It's not a particularly recent phenomenon, is it? If the clients are in error, then please let each client know what information is missing or incomplete. I have a transfer that's been in limbo since 7 Nov. I have sent you all pieces of documentation required to locate the transfer. There are no meaningful responses to ticket #GBT-464-60851 as of today. There is no more documentation I could send you. There are simply no more pieces of information that might help you. You have everything you could possibly have.

Since your support is so unbelievably unresponsive, you leave us to imagine that you are using our money for your own purposes until the last moment. I envision you playing a sort of game whereby you make the client as desperate as possible, but not quite desperate enough to risk his stake through legal action. During this time, you could use the "missing" transferred money to make more money for yourselves. Then, having milked him for as much as you believe you can get, you release the funds. At this point the client is so relieved that the money is not gone forever, and so fevered to get it back out of BTC-e's system again, that he will not rock the boat for fear that it will again be "lost" on transfer out.

If this is not, in fact, what you are up to, and if you don't want current and potential, future clients assuming the worst of you, then please, please, please hire some people to track these transfers down. Blaming your clients is one of the worst ways to handle a situation like this, and your trust level will likely sink even further as a result.

- Findiggle.

. . . unless that transfer is large enough to be deemed useful, it seems. I haven't heard many stories of even several thousand dollars going through to BTC-e without some unexplained delay, whether first or subsequent transfer. I'm sure they let the first, small transfer through; after all, you have to gain people's trust somehow.

See http://www.coindesk.com/btc-e-exchange-banking-issues/.

I'm in my fourth week of waiting on a meaningful response to my first-transfer issues (#GBT-464-60851, if support is listening).

- Findiggle.

What are you on about? Why would I use USD? Would things have been any different if I'd had my (American) bank transfer Euros? It's done, so that sounds like a rhetorical cheap shot on your part, but perhaps I misunderstand you. If you've had a good experience with a similar sequence of events, then by all means post about it, and try to recover some trust for BTC-e's fast-sinking reputation.

Maybe you're asking why I would send money to a (purportedly) reputable exchange in order to exchange that money for cryptocurrency? Why would I use a business for its intended purpose? Why would I then post about how I and many others now suspect them to be shady, in order that still others may avoid our fate? Sorry, I've no clue what your actual question might be. I doubt you have one.

More questions about incompetence and/or outright fraud by BTC-e:

http://www.coindesk.com/btc-e-exchange-banking-issues/

- Findiggle.

This has been my experience. You can re-open the same ticket, but it does no good. You can open a new ticket with the same details, and you may get the immediate (bullshit) response:


after which they won't respond further. If they realize it's a duplicate ticket, they'll combine the two (or three or four) into one ticket.

Either way, you're simply stuck until they decide they've milked you for all you're worth.

- Findiggle.

While I've heard of some eventual successes, I wouldn't try to wire money to BTC-e. It seems that they selectively . . . misplace transfers in, anywhere from several weeks to months. Their customer service is completely unresponsive, so if it's a question of missing documents or the like, they don't want your help to clear it up.

Can you imagine what they're doing with your money? If you can imagine it, it's probably happening.

I've had it with these fraudsters. They've stolen over $10,000 from me. Don't let it happen to you.

- Findiggle.

Users have started repeating these stories at https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=trust;u=33012 in an effort to lower the trust rating of btc-e.com. It's a good place to gather these anecdotes, at any rate.

People should be warned.

- Findiggle.

I'm not sure how to fix it, exactly. When this happens to me, I can usually locate a . . . blank spot in the switcher I use. Does something look fishy if you Alt-tab through all your windows? If you use compiz, then enable shift switch, and you'll see that there is an invisible window in the rotation. That's your bitcoin-qt window. Possibly other switchers will reveal it similarly.

- Findiggle.

Easily everyone's biggest mistake was not buying or mining sooner, so I guess your question is really about our second biggest mistakes?

In my case, that's easy. I issued an international wire transfer for many thousands of USD to BTC-e at the beginning of November, to get in on the jump we all knew was coming. I'm still waiting for those funds to be credited to my account. I assume BTC-e are using it for their own purposes, and having a big laugh at my expense. I've started calling this practice of theirs charging people for the privilege of giving BTC-e an interest free loan.

I surely won't do that again. My bank will soon issue a chargeback on those funds. I've heard this story again and again, so maybe it's my fault for thinking it wouldn't happen to me. Maybe my timing was just bad: these stories seem to have multiplied since.

All my transactions since have been on Coinbase, and I couldn't be happier.

- Findiggle.

From now on, I will avoid BTC-e for transfers of USD in. I've heard many, many reports of those monies being held by BTC-e for unspecified reasons. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the larger the transfer, the longer they hold it at BTC-e. Anything over a few hundred dollars seems to be fair game. The wire transfers seem to go through in a few days, as you would expect. BTC-e just . . . holds it. Their support department is unresponsive.

What I imagine happens is that BTC-e takes advantage of the lack of visibility and uses the money for their own trades. Alternate theories I've heard include exchanges using these new funds to provide each other bridge loans to cover, e.g., large sell orders. Any way you slice it, it amounts to us paying BTC-e a fee in order to give themselves an interest-free loan.

Never again.

- Findiggle.

I have had exactly the same experiences, both with Coinbase (great!) and with BTC-e (terrible!). My current transfer to BTC-e is in limbo, but all my small currency trades there have gone fine.

- Findiggle.

I am in the same boat. I've got a tracer out from my bank trying to locate the funds, but all banks swear they should have been in BTC-e's account for some time now. I also receive no information via the support system. I've also tried writing in Russian via Google translate.

What else can one do? My bank is prepared to issue a recall of the funds. I don't know whether that will have any impact. I'll post a thread about it if it does.

The hard lesson I learned here is to avoid BTC-e entirely for this. I've had good success transferring cryptocurrency in to BTC-e, just not USD. I have had good success (well, no problems with them) trading among currencies, including to and from USD on BTC-e's exchange. I just can't get a large transfer to go through.

- Findiggle.