Official Newbie BitInstant Support Thread (Active Customer Support)

[jarethfox]

I was in touch with MtGox. They froze the account and said they had talked
to Bitinstant support and were awaiting a rescinding and resending of the funds
then....nothing happened. They tell me they are still waiting on Bitinstant and
I have gotten no more updates/info from support since "Rachel" went to
"talk to her CEO about fixing this issue"
I have another account I was using beforehand with a family member and have
made multiple transactions so nah I didn't type in "exchange" instead of a number.
I just wanted to use a new account instead of the family account and I got hosed.
Would love to run this like $5k on my desk through Bitinstant....love to. My wife has
tons of shopping and crap to do...but we both agreed that being unable to fix a
roughly $500 error is not an excercise in longtime trust.

[1715546086]

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[Izzy]

I just did a cash deposit at Walmart and it went right through, no problems.

Haven't had a problem with cash yet.

Out of $504 I got $480.  So that's a 4.76% fee.

[Huxley]

Hate to bee annoying as I see there are people sitting on here with bigger losses atm, but since I have taken a personal loss in the meantime as this was a transfer for a friend and Yankee is active...

Dwolla -> Bitcoin Address
$235 to the address 1kbB53hNz9rFrGeBV6anA6b6wAUNgqmp5 at Tue Mar 5 19:37:53 2013 (roughly ~$40 per MtGox)

Quote ID.............................cb67da5e-8550-488f-a6f3-1150bf31637a
Event ID.............................05ad1172-a7cb-4a63-8b6a-9ee184f5a144
Dwolla Transaction ID...........2144374

Thank you much in advance

Edit 3/15/13 2:00 PM EST: Resolved

[kikotoby]

I just did a cash deposit at Walmart and it went right through, no problems.

Haven't had a problem with cash yet.

Out of $504 I got $480.  So that's a 4.76% fee.

I have no type of connection with this site but i had problems with BITSTAMP wehen they first started with all this shit and the DOS attacks..I since then went to BITFLOOR.. Man it was the best thing i have done
.I have not had a problem since then.Check it out.Its roughly the same amount of time to get your coins.The only thing i dont like about BITFLOOR is that you have to go to a BOFA to deposit money into it.The best thin
g is that it is 100% anonymous ,just add money into the account and bingo bango..I dont care if people dont believe me or think this is a scam ..really check it out for yourself! i make nothing off of this im just trying to get
my account out of JR. status so i can post on this site so i really dont give 2 shits...If you feel like giving your money away to bitstamp and wasting your time have at it!...I just know that i have found a way to get BTC.
wihtought all the  bullshit.Also because they are like bitstamp they are not a site that buys or  sells BTC they are only a middleman that puts buyer and seller together..Nothing more..Well have fun and i hope you check
it out..It was the best thing i have ever done .I actually hope that bitstamp gets up and running again because they are 24/7 Withc BITFLOOR you have to work around banking hours..whick sucks!... Now i have 2 options..

[dman21]

Hello,
Can one of the Bitinstant reps help me out,

Ive used this before but when I deposited 430 to my bit stamp account the bitinstant API response =

User: SYSTEM
DestExchange: bitstamp
eventtype: Order executed
EventSentAt: 1363286659.23
APIResponse: {"error": {"amount": ["You have only $116.56 available. Check your account balance for details."]}}4
FundsSent: $409.0026 USD

That last line is the weird part... I can send you the whole thing , with the order ID , Quote ID etc.. but cant message, because im a new user.


What to do ? are my funds stuck? could I get these sent to a MtGOx account if there is a problem with bit stamp instead?

ANY help woud be appreciated greatly.. WHAT DOES ALL THIS MEAN?

-dman

[Gareth Nelson]

I was in touch with MtGox. They froze the account and said they had talked
to Bitinstant support and were awaiting a rescinding and resending of the funds
then....nothing happened. They tell me they are still waiting on Bitinstant and
I have gotten no more updates/info from support since "Rachel" went to
"talk to her CEO about fixing this issue"
I have another account I was using beforehand with a family member and have
made multiple transactions so nah I didn't type in "exchange" instead of a number.
I just wanted to use a new account instead of the family account and I got hosed.
Would love to run this like $5k on my desk through Bitinstant....love to. My wife has
tons of shopping and crap to do...but we both agreed that being unable to fix a
roughly $500 error is not an excercise in longtime trust.

I just had someone add me on skype with your name, I assume it is in fact you. Please get on there when you can and we'll go over this until it's resolved.

In the meantime, i'll check the correspondence with gox to see what they're waiting on from us.

[cosmicboy]

Haven't visited this thread for a bit. Gareth I see that bitinstant has decided to once again offer support on their official support thread, but larger questions remain. Why was bitinstant a complete no-show on here for some time when people were having a major crisis with orders? Why did the bitinstant site say that some services were down due to site upgrades when this was an obvious lie? Why wasn't bitinstant more transparent about what was going during your company's crisis? Your company been so maligned during this whole thing and while a lot of it is due to money being delay, a lot of it could have been avoided has you just been more open and honest about what was really going on, both on your site and on here.

 Bitinstant was always my favorite way to get bitcoin, but I am very reluctant to use your service again and I'm sure many feel the same way. What do you say about all of this?

-cb

[Gareth Nelson]

Why was bitinstant a complete no-show on here for some time when people were having a major crisis with orders?

If you are referring to recently, our support team has been working through a very large backlog of support issues, which I understand makes some frustrated when they don't see a quick response - internally the focus is on trying to improve our automated system's reliability while working through the support backlog but there is never a point where our support staff are literally doing nothing. There are various changes coming aimed at making transactions smoother and more reliable while development on more "exciting" new features is taking a low priority.

Why did the bitinstant site say that some services were down due to site upgrades when this was an obvious lie?

Please don't make accusations like this without evidence.

Most recently, we had coinapult (which provides email and direct to BTC destinations) down due to required API changes - this is indeed an upgrade that needed to be done and why these 2 services were down. If you are referring to something else please elaborate.

Why wasn't bitinstant more transparent about what was going during your company's crisis?

During the recent attack on our domain (which is documented in full on our blog as i'm surely aware), the absolute top priority was to secure things first as there was a concern that a phishing site could have been setup - there wasn't time to update people until after we were in the clear and as soon as we had all the information and were able to give the proper and full details our customers and the general public deserve we did so.

Your company been so maligned during this whole thing and while a lot of it is due to money being delay, a lot of it could have been avoided has you just been more open and honest about what was really going on, both on your site and on here.

At what point have we not been honest? I understand people are frustrated about order delays but we are doing all we can to resolve the issues and try to prevent further issues.

If you think we have been dishonest in any way then please point out where and i'll look into the specifics and resolve any problems.

Bitinstant was always my favorite way to get bitcoin, but I am very reluctant to use your service again and I'm sure many feel the same way. What do you say about all of this?

What I say is this:

You may choose freely whether or not to use our service, if you choose not to then I would hope you change your mind but I can not force you.
If you choose to use our service and it doesn't work out, then get in touch and we'll fix your problem.

[Gareth Nelson]

Hello,
Can one of the Bitinstant reps help me out,

Ive used this before but when I deposited 430 to my bit stamp account the bitinstant API response =

User: SYSTEM
DestExchange: bitstamp
eventtype: Order executed
EventSentAt: 1363286659.23
APIResponse: {"error": {"amount": ["You have only $116.56 available. Check your account balance for details."]}}4
FundsSent: $409.0026 USD

That last line is the weird part... I can send you the whole thing , with the order ID , Quote ID etc.. but cant message, because im a new user.


What to do ? are my funds stuck? could I get these sent to a MtGOx account if there is a problem with bit stamp instead?

ANY help woud be appreciated greatly.. WHAT DOES ALL THIS MEAN?

-dman

Please email support (support@bitinstant.com) and CC me (gareth@bitinstant.com) and give all your details including your gox username and we can redirect funds. Include a link to this post in the body of the email.

[cosmicboy]

Gareth wrote: Please don't make accusations like this without evidence.

C'mon....you had the "site upgrade" on your site for a good while before you came and admitted you had been hacked.

"there wasn't time to update people until after we were in the clear and as soon as we had all the information and were able to give the proper and full details our customers and the general public deserve we did so."

There wasn't time to come on here and write a short note explaining what was going on to the dozens or hundreds of people with money tied up? I find that hard to believe. You all were absent on this thread for something like an entire week! If you had just come on here and explained yourself you could have kept the confidence of many of your customers who have fled for coinbase, bitfloor and other services. Speaking as a customer you really blew it and I'm sure most here would agree...

cb

[Gareth Nelson]

Gareth wrote: Please don't make accusations like this without evidence.

C'mon....you had the "site upgrade" on your site for a good while before you came and admitted you had been hacked.

Looking at the page in question I see what you mean:

Code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "https://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="https://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
<head>
</head>
<body>
<div style="text-align:center;">
<img src="/static/images/topleft_logo.png" alt="" />
<p>BitInstant.com is currently down due to site revisions</p>
<p>We apologize for the downtime. BitInstant will be back online after the weekend.</p>
<p>If you have any questions or issues feel free to call 716-712-4846 - if you have an outstanding order please have all details to hand so we can help you as quickly as possible.</p>
</div>
</body>
</html>

This is our standard placeholder page for when we've had to take the site down in the past - although I could argue securing things is still technically "site revisions", I can see your point - should we ever need to use this page in future i'll update it.

Just a clarification though - to this date none of our systems has been successfully broken into - our domain was hijacked temporarily due to the incompetence of our former domain registrar. We kept the site down simply so that we could audit everything and ensure credentials were changed etc at exchanges and to ensure there were no other issues. We also needed to update our reserves at various exchanges before going back online - but before doing that we had to be 100% confident that nobody else had access to our exchange accounts.

"there wasn't time to update people until after we were in the clear and as soon as we had all the information and were able to give the proper and full details our customers and the general public deserve we did so."

There wasn't time to come on here and write a short note explaining what was going on to the dozens or hundreds of people with money tied up? I find that hard to believe. You all were absent on this thread for something like an entire week! If you had just come on here and explained yourself you could have kept the confidence of many of your customers who have fled for coinbase, bitfloor and other services. Speaking as a customer you really blew it and I'm sure most here would agree...

Quite honestly, the general attitude was to fix things first and then carefully prepare a proper statement for the public later - we could have possibly posted here or elsewhere but without full details it could possibly have made people more worried - or at least that's what was thought at the time.

I am painfully aware of what a hit we've taken in the public eye, but we are not going anywhere and in a few months from now recent events will hopefully be looked back on as a small blip.

[Yankee (BitInstant)]

Gareth wrote: Please don't make accusations like this without evidence.

C'mon....you had the "site upgrade" on your site for a good while before you came and admitted you had been hacked.

"there wasn't time to update people until after we were in the clear and as soon as we had all the information and were able to give the proper and full details our customers and the general public deserve we did so."

There wasn't time to come on here and write a short note explaining what was going on to the dozens or hundreds of people with money tied up? I find that hard to believe. You all were absent on this thread for something like an entire week! If you had just come on here and explained yourself you could have kept the confidence of many of your customers who have fled for coinbase, bitfloor and other services. Speaking as a customer you really blew it and I'm sure most here would agree...

cb

Was this not enough?

http://blog.bitinstant.com/blog/2013/3/4/events-of-friday-bitinstant-back-online.html

Charlie

[jthev05]

I just wanted to weigh in and say Bitinstant has been phenomenal in resolving customer issues. I know they've been dealing with difficult security matters lately, but if you email support and/or Gareth and Charlie they will respond and help you. I have just been frustrated as of late that there is a recurring theme where I have to email support each week when I attempt to buy bitcoins. I hope Bitinstant soon stabilizes to the point where you can literally expect your coins in an instant rather than waiting a day or two. I remember not too long ago walking to CVS, paying with Moneygram, and then seeing the deposit appear by the time I logged back in to my computer 5 minutes later. I'm sure this is only a matter of time. I'd rather not have to use an alternative because Bitinstant is the fastest and most convenient service available IMHO.

jthev05

[cosmicboy]

Was this not enough?

http://blog.bitinstant.com/blog/2013/3/4/events-of-friday-bitinstant-back-online.html

Charlie


If you read posts in thread for the past few weeks you will see that this was definitely not enough, not only for me but for many many others.

cb

[BitcoinBallin]

I see that the Bitcoin address option is back up on your site.  Does that mean if I do a transaction with you guys today it will go through.

[cosmicboy]

we could have possibly posted here or elsewhere but without full details it could possibly have made people more worried

Speaking for myself, I would much rather have had you come on here periodically and say that you were still having (fill in the blank) problem and that you were working on it than having nothing and wondering if I was even going to get my money back from you.  Next time you might consider that...just sayin'.

cb

[Gareth Nelson]

we could have possibly posted here or elsewhere but without full details it could possibly have made people more worried

Speaking for myself, I would much rather have had you come on here periodically and say that you were still having (fill in the blank) problem and that you were working on it than having nothing and wondering if I was even going to get my money back from you.  Next time you might consider that...just sayin'.

cb

Of course, but hopefully there won't be a next time

Your feedback is appreciated - constructive criticism can only be a good thing.

[Huxley]

At what point have we not been honest? I understand people are frustrated about order delays but we are doing all we can to resolve the issues and try to prevent further issues.

If you think we have been dishonest in any way then please point out where and i'll look into the specifics and resolve any problems.

This would probably be the many of us who were told, after a day+ of no communication, that "there were technical difficulties and a manual transfer would be issued...allow one business day to resolve"

Yet still have outstanding orders and no communication many days later. I have sent numerous emails at varying degrees of frustration to every bitinstant support member I could track down with NO response and NO steps taken to resolve my problem. You'll have a PM with my order details, but I'm sorry to say at this point it is hard to expect a response.

Edit 3/15/13 2:00 PM EST: Resolved

[Huxley]

@bitcoinballin - They have opened up shop again before addressing (or even acknowledging) countless past orders that were never filled if you read back a few pages. So I wouldn't consider it a no-risk, but its your prerogative. At the very least expect them to barrel ahead with business while your money hangs in limbo if there does turn out to be an issue.

[bomboclat77]

I've heard it may take a few days.

search Yankee on the forums and send him a message and he will get your problem sorted out.