Noob introduction and pingit question

[Spitfire]

Hi im new here and will probably be posting alot as im abit of a techno phobe,heres abit of back story. Im reasonably new to bitcoins and have been using them for about 3 months now with no problems whatsoever. 
Recently mtgox stopped taking deposits to their UK account which left me without anyway of buying bitcoins . After looking at a few different options i decided to have a look at the pingit option on Blockchain-info, ive signed up and today made my first small deposit via pingit but sadly it has not arrived in my wallet .
Can anyone put my mind at rest as im worrying this might be a scam, can anyone who has used pingit let me know what your experience was and give me some idea of the length of time it take for funds to arrive in your account via pingit.
 
I apologise for jumping straight in with a question .
Many thanks guys and girls

[scribe]

How long did you wait? I've tried twice - the first time arrived in a few minutes, the second was within maybe half an hour. I don't know if it depends on blocks coming out, or on any manual intervention at all from the blockchain.info guy.

Did you get a confirmation SMS from Barclays saying it had gone through? And did the phone number map to "QKOS Services Limited" as in the screenshots at https://blockchain.info/wallet/deposit-pingit ?

[Stephen Gornick]

Can anyone put my mind at rest as im worrying this might be a scam,

Barclays is one of the largest banks in the UK.    Blockchain.info is by far the largest online wallet (other than any exchange).   You needn't jump to conclusions like that.

How long will it take to receive my bitcoins?
We aim to process all payments within 1-10 minutes however this is not guaranteed.

If their automation is running and you didn't get the funds, perhaps there was a problem (like, perhaps, pasting the wrong reference number, or missing a digit)?

The instructions show how the account number and reference are provided.   Did you by chance get an e-mail or anything that from Pingit providing to you the details?

 - https://blockchain.info/wallet/deposit-pingit

[c4n10]

I've never used pingit, but I know services like Mt Gox will wait for 6 confirmations before the funds show in your account.

[Spitfire]

Ok so ive received my funds from pingit and have them in my wallet and have now sent them to a bitcoin address. This was about 4 hrs ago and ive not received them yet at said address.  

When i go to my transactions page it shows my incoming transaction from pingit and says (47 confirmations) highlighted in green and the outgoing transaction to the bitcoin address(43 confirmations) highlighted in red.  Can someone explain in laymans terms what this all means please?

Is there something i must click or do i just wait, total noob sorry.
Many thanks

[c4n10]

Ok so ive received my funds from pingit and have them in my wallet and have now sent them to a bitcoin address. This was about 4 hrs ago and ive not received them yet at said address.  

When i go to my transactions page it shows my incoming transaction from pingit and says (47 confirmations) highlighted in green and the outgoing transaction to the bitcoin address(43 confirmations) highlighted in red.  Can someone explain in laymans terms what this all means please?

Is there something i must click or do i just wait, total noob sorry.
Many thanks

No problem, try restarting your client from the command prompt like so: "bitcoin-qt -rescan" and that SHOULD fix you right up...

[Spitfire]

Ok all is good now guys, my coins have reached their destination, roughly 1hr 50 mins ping-bci and  6hrs bci-bitcoin address , many thanks for all your help..  This was just a test to see if it works, soon as i knew it worked sent more cash via pingit and that was about 4hrs ago and not in wallet yet . The transaction has been confirmed with pingit through txt so waiting on blockchain now..  Im not sure if they do it manually or not but i bet they inundated since what happened with Mtgox..

[scribe]

Ok so ive received my funds from pingit and have them in my wallet and have now sent them to a bitcoin address. This was about 4 hrs ago and ive not received them yet at said address.  

When i go to my transactions page it shows my incoming transaction from pingit and says (47 confirmations) highlighted in green and the outgoing transaction to the bitcoin address(43 confirmations) highlighted in red.  Can someone explain in laymans terms what this all means please?

Is there something i must click or do i just wait, total noob sorry.
Many thanks

Was the address you sent to an address set up by the bitcoin.org client? If so, and you installed it recently, you'll need to download the blockchain database up to the point where your transaction occurred in order to see it in the client. (There should be a progress indicator bottom right telling you how far behind you are.) If the address you sent to was pasted OK, and blockchain.info is saying it's confirmed a lot (see below), then you should be OK.

Confirmations are basically new blocks being added to the (most recent) end of the blockchain, the big bitcoin record-keeping database in the cloud. When you send some Bitcoins, the record of your transaction is recorded in (probably) the next block to get mined (which happens roughly every 10-15 minutes). That's 1 confirmation. Each block after that adds on top of it, and adds 1 more confirmation. The more confirmations a transaction has, the more blocks have been added on afterwards. Each block confirms the previous one like a big snake, and each block takes a whole bunch of computing power to add, so after about 6 new blocks following your transaction, it's basically computationally impossible to "undo" your transaction (i.e. find a block that can be used instead of the one with your transaction in).

I think that's right. It may or may not make sense. *Very* happy to be corrected and/or help more on this, as I've started trying to explain it more, and would love to know if I'm being accurate or not...

[c4n10]

Ok all is good now guys, my coins have reached their destination, roughly 1hr 50 mins ping-bci and  6hrs bci-bitcoin address , many thanks for all your help..  This was just a test to see if it works, soon as i knew it worked sent more cash via pingit and that was about 4hrs ago and not in wallet yet . The transaction has been confirmed with pingit through txt so waiting on blockchain now..  Im not sure if they do it manually or not but i bet they inundated since what happened with Mtgox..

You should be able to follow the coins progress on the blockchain if they gave you a tx number...

[Spitfire]

Ok so ive received my funds from pingit and have them in my wallet and have now sent them to a bitcoin address. This was about 4 hrs ago and ive not received them yet at said address.  

When i go to my transactions page it shows my incoming transaction from pingit and says (47 confirmations) highlighted in green and the outgoing transaction to the bitcoin address(43 confirmations) highlighted in red.  Can someone explain in laymans terms what this all means please?

Is there something i must click or do i just wait, total noob sorry.
Many thanks

Was the address you sent to an address set up by the bitcoin.org client? If so, and you installed it recently, you'll need to download the blockchain database up to the point where your transaction occurred in order to see it in the client. (There should be a progress indicator bottom right telling you how far behind you are.) If the address you sent to was pasted OK, and blockchain.info is saying it's confirmed a lot (see below), then you should be OK.

Confirmations are basically new blocks being added to the (most recent) end of the blockchain, the big bitcoin record-keeping database in the cloud. When you send some Bitcoins, the record of your transaction is recorded in (probably) the next block to get mined (which happens roughly every 10-15 minutes). That's 1 confirmation. Each block after that adds on top of it, and adds 1 more confirmation. The more confirmations a transaction has, the more blocks have been added on afterwards. Each block confirms the previous one like a big snake, and each block takes a whole bunch of computing power to add, so after about 6 new blocks following your transaction, it's basically computationally impossible to "undo" your transaction (i.e. find a block that can be used instead of the one with your transaction in).

I think that's right. It may or may not make sense. *Very* happy to be corrected and/or help more on this, as I've started trying to explain it more, and would love to know if I'm being accurate or not...

Thanks for above explanation, this really helped .Im getting an idea of how this works finally.

[semperferox]

I made a PingIt purchase on blockchain.info today (approx. 10 hours ago) and I've still not had any news of BTC arriving. Since it says they aim to process transactions within ~1-10 minutes, I've been growing a little concerned, and I sent a message through the support page but I've had no response yet.

From what I know, blockchain.info is operated by a single individual (https://www.duedil.com/director/909718859/benjamin-graham-zoot-reeves), so I'm still treating this as a good faith delay. I'll wait until about 10AM GMT and then send another message.

What concerns me is that the process of buying BTC from PingIt is evidently not automated (or poorly automated). If it really isn't automated, I would be interested in writing an implementation that was.

[c4n10]

I made a PingIt purchase on blockchain.info today (approx. 10 hours ago) and I've still not had any news of BTC arriving. Since it says they aim to process transactions within ~1-10 minutes, I've been growing a little concerned, and I sent a message through the support page but I've had no response yet.

From what I know, blockchain.info is operated by a single individual (https://www.duedil.com/director/909718859/benjamin-graham-zoot-reeves), so I'm still treating this as a good faith delay. I'll wait until about 10AM GMT and then send another message.

What concerns me is that the process of buying BTC from PingIt is evidently not automated (or poorly automated). If it really isn't automated, I would be interested in writing an implementation that was.

Are you able to see the transaction with block explorer...?

[semperferox]

I made a PingIt purchase on blockchain.info today (approx. 10 hours ago) and I've still not had any news of BTC arriving. Since it says they aim to process transactions within ~1-10 minutes, I've been growing a little concerned, and I sent a message through the support page but I've had no response yet.

From what I know, blockchain.info is operated by a single individual (https://www.duedil.com/director/909718859/benjamin-graham-zoot-reeves), so I'm still treating this as a good faith delay. I'll wait until about 10AM GMT and then send another message.

What concerns me is that the process of buying BTC from PingIt is evidently not automated (or poorly automated). If it really isn't automated, I would be interested in writing an implementation that was.

Are you able to see the transaction with block explorer...?

I put the address of the wallet into blockexplorer.com, it says 'Never used on the network (as far as I can tell)'.

[c4n10]

I put the address of the wallet into blockexplorer.com, it says 'Never used on the network (as far as I can tell)'.

Have you opened your wallet and let it download the blockchain completely...?

[semperferox]

OK, so here's a hypothesis.

PingIt restricts you to receiving £5,000 per account per day. So perhaps the account in question (since there's just a single mobile number for the whole of blockchain.info) has reached that daily limit. In which case: congratulations! But let's figure out a way to prevent this from affecting users (since, after asking Barclays, I found out that PingIt payments are non-reversible).

[semperferox]

I put the address of the wallet into blockexplorer.com, it says 'Never used on the network (as far as I can tell)'.

Have you opened your wallet and let it download the blockchain completely...?

Oh, this is using the hosted wallet from blockchain.info and blockexplorer.com. My local Bitcoin client is 100% synced with the block chain, but I'm not certain how to explore the block chain with the standard Bitcoin-Qt client for OS X.

[semperferox]

I thought it was worth setting the record clear on this, by the way. I got the BTC in the end, and was contacted by support about the matter. They said their live wallet was empty due to an inundation of orders—which indicates to me that they're storing their private keys the right way; that is, with one wallet for 'checking' and one for reserves.

Will definitely use them again.

[Blockchain_Helper]

Hi everyone, 

There are a couple of issues with the Pingit service currently.

1.  Overwhelming demand.
The wallet that holds the coins for these transactions has been depleted several times.

2. User error
Some users are not using the correct confirmation number etc,   so the system is not able to process there order even though the payment was sent.

3. Some other error
Unfortunately the site's owner, Ben,  is on vacation until Oct 5th. There are a number of users who have sent their payment but have not received their bitcoins yet.  This is not a scam, and I understand the frustration,  but it will need to be addressed by Ben himself,  so please be patient until Oct 5th.

For now,  I recommend refraining from using the service until Ben is able to address the current bugs.
All the other features of the site should be fine.

Thank you all for using Blockchain.info