Are Coinbase being deliberately stupid/inefficient?

[NadimAJ]

Withdrawals taking an absolute age, getting stuck. Customers being met with messages such as you're not verified when they are.

Terrible customer service.

Is this all a deliberate tactic so thousands of crypto-currency holders don't move their assets out? What use is an exchange if it's not asset rich?

[meer45]

I doubt they would do it deliberately, they wouldn't willingly kill their own business. My guess is, when the backends of such exchanges were designed, they initially had way fewer customers in mind. But whenever btc hits the news, a massive wave of new users flood the exchanges, meaning the exchanges are technically not equipped to meet the new customers' needs. Some upgrades and improvements are definitely needed.

[odolvlobo]

Consider that 100's of thousands of person sign up at Coinbase every day, and all of these people need hand-holding because they have no idea what they are doing. There is no way that any company can handle that load successfully.

Bitfinex did the right thing by halting new accounts. They lose potential customers, but at least they don't go broke trying to support them.

[soham]

Withdrawals taking an absolute age, getting stuck. Customers being met with messages such as you're not verified when they are.

Terrible customer service.

Is this all a deliberate tactic so thousands of crypto-currency holders don't move their assets out? What use is an exchange if it's not asset rich?

I don't think that Coinbase would deliberately do that. This kind of negative publicity will effect their business big time. I too hold a coinbase account and few weeks back I transferred a decent amount of bitcoins to my exchange account without any issue. Even though I had to pay an insanely high fees, but the transaction went on smoothly and got confirmed within 20-25 minutes at max. However, I would love if they implement segwit to their network because initially they were positive about segwit and also sent out an official announcement that they will be supporting it. But when it was called off they didn't send any further announcement. Now since we have segwit in place, I think it will be a good idea for them to implement it. They are not scammers but they are slower compared to others.