jared- what is your phone number?  I am about to start calling all of the Kennas in your area unless you get your act together.  What you are doing is NOT acceptable.

Although I am not in any way affiliated with any exchange the guarantee offered by CryptoXChange might be something for others to consider (check the post and reply I got here):

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=58299.msg705311#msg705311


Cheers,

Ian.