Official Newbie BitInstant Support Thread (Active Customer Support)

[jodyjr1980]

WTF happened to Bitinstant?

Really? What am I supposed to do now?

[1715176707]

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[1715176707]

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[crazylikeafox]

WTF happened to Bitinstant?

Really? What am I supposed to do now?

Hmm...well if you're looking for an alternate person to just give money away to, I'll take it.  That's all Bitinstant was the last few months.

[jodyjr1980]

WTF happened to Bitinstant?

Really? What am I supposed to do now?

Hmm...well if you're looking for an alternate person to just give money away to, I'll take it.  That's all Bitinstant was the last few months.

Ahhh it was that bad? Crap! What is the alternative to buying BitCoins without paying an arm and leg for the bank wire transfers etc...

[crazylikeafox]

WTF happened to Bitinstant?

Really? What am I supposed to do now?

Hmm...well if you're looking for an alternate person to just give money away to, I'll take it.  That's all Bitinstant was the last few months.

Ahhh it was that bad? Crap! What is the alternative to buying BitCoins without paying an arm and leg for the bank wire transfers etc...

Coinbase just introduced instant purchases (though you have to complete 1 slow purchase first).

[Droganan]

Don't listen to crazylikeafox. He's one of those people that likes to bad mouth businesses without much proof. Sites like bitinstantscam.com are also not proof since most of the people there likely did not follow procedure to get their orders processed. ANY problem I had with bitinstant was solved within 24 hours as I followed proper procedure and did not clog up their system with support tickets like most people tend to do. They were an excellent company to buy bitcoins from but it looks like they need to sort things out for themselves. Hopefully another company will rise up in their place.

[nielsg]

How about the other way? I'm looking for a good, reliable, inexpensive way to convert BTC to USD, not willing to pay more than 1% for wire transfer.

My accountant is repeatedly telling me my investment in BTC Mining is worthless, if I cannot pay back the fiat costs to run... like POWER. And for now, my electricity provider does not accept BTC.

I have solar cells, but not enough to power my farm, need more, but, as with most things, they cost FIAT currency.

Anyone? Know anyone selling large solar panels for BTC?

[jodyjr1980]

It just seems like everywhere I look everyone wants like 20% commission over the going price or you are going to pay that much for the wire transfer or the wait is like a week WTF!

[crazylikeafox]

Don't listen to crazylikeafox. He's one of those people that likes to bad mouth businesses without much proof. Sites like bitinstantscam.com are also not proof since most of the people there likely did not follow procedure to get their orders processed. ANY problem I had with bitinstant was solved within 24 hours as I followed proper procedure and did not clog up their system with support tickets like most people tend to do. They were an excellent company to buy bitcoins from but it looks like they need to sort things out for themselves. Hopefully another company will rise up in their place.

Yes, because out of these 412+ pages I was the only one complaining.  And by the way, the proof that they had become a Ponzi scheme (besides the fact that they are now and probably forever closed) was overwhelming.  They lied to everyone about technical issues to buy themselves multi-week delays while they prayed that no one called the FBI because they took customer money.  I'm a programmer.  Code either works or it doesn't.  It doesn't work sometimes for some people and not for most others (unless you want it to because you have no money to process orders with or intend to run off with the money from the order).  They haven't responded to this thread in over 2 weeks.  They laid off their customer support staff becuase they couldn't afford them.  Their $8/month blog was even shut down for a time for non-payment.  At Bitinstantscam.com (not my site) nearly half of people were reporting that they never received their orders, and that was reflected in this thread and on Twitter, their Facebook page, and Reddit.  Everywhere Bitinstant could possibly be contacted, there were complaints about "failed orders" followed by excuses about "technical issues". The proof was piled higher and deeper than the BS they were spewing, and they have confirmed it by shutting down.

I understand that no one wants to believe they were conned out of money. Maybe you actually are one of the few that have hit the lottery by not losing money to them and only having to wait 24 hours for you money, but many others did not share your experience. My guess is that the next step will be the feds coming in.

[MrBilling]

Don't listen to crazylikeafox. He's one of those people that likes to bad mouth businesses without much proof. Sites like bitinstantscam.com are also not proof since most of the people there likely did not follow procedure to get their orders processed. ANY problem I had with bitinstant was solved within 24 hours as I followed proper procedure and did not clog up their system with support tickets like most people tend to do. They were an excellent company to buy bitcoins from but it looks like they need to sort things out for themselves. Hopefully another company will rise up in their place.

Yea what makes it worse is people talking shit when they have no idea what they are talking about.  I had two trans with NO MISTAKES that took over A MONTH to get a response from BI.   Cmpoetely they're fault a d they couldn't even respond to tell me what's going on.

[meyoumeyou]

I guess I was one of the lucky ones, I completed 100+ transactions with Bitinstant and had about 5 or so problems during some of them and they were resolved in less than 24hrs, my last transaction was on 7/11 and I didn't have any problems. Sorry to see them down, hope they come back.

[hojo]

I'm glad some of your experiences were good  but you can't ignore the huge volume of people that got robbed of their money and never got their funds. I myself had several good experiences with them and 2 that had me waiting for a week to get my money. By the time i got it the value of the bitcoin changed severely and i lost money. My tickets i submitted about that were ignored as we my PM's. I was desperate and did one last transaction at the end of last month around June 25th and got lucky as it was processed in my account in 2 hours. The next day is when the sh!t hit the fan and all this chaos started again. It appears as though many had issues before and after that date that either took weeks to resolve or never got resolved. USRAY is no longer an employee and will not answer PM's. No Bitinstant rep will answer PMS here or on their support tickets. The info they post on twitter is clearly lies as they kept telling people in certain states the site was working and people got robbed of their money and/or severely delayed. They never posted which states were actually working and which were not but referred people to their blog to get that information which is as much of a lie as any other they have told. They have pictures up on their site that make it look like they are working hard on getting things resolved which is a freaking joke. Seriously what does that prove. I bet that picture is not even of their employees or even from their office. It is possible they will get back up and running but I'm done with them. I just find it laughable that members here want to defend them and assume all these issues are from people making mistakes and defending Bitinstant. I guess some people are either a member of their company or someone who was lucky and didn't take it in the butt. Like i said I've had success with them and also been screwed by them. While they resolved it and paid me this was after 4 days and 8 days and I lost alot of money because they paid out the bitcoin quantity from when i placed the order not when the cheaters actually filled it. Other people making the same transaction as me at the same time had successful transactions. I believe they were in fact doing this to stay in business. My 2 failures both said "insufficient funds". And NO i made no mistakes with my information on either of those 2 transactions. They were broke and robbing people. Now the Winkleboss Twins are partnered up.....wow yeah i really trust them now.......Joke Joke. I respect other people's opinions but i do not dismiss them if i disagree and I am entitled to my own.

[URSAY]

I'm a former BitInstant employee.  I'm under no obligation to post this, nor is this endorsed by BitInstant.  With all the wild theories and speculation going on I feel the need to say something...

Charlie and the team there are good people.  BitInstant is one of the leading and longest running bitcoin businesses.  It's obvious the new website had some issues and the dev team is working hard to get things working properly.  There is no scam and BitInstant isn't "robbing" people.

They are doing some restructuring and likely prepping for a proper relaunch.  There's a lot that goes on behind the scenes and daily challenges within a volatile space like bitcoin.  This is a new market and there will be bumps in the road.

If you have an issue with an outstanding transaction my suggestion to you is to be patient and communicate with their support team in a calm and respectful way.  If your order has a problem then they will fix it.

BitInstant is an important part of the bitcoin community and has made it easy for so many people to get their first taste of bitcoin.  They're growing quickly and working on exciting new projects and functionality.  I know they will come back stronger then ever.

[crazylikeafox]

I'm a former BitInstant employee.  I'm under no obligation to post this, nor is this endorsed by BitInstant.  With all the wild theories and speculation going on I feel the need to say something...

Charlie and the team there are good people.  BitInstant is one of the leading and longest running bitcoin businesses.  It's obvious the new website had some issues and the dev team is working hard to get things working properly.  There is no scam and BitInstant isn't "robbing" people.

They are doing some restructuring and likely prepping for a proper relaunch.  There's a lot that goes on behind the scenes and daily challenges within a volatile space like bitcoin.  This is a new market and there will be bumps in the road.

If you have an issue with an outstanding transaction my suggestion to you is to be patient and communicate with their support team in a calm and respectful way.  If your order has a problem then they will fix it.

BitInstant is an important part of the bitcoin community and has made it easy for so many people to get their first taste of bitcoin.  They're growing quickly and working on exciting new projects and functionality.  I know they will come back stronger then ever.

And yet they had to lay you off....they couldn't afford the salary of a customer service employee, which (no offense) couldn't have been that high.  Also no offense, but like many others you seem to have been under the Bitinstant "spell" as well.....you spent your time defending them when all the evidence pointed to a very problematic future for Mr. Shrem personally and Bitinstant as a company.  I've said this time and again, but I'll say it again: code either works or it doesn't.  It doesn't work just sometimes, and it doesn't require endless delays while people manually "push through" transactions.  The fact that some (small) transactions went through instantly, while most others instantly received "order failed" responses, shows that the code worked.  So when they had delays, it was because they had no money.

All of these were bankroll issues.  They could have easily publicly displayed how many Bitcoins they had available to sell, and stopped taking new orders that couldn't be immediately delivered, until they had more coins available.  They could have even setup an email queue that would let interested people that wanted coins know instantly when more coins were available.  But they couldn't do this, because they needed the new transaction money in order to process old transactions (aka Ponzi Scheme).  Who knows where the old transaction money went - perhaps Charlie's trips to London.  They were selling things they didn't have with the promise of immediate delivery.  They were no different than criminals that post items they don't have on eBay, collect the money, and run - except they did it on a larger scale.

[URSAY]

I'm a former BitInstant employee.  I'm under no obligation to post this, nor is this endorsed by BitInstant.  With all the wild theories and speculation going on I feel the need to say something...

Charlie and the team there are good people.  BitInstant is one of the leading and longest running bitcoin businesses.  It's obvious the new website had some issues and the dev team is working hard to get things working properly.  There is no scam and BitInstant isn't "robbing" people.

They are doing some restructuring and likely prepping for a proper relaunch.  There's a lot that goes on behind the scenes and daily challenges within a volatile space like bitcoin.  This is a new market and there will be bumps in the road.

If you have an issue with an outstanding transaction my suggestion to you is to be patient and communicate with their support team in a calm and respectful way.  If your order has a problem then they will fix it.

BitInstant is an important part of the bitcoin community and has made it easy for so many people to get their first taste of bitcoin.  They're growing quickly and working on exciting new projects and functionality.  I know they will come back stronger then ever.

And yet they had to lay you off....they couldn't afford the salary of a customer service employee, which (no offense) couldn't have been that high.  Also no offense, but like many others you seem to have been under the Bitinstant "spell" as well.....you spent your time defending them when all the evidence pointed to a very problematic future for Mr. Shrem personally and Bitinstant as a company.  I've said this time and again, but I'll say it again: code either works or it doesn't.  It doesn't work just sometimes, and it doesn't require endless delays while people manually "push through" transactions.  The fact that some (small) transactions went through instantly, while most others instantly received "order failed" responses, shows that the code worked when they had money, and didn't work when they didn't.

All of these were bankroll issues.  They could have easily publicly displayed how many Bitcoins they had available to sell, and stopped taking new orders that couldn't be immediately delivered, until they had more coins available.  They could have even setup an email queue that would let interested people that wanted coins know instantly when more coins were available.  But they couldn't do this, because they needed the new transaction money in order to process old transactions (aka Ponzi Scheme).  Who knows where the old transaction money went - perhaps Charlie's trips to London.  They were selling things they didn't have with the promise of immediate delivery.  They were no different than criminals that post items they don't have on eBay, collect the money, and run - except they did it on a larger scale.

You make a lot of assumptions and state them as fact when you really have no idea what is / was going on.  It starts with your first sentence, "And yet they had to lay you off".

[BCB]

URSAY resigned.

They didn't lay him off.

leave him alone.

[business88]

I have used Bitinstant at least half a dozen times in the past. I am a little upset that your site is down. It was a quick and easy process. Any ideas when the site will be back up?

Much appreciated, Thanks.

[hojo]

http://www.bitcoin-brokers.org/

I just used a much better service the other day (See above link). Look them up on this forum and you will see my post as well as others from here on them. Great people. A few extra steps but nothing too hard. 2% charge to buyers and none to sellers but correct me if i am wrong on this. now 400 dollar minimum to buy but i was waived for a 300 dollar purchase 2 days ago. Flawless. You request a quote and from a specific bank or banks on their list. They give to you and you have to 6PM to deposit it and scan or photo the receipt and business card of teller to send to them. They hold coins in escrow from the seller the whole time. Once the receipt is sent to the seller the seller has 24 hours to view and release funds or it will go to resolution. My response from seller and release of coins took 1.5 hours/  then 5 more hours to get to wallet. really easy.

Edit: bitcoin rate is locked in when you make the bank deposit per the current MTGOX rate at that time. I deposited 300 would have received 294 in coins but from fluxuation going up it cost me 3 dollars. I was super pleased. They are super fast so far to respond and only weeks or maybe 1 month old. But very nice to deal with and honest from my experience. For what it is worth i liked them. If they stay and bitinstant returns i will not use bitinstant.

[btcbonanza]

Are there any new updates on when restrictions for certain states will be lifted?  Thanks

[BCB]

Interesting.

Obopay is the MSB with the Money Transmitter Licenses of which bitinstant is (or was) a partner.  

I recently went to Obopay's website to check which states they currently hold licenses.

an http call to:

http://www.obopay.com/corporate_website/state_license.php

returns.

Code:

ERROR 404: Not Found.

then redirects to

https://www.obopay.com/corporate_website/

which shows

Code:

The server's security certificate is revoked!

The cert is valid through 4/15/2018

Then after a little more digging it turns out that here is a Market Research Report for
"Obopay, Inc. - Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A), Partnerships & Alliances and Investment Report"
http://www.fastmr.com/catalog/product.aspx?productid=631591

Interesting.

Is Obopay in play and did they terminate their relationship with bitinstant due to regulatory risk?

Or is there something bigger involved.

Or did someone just mis-configure their website.

Let the speculation continue....

[thebaron]

I blame the Patriarchy.