Also want to update the status of the original posting.  I did receive Bitcoin4Cash's refund of my original payment for $350 as well as the 10% deposit of 28BTC.  However I think it was very immature and unprofessional of him to accuse me of attempting to scam him when he was the one who violated the terms of our contract.  If he had the guts to acknowledge and apologize for his mistake I might have forgiven him but I certainly won't ever do business again with someone who can't even own up to his own mistakes and instead blames his own customers, those who were let down after doing business with him on his terms in good faith that he would honor his contracts.  I can only feel sorry for this guy being such dishonorable loser.  When someone puts their trust in me I feel honored and wouldn't let them down no matter how many 100s of BTC or $$$ I might be able to gain by scamming them.  I apologized to my friend for not being able to obtain his BTC and insisted on paying him $2000 for the current market value of the BTC I was supposed to order for him.  Unfortunately my mistake in relying on Madhatter still caused my friend to distrust the Bitcoin community as a whole, the result of which I feel responsible for.

Just 'cuz it's against "the law" doesn't mean they won't do it.  There are "illegal" strikes here in Canada all the time.  Anyway the politician who would try to fire them all would probably get assassinated by the union bosses' mob friends, at least here in Keb'ec, land of corruption.

The issue in question is not whether or not Madhatter received the payment.  He says he received it and returned it because he was unable to honor the locked in orders.  I have not yet received the return payment however I know "return to sender" mails can be subject to substantial delays up to 5 weeks in my experience so I'm not worried about my payment being eventually returned.  On his website Madhatter recommends against registered/tracked mail because it will cause additional delays, etc (which is true).  Personally I've sent hundreds of cash payments through Canada Post and never has a single one been lost.  I used to buy precious coins and collectible Paper Money through the internet and the vast majority of these were shipped untracked without a single incident of mail theft or loss with some valued between $250-$500. The only package I ever had lost was both tracked and insured by Canadapost Xprespost and unfortunately for me was worth much more ($3000) than the maximum insured value ($1000).  If ever I have to send packages valued above $1000 I'll always use UPS/Fedex in the future as they have even much delivery rates and will insure the full value of shipments. I suspect that tracking or declaring a value to a CanadaPost package makes it more susceptible to theft as most letters go through unnoticed without anyone suspecting there may be cash hidden inside.

I agree that the accusation of "fraud" was too harsh.  The situation is more of a misunderstanding as I see it since there doesn't seem to be any malicious intent on the part of anyone involved.

Sorry it took me a while to reply. As I'm very busy, I only have a few minutes each day to visit the forum.  You must be mistaken about which transaction this is concerning because my trade was booked on April 22, 2011:  https://www.bitcoin4cash.com/status.php?tcode=bfc81c4efeb1779ed2b9c49699c700705387e1a0 and was marked canceled on May 13, 2011.  I first noticed on May 13 but only had time to make my post on the forum on May 14.  Sorry for the lack of private communications in trying to resolve this issue but since I don't have much time to access the Internet and since I felt that your statements made on your website were unambiguous in their intention, I felt compelled to warn the community as quickly as possible of the situation. 

I'm not sure where you get 1.5 months from since my transaction was already canceled by you after only three weeks of being booked.  It may have taken me a few days to get the payment mailed off although I did send it as soon as I could get the money together at my earliest convenience.  If it had been mentioned anywhere that there was a maximum delay to mail the letter then I would have respected that deadline but there was no such indication and I could only assume that I was allowed to mail the payment whenever was convenient for me.  Since I'm very busy operating several different businesses and since I was making this transaction on the behalf of a friend of mine who had to first give me the money to send to you it was not my highest priority time-wise and may have indeed been delayed by a few days but obviously not 1.5 months as claimed (since the transaction was booked less than one month ago at this time). I'm not sure how you can know what my intentions were and claim that I was attempting to scam you while admitting no responsibility in the matter when I was respecting all the terms specified on your website.  I had done business with you four times in the past and was very satisfied with the service every time (even though on a few occasions it took a several weeks between the time I mailed the payment and the trade was completed) so had no reason to be worried that there would be any problem this time around.  I think a 60-day time limit is reasonable however this time limit is still more than a month in the future so I'm not sure under what grounds my transaction is being canceled and I'm being accused of wrongdoing.  If you would consider reversing your decision and completing my transaction then I would be very appreciative, would retract any accusations I made against you and would certainly continue using your services many times in the future.

I have to say I don't think Madhatter had any wrongful intentions or had the intention to scam anyone (unlike he accuses me of doing) but rather made some important business mistakes by not properly anticipating his own risks, by making the terms of use of his service overly ambiguous and by choosing to resolve these mistakes in such an unprofessional manner.

I had already dealt with Mr. Madhatter a few times before and was very satisfied with his service so I wasn't even worried at all about the slight delay this time around.  I took for granted that he would do good on his orders.  All the information I have from him is clearly posted on his website so don't take my word for it just see for yourself and make your own conclusions.  I felt that it was important to communicate the issue to the rest of the community as promptly as possibly and see what other members' opinions on the matter were.

https://www.bitcoin4cash.com/buy.php


At least Mr. Madhatter is honest in his dishonesty so I still feel like he has the opportunity to correct his mistake.  I can only assume he will at least return my initial payment since he did refund my 10% deposit already.  It's the fact that he is unwilling the fulfill the original agreement that leads me to no longer trust him. Imagine you had bought a lottery ticket and won the drawing but then the issuer says "well we can't pay you the prize so here's your $1 back".  Gee, thanks!  The original wording of his statement leads one to believe that the bitcoins purchased were available on-hand and reserved to the buyer.  Madhatter fails to give any explanation as to how he was was "unable" to fulfill the orders subsequently and leads one to believe he is simply "unwilling" to do so seeing as how it would be more profitable for him to cancel the orders.

So I booked a transaction three and a half weeks ago for 288 BTC at $350.  I send a 10% deposit to lock in the rate at around $1.2 Canadian.  I mail the money the next day and then wait and wait and wait for over three weeks.  Then yesterday I find out that my deposit has been refunded and the Mr. Madhatter is "unable" (more likely unwilling) to honor the locked-in order because he decided that the prices were "too volatile" currently for him to honor his own word.

Now I have no idea if/when I will ever get my $350 refunded to me.  Furthermore, I made this order on behalf of a friend of mine whom I was trying to convince of the merits of Bitcoin.  He gave me the $350 to buy for him and I confirmed to my friend that the order was locked in for 288 BTC and that I would take care of securing his newly bought coin on his behalf.  Now, where am I supposed to obtain these 288 BTC for my friend?  I'll have to pay $2500 out of pocket to do good on my own word because Madhatter was too greedy to honor his!  

Nowhere did Madhatter indicate that a locked-in order could be canceled.  According to his own website, the BTC were supposed to be already available in his possession and "Reserved" to the person who booked the order.  The whole point of leaving a 10% deposit was to guarantee that the order could not be canceled.  If I had known there was a possibility that my order might be canceled then I would never have booked it with him in the first place.  I would have found a much more expedient channel to obtain the BTC.  I was relying in good faith on the terms he specified on his website and on his high esteem within the Bitcoin community.

What he chose to do is outright theft as far as I see it.  If the price had dropped considerably in the last three weeks then he would not have refunded my deposit as is clearly stated on his website.  I bought the coins on the terms that he specified.  It's not my fault if he was (in retrospect) overly generous in the terms that he offered on his website.  This gives him no right to defraud his customers because of his own lack of foresight.

If he wants to save his face and/or ever do business with me or the other people whom he has defrauded, then I suggest he make good on his orders.  Someone who has shown his willingness to unilaterally changes the terms of a contract that he agreed to and even himself came up with the terms thereof can never again be trusted for any kind of business dealings anytime in the future.  I'm not sure is Mr. Madhatter is aware of the magnitude of the mistake he has committed but I hope he will be smart enough to correct it in an expedient manner if he wants to maintain his excellent standing within the community.

Why are there no bids below $0.80 and no asks above $2 on MTGOX??  Are there really none or are they just not being displayed?  Both these values seem highly plausible and I cannot believe no one would place a large buy order around $0.75 or $0.60 just in case a large sale comes through and pushes down the price and no asks above $2 when a fairly modest purchase could easily drive the price up to that level.

Bobby

Anyone know what has generated so much buying interest in the past four days?  And today is looking to become the highest volume day in the last several months.  Have there been any major news articles about BitCoin coming out lately?

+5 to Madhatter.  I want to commend him for his honesty!

I locked in an order for $500 CAD at $0.58 during the middle of the sell-off last week.  By the time he received the payment (April 14th) the rate was well above $0.90 but Mr. Madhatter still honored the agreement at $0.58 at a >$300 loss to himself.  His sell rates are so low with an ask price frequently well below MtGox and with ZERO fees I wonder how this guy even makes a profit. 

Keep up the great work and don't be shy to charge something for your efforts.  You certainly deserve to make a profit for your awesome service!

Exactly what I needed!  No longer BitCoin related but does anyone know a script that can fetch the spot price of Gold/Silver??

Thanks!

Basically I'm going to be selling certain items on my website such as Gold, Silver coins, etc.  I would like to accept bitcoin in payment but I need to be able to update the price in accordance to the bitcoin/USD exchange rate.  Since my website is written in PERL/CGI is there an easy way to obtain the latest exchange rate (current BID on MTGOX for example) and import it into a variable that I would use to update my prices in real time?  It's easy to look up manually but how would I write a script that would be able to look up the value?

Also would need to look up the spot price of Gold and Silver (in USD) at the same time.

There seem to be a lot of geniouses here so thanks in advance for any advice!

Bobby