Official Newbie BitInstant Support Thread (Active Customer Support)

[Gareth Nelson]

Hello,

Just used BitInstant for the first time. Everything worked out nice and quickly. Unfortunately, in the half hour it took me to run to the store for the money gram, the price of BTC went up a bit. When all was said and done, I ended up with ~0.978 instead of 1.0 BTC. I guess there is no way to make up that difference? I'd hate to do another full order + fees + trip to the store just for that tiny amount.

Thanks.

Unfortunately we can only cover price changes due to delays and this would not be a delay.

[Gareth Nelson]

Hello,

Just used BitInstant for the first time. Everything worked out nice and quickly. Unfortunately, in the half hour it took me to run to the store for the money gram, the price of BTC went up a bit. When all was said and done, I ended up with ~0.978 instead of 1.0 BTC. I guess there is no way to make up that difference? I'd hate to do another full order + fees + trip to the store just for that tiny amount.

Thanks.

Your price is not locked in when you create a quote.  Regardless, if you think you have an issue that needs correction then it should go to support.bitinstant.com

What do you mean it's not locked?

Do you mean if we created a quote when 5 BTC equaled 500 USD...if it took 1 day for you to process and the price per BTC drops to 75...then we will get 375USD (before fees)?

Our system has a hard deadline of 24 hours, past which customers are entitled to fee refunds and compensation for price changes. The soft deadline (which is what we aim to deliver the majority of orders in) is 1 hour, and between those 2 timeframes we don't make a formal commitment to prices other than market rate as determined by our partners at coinapult.

[Gareth Nelson]

I am being ignored by bitinstant customer service

I assure you you're not, if you have a support ticket open it will be answered, but our whole team has been extremely busy. If you don't get a response soon PM myself here.

[Gareth Nelson]

I made two Dwolla payments to Mtgox through Bitinstant (old.bitinstant.com) yesterday and after 36hr's I haven't received anything. I didn't even receive an email receipt! Is anyone else in a similar situation? And I have made a support ticket (received a response too) but it must have gotten put on the back burner with all the cash deposit problems coming through. I emailed again so maybe that one will get some attention.

PM me here with your ticket reference and i'll take over the ticket and resolve it.

[Gareth Nelson]

So my transaction "failed" on a ~$200 and I'm barely getting any communication from BitInstant.  All I got was "We're forwarding this to coinapult" and then nothing.  I really needed those coins tonight, but I will settle for tomorrow if I can just get them.  It's kind of ridiculous that a company can  hold on to your money if something like this fails.  There was no reason for the failure, no nothing, and all I know is that the money is gone until someone finds the time to resolve this issue.

Bitinstant would do well to take on a customer service policy that actually protects the customer: admit their mistake, instantly credit my wallet with the missing funds, and solve whatever issue on their own time  

An update for customers with the coinapult issue:

I've asked our support team to forward a list of all orders affected and will be personally handling them today. I aim to get the entire backlog fixed before monday but in the unlikely case i'm not able to get anyone's order fixed in time you will of course be entitled to a full and complete refund.

These orders will execute at first with normal fees, fee refunds and compensation for price changes will then be handled through regular support channels.

[BCB]

Gareth
For transparency can you explain the transfer process?  I have been aware of zip zap issues in the past. Now it seems to be that coinapult is the problem. How many hops/services are required to convert the fiat to BTC? Maybe if the user understood the complexity of the process in addition to the added regulatory requirements you are facing they would be less quick to make claims in the event of a delay.

Thanks.

[chachachazippo2]

I am being ignored by bitinstant customer service

I assure you you're not, if you have a support ticket open it will be answered, but our whole team has been extremely busy. If you don't get a response soon PM myself here.

I am referring to a specific post. I asked why my issue can't be handled though bitinstant? I am instead being forced to talk to Coinapult which still has not contacted me. I used your service why can't your company finish my transaction?

[Gareth Nelson]

Gareth
For transparency can you explain the transfer process?  I have been aware of zip zap issues in the past. Now it seems to be that coinapult is the problem. How many hops/services are required to convert the fiat to BTC? Maybe if the user understood the complexity of the process in addition to the added regulatory requirements you are facing they would be less quick to make claims in the event of a delay.

Thanks.

Last post of mine for today until i've cleared out these orders:

A basic deposit from cash to BTC looks like this:

1 - User gets a quote, the quote is recorded on our system and is used to generate the call to zipzap's system generating a payment slip
2 - User prints that payment slip, goes to location, deposits cash, usually via moneygram
3 - Moneygram confirm receipt, send money to ZipZap
4 - ZipZap confirm receipt from moneygram
5 - ZipZap send our system a notification (for the record, a lot of the issues on the new site happened here, looks like it was DNS-related)
6 - Our system confirms the notification from ZipZap is all legit and checks the cryptographic signature
7 - Our system generates a New Order - this is where the clock starts ticking on our deadlines (since before this point we don't have confirmed payment)
8 - The New Order goes into our queue, a worker process in the backend picks it up and verifies everything is legit, screens  for fraud etc
9 - The worker process sends USD funds over to our delivery partners at coinapult - we generally treat this as the point where orders are fulfilled
10 - Coinapult purchases bitcoins and withdraws from the exchange to the specified address (this stage has failed at times due to gox withdrawal delays)

[PuertoLibre]

Hello,

Just used BitInstant for the first time. Everything worked out nice and quickly. Unfortunately, in the half hour it took me to run to the store for the money gram, the price of BTC went up a bit. When all was said and done, I ended up with ~0.978 instead of 1.0 BTC. I guess there is no way to make up that difference? I'd hate to do another full order + fees + trip to the store just for that tiny amount.

Thanks.

Your price is not locked in when you create a quote.  Regardless, if you think you have an issue that needs correction then it should go to support.bitinstant.com

What do you mean it's not locked?

Do you mean if we created a quote when 5 BTC equaled 500 USD...if it took 1 day for you to process and the price per BTC drops to 75...then we will get 375USD (before fees)?

Our system has a hard deadline of 24 hours, past which customers are entitled to fee refunds and compensation for price changes. The soft deadline (which is what we aim to deliver the majority of orders in) is 1 hour, and between those 2 timeframes we don't make a formal commitment to prices other than market rate as determined by our partners at coinapult.

You do realize that this is not directly implied on your website?

That is one hell of a bombshell to drop on people.

So basically, we don't actually know what rate we are getting until after we get it....?

Everything about the BitInstant website leads a person to believe they are going to get a fixed transaction (1 BTC for a certain amount of USD) as soon as finalized or as soon as it is paid in full. You'd better make it more obvious that prices are honored when executed rather than when paid. (huge variance right there)

Anyway:

Order: df07ed15-e31f-48be-9d0f-da85a3a59c58

There was some hickups with my order getting processed. Apparently customer service alerted me that the blockchain took its sweet time to confirm my payment. Even though I made the payment a few seconds after receiving the BitInstant address several days ago. You can check the timestamp to confirm when the transfer was made.

My order is still in limbo and I am definitely invoking the 24 hours clause. (fee free)

[Loser15]

really need help, MtGox changed my account without notifying my so i sent it to the wrong account and now my transaction is stuck at pending, number: b9cefd6a-1d8b-497b-8d48-396dedb7f6c7
6/15/13

new account number i need it to be sent to: M51206660X

please help

[URSAY]

Hello,

Just used BitInstant for the first time. Everything worked out nice and quickly. Unfortunately, in the half hour it took me to run to the store for the money gram, the price of BTC went up a bit. When all was said and done, I ended up with ~0.978 instead of 1.0 BTC. I guess there is no way to make up that difference? I'd hate to do another full order + fees + trip to the store just for that tiny amount.

Thanks.

Your price is not locked in when you create a quote.  Regardless, if you think you have an issue that needs correction then it should go to support.bitinstant.com

What do you mean it's not locked?

Do you mean if we created a quote when 5 BTC equaled 500 USD...if it took 1 day for you to process and the price per BTC drops to 75...then we will get 375USD (before fees)?

Our system has a hard deadline of 24 hours, past which customers are entitled to fee refunds and compensation for price changes. The soft deadline (which is what we aim to deliver the majority of orders in) is 1 hour, and between those 2 timeframes we don't make a formal commitment to prices other than market rate as determined by our partners at coinapult.

You do realize that this is not directly implied on your website?

That is one hell of a bombshell to drop on people.

So basically, we don't actually know what rate we are getting until after we get it....?

Everything about the BitInstant website leads a person to believe they are going to get a fixed transaction (1 BTC for a certain amount of USD) as soon as finalized or as soon as it is paid in full. You'd better make it more obvious that prices are honored when executed rather than when paid. (huge variance right there)

Anyway:

Order: df07ed15-e31f-48be-9d0f-da85a3a59c58

There was some hickups with my order getting processed. Apparently customer service alerted me that the blockchain took its sweet time to confirm my payment. Even though I made the payment a few seconds after receiving the BitInstant address several days ago. You can check the timestamp to confirm when the transfer was made.

My order is still in limbo and I am definitely invoking the 24 hours clause. (fee free)

This is all covered in our terms of service.  Sorry for the delay on your order.  We are working on a solution.  Thanks.

[URSAY]

really need help, MtGox changed my account without notifying my so i sent it to the wrong account and now my transaction is stuck at pending, number: b9cefd6a-1d8b-497b-8d48-396dedb7f6c7
6/15/13

new account number i need it to be sent to: M51206660X

please help

Please log your issue at support.bitinstant.com so we can help you further.

[BCB]

Gareth
For transparency can you explain the transfer process?  I have been aware of zip zap issues in the past. Now it seems to be that coinapult is the problem. How many hops/services are required to convert the fiat to BTC? Maybe if the user understood the complexity of the process in addition to the added regulatory requirements you are facing they would be less quick to make claims in the event of a delay.

Thanks.

Last post of mine for today until i've cleared out these orders:

A basic deposit from cash to BTC looks like this:

1 - User gets a quote, the quote is recorded on our system and is used to generate the call to zipzap's system generating a payment slip
2 - User prints that payment slip, goes to location, deposits cash, usually via moneygram
3 - Moneygram confirm receipt, send money to ZipZap
4 - ZipZap confirm receipt from moneygram
5 - ZipZap send our system a notification (for the record, a lot of the issues on the new site happened here, looks like it was DNS-related)
6 - Our system confirms the notification from ZipZap is all legit and checks the cryptographic signature
7 - Our system generates a New Order - this is where the clock starts ticking on our deadlines (since before this point we don't have confirmed payment)
8 - The New Order goes into our queue, a worker process in the backend picks it up and verifies everything is legit, screens  for fraud etc
9 - The worker process sends USD funds over to our delivery partners at coinapult - we generally treat this as the point where orders are fulfilled
10 - Coinapult purchases bitcoins and withdraws from the exchange to the specified address (this stage has failed at times due to gox withdrawal delays)

Gareth,

This is great.  Hopefully clients can see that this is a complicated process.

You are also trying to implement a cutting edge technology on top of an antiquated banking system.

Then you have all the US REGULATION to deal will.

Hopefully Newbes will understand that Bitinstant is a trusted service and sometime there are glitches.

As much as everyone bitches about slow transactions on occasion I for one have never seen a Bitinstant transaction NOT honored or not refunded.

Good Luck.

[depositPatience]

I made two Dwolla payments to Mtgox through Bitinstant (old.bitinstant.com) yesterday and after 36hr's I haven't received anything. I didn't even receive an email receipt! Is anyone else in a similar situation? And I have made a support ticket (received a response too) but it must have gotten put on the back burner with all the cash deposit problems coming through. I emailed again so maybe that one will get some attention.

PM me here with your ticket reference and i'll take over the ticket and resolve it.

I PM'd you the ticket reference but just in case here it is again.

Support case #12722

[bamill010]

Garreth,

That is my email above, which I actually took some time to write because I wanted to be fair.   I also want to be logical.

To be fair, you obviously have so many tickets URSAY was unable to recall the order information in detail I posted just a couple pages before the one where he says I provide no meaningful information.  That is not to mention the numerous emails (at first) to make sure everything is logged, and then a PM to him directly with the same information. So I get that you all are effing slammed.

But you keep leading us to believe it will be "just any second."   It's been 4/5 days now.  I could have already been refunded and bought btc from you again already.... now that it works.  

1. You have my MT GOX account number.  
2.  At least two transfers are logged on BI.com since I am registered.  There is no searching or finding the trxn like the guest transfers.
3.  You have Mt. Gox funds at your disposal.
4.  I don't care if you cancel, amend, refund and reissue, WHATEVER you need to do to make sure you Mt. Gox account sends money to my Mt. Gox account is really all we care about.
5.  I think when you say manually, we assume that means its a workaround and that means it will work.  it hasn't.  When i say manually I mean you literally log into Mt. Gox with you username and password and start transferring funds immediately.  MANUALLY.

Yes, i know it will mess up your accounting and the system issues must be addressed.  But you are underestimating the impact that some of these transactions are now having on our personal lives.  Your personal life is bitinstant.... so its different for you.  For us, bitinstant has BECOME our life for a week where we are spending literally hours a day......

you all could have handled, and still could handle this in a way that would have minimized damage.  you have done almost every single thing wrong so far, except show up here.  even though no one is getting helped, you are here.

The problem is that messing up our accounting endangers our ability to comply with regulations and thus risks the whole company - we have to ensure transactions are logged properly in case of audits or whatever.

For what it's worth here's an update:
We have a batch of 127 orders (out of 2106 zipzap payments) which are having issues, it seems most of them are failing due to invalid addresses caused by whitespace and after fixing the formatting some of these are executing UNLESS they have already auto-retried the maximum number of times, in which case they're failing again. To resolve this our dev team is working on a patch so that all these orders can be batch processed correctly.

The vast majority of outstanding delayed orders are now fixed, and it's only this last batch that's causing so much trouble, but we are all working to get it resolved.

Some customers have been told to wait on coinapult, it turns out that a large proportion of these orders are still failing due to the above mentioned issue with addresses, and this is something that coinapult can address on their end - customer support are now  being told to get valid addresses for all outstanding orders and verify them, with the aim being to batch process them no later than sunday.

gareth,

my order is one of those conapult errors..

I have given you the updated as well as the current bitcoin address i used, will they process again? or can you try and manually push it through one more time?..

I have sent payment my self to bitcoin address i used and it worked no problem.

PM me the details and i'll see if it's possible to fix your order without the patch (which should be live tomorrow)

I placed an order today and got an email saying "This email is to notify you that while received your payment successfully, we have encountered an error while trying to process your transaction at Jun 15 2013 22:58:39, meaning your order has currently failed." You're saying there's a patch coming tomorrow and my transaction will be automatically processed? Or do I need to give someone the details and have it manually fixed? Thanks in advance.

Be safe and log your issue at support.bitinstant.com

 I'm not sure if I'm missing something or just stupid. Is there a way to create a support ticket? The only thing I can find on the support page is a link to send an email.

[depositPatience]

Garreth,

That is my email above, which I actually took some time to write because I wanted to be fair.   I also want to be logical.

To be fair, you obviously have so many tickets URSAY was unable to recall the order information in detail I posted just a couple pages before the one where he says I provide no meaningful information.  That is not to mention the numerous emails (at first) to make sure everything is logged, and then a PM to him directly with the same information. So I get that you all are effing slammed.

But you keep leading us to believe it will be "just any second."   It's been 4/5 days now.  I could have already been refunded and bought btc from you again already.... now that it works.  

1. You have my MT GOX account number.  
2.  At least two transfers are logged on BI.com since I am registered.  There is no searching or finding the trxn like the guest transfers.
3.  You have Mt. Gox funds at your disposal.
4.  I don't care if you cancel, amend, refund and reissue, WHATEVER you need to do to make sure you Mt. Gox account sends money to my Mt. Gox account is really all we care about.
5.  I think when you say manually, we assume that means its a workaround and that means it will work.  it hasn't.  When i say manually I mean you literally log into Mt. Gox with you username and password and start transferring funds immediately.  MANUALLY.

Yes, i know it will mess up your accounting and the system issues must be addressed.  But you are underestimating the impact that some of these transactions are now having on our personal lives.  Your personal life is bitinstant.... so its different for you.  For us, bitinstant has BECOME our life for a week where we are spending literally hours a day......

you all could have handled, and still could handle this in a way that would have minimized damage.  you have done almost every single thing wrong so far, except show up here.  even though no one is getting helped, you are here.

The problem is that messing up our accounting endangers our ability to comply with regulations and thus risks the whole company - we have to ensure transactions are logged properly in case of audits or whatever.

For what it's worth here's an update:
We have a batch of 127 orders (out of 2106 zipzap payments) which are having issues, it seems most of them are failing due to invalid addresses caused by whitespace and after fixing the formatting some of these are executing UNLESS they have already auto-retried the maximum number of times, in which case they're failing again. To resolve this our dev team is working on a patch so that all these orders can be batch processed correctly.

The vast majority of outstanding delayed orders are now fixed, and it's only this last batch that's causing so much trouble, but we are all working to get it resolved.

Some customers have been told to wait on coinapult, it turns out that a large proportion of these orders are still failing due to the above mentioned issue with addresses, and this is something that coinapult can address on their end - customer support are now  being told to get valid addresses for all outstanding orders and verify them, with the aim being to batch process them no later than sunday.

gareth,

my order is one of those conapult errors..

I have given you the updated as well as the current bitcoin address i used, will they process again? or can you try and manually push it through one more time?..

I have sent payment my self to bitcoin address i used and it worked no problem.

PM me the details and i'll see if it's possible to fix your order without the patch (which should be live tomorrow)

I placed an order today and got an email saying "This email is to notify you that while received your payment successfully, we have encountered an error while trying to process your transaction at Jun 15 2013 22:58:39, meaning your order has currently failed." You're saying there's a patch coming tomorrow and my transaction will be automatically processed? Or do I need to give someone the details and have it manually fixed? Thanks in advance.

Be safe and log your issue at support.bitinstant.com

 I'm not sure if I'm missing something or just stupid. Is there a way to create a support ticket? The only thing I can find on the support page is a link to send an email.

Go to http://old.bitinstant.com/contact and select "I am having a problem with an order I submitted"......took me a while to figure out as well.

[depositPatience]

I made two Dwolla payments to Mtgox through Bitinstant (old.bitinstant.com) yesterday and after 36hr's I haven't received anything. I didn't even receive an email receipt! Is anyone else in a similar situation? And I have made a support ticket (received a response too) but it must have gotten put on the back burner with all the cash deposit problems coming through. I emailed again so maybe that one will get some attention.

PM me here with your ticket reference and i'll take over the ticket and resolve it.

I PM'd you the ticket reference but just in case here it is again.

Support case #12722

About 52 hours now......hopefully I get my 2% fee back this is ridiculous! I made a support ticket hours after it happened, emailed multiple times, and PM'd several admins. I've used Bitinstant for a long time and I'm starting to get fed up, if you can push it through then refund MY MONEY if I can Dwolla you all that cash instantly it shouldn't take a rocket scientist to transfer it back to me.

[URSAY]

Garreth,

That is my email above, which I actually took some time to write because I wanted to be fair.   I also want to be logical.

To be fair, you obviously have so many tickets URSAY was unable to recall the order information in detail I posted just a couple pages before the one where he says I provide no meaningful information.  That is not to mention the numerous emails (at first) to make sure everything is logged, and then a PM to him directly with the same information. So I get that you all are effing slammed.

But you keep leading us to believe it will be "just any second."   It's been 4/5 days now.  I could have already been refunded and bought btc from you again already.... now that it works.  

1. You have my MT GOX account number.  
2.  At least two transfers are logged on BI.com since I am registered.  There is no searching or finding the trxn like the guest transfers.
3.  You have Mt. Gox funds at your disposal.
4.  I don't care if you cancel, amend, refund and reissue, WHATEVER you need to do to make sure you Mt. Gox account sends money to my Mt. Gox account is really all we care about.
5.  I think when you say manually, we assume that means its a workaround and that means it will work.  it hasn't.  When i say manually I mean you literally log into Mt. Gox with you username and password and start transferring funds immediately.  MANUALLY.

Yes, i know it will mess up your accounting and the system issues must be addressed.  But you are underestimating the impact that some of these transactions are now having on our personal lives.  Your personal life is bitinstant.... so its different for you.  For us, bitinstant has BECOME our life for a week where we are spending literally hours a day......

you all could have handled, and still could handle this in a way that would have minimized damage.  you have done almost every single thing wrong so far, except show up here.  even though no one is getting helped, you are here.

The problem is that messing up our accounting endangers our ability to comply with regulations and thus risks the whole company - we have to ensure transactions are logged properly in case of audits or whatever.

For what it's worth here's an update:
We have a batch of 127 orders (out of 2106 zipzap payments) which are having issues, it seems most of them are failing due to invalid addresses caused by whitespace and after fixing the formatting some of these are executing UNLESS they have already auto-retried the maximum number of times, in which case they're failing again. To resolve this our dev team is working on a patch so that all these orders can be batch processed correctly.

The vast majority of outstanding delayed orders are now fixed, and it's only this last batch that's causing so much trouble, but we are all working to get it resolved.

Some customers have been told to wait on coinapult, it turns out that a large proportion of these orders are still failing due to the above mentioned issue with addresses, and this is something that coinapult can address on their end - customer support are now  being told to get valid addresses for all outstanding orders and verify them, with the aim being to batch process them no later than sunday.

gareth,

my order is one of those conapult errors..

I have given you the updated as well as the current bitcoin address i used, will they process again? or can you try and manually push it through one more time?..

I have sent payment my self to bitcoin address i used and it worked no problem.

PM me the details and i'll see if it's possible to fix your order without the patch (which should be live tomorrow)

I placed an order today and got an email saying "This email is to notify you that while received your payment successfully, we have encountered an error while trying to process your transaction at Jun 15 2013 22:58:39, meaning your order has currently failed." You're saying there's a patch coming tomorrow and my transaction will be automatically processed? Or do I need to give someone the details and have it manually fixed? Thanks in advance.

Be safe and log your issue at support.bitinstant.com

 I'm not sure if I'm missing something or just stupid. Is there a way to create a support ticket? The only thing I can find on the support page is a link to send an email.

support.bitinstant.com

[URSAY]

I made two Dwolla payments to Mtgox through Bitinstant (old.bitinstant.com) yesterday and after 36hr's I haven't received anything. I didn't even receive an email receipt! Is anyone else in a similar situation? And I have made a support ticket (received a response too) but it must have gotten put on the back burner with all the cash deposit problems coming through. I emailed again so maybe that one will get some attention.

PM me here with your ticket reference and i'll take over the ticket and resolve it.

I PM'd you the ticket reference but just in case here it is again.

Support case #12722

About 52 hours now......hopefully I get my 2% fee back this is ridiculous! I made a support ticket hours after it happened, emailed multiple times, and PM'd several admins. I've used Bitinstant for a long time and I'm starting to get fed up, if you can push it through then refund MY MONEY if I can Dwolla you all that cash instantly it shouldn't take a rocket scientist to transfer it back to me.

Nowhere do we say it is okay for users to transfer us funds directly on Dwolla.  If you decided to do this regardless then you will need to be patient to see if we can provide you with a solution.

[dstevenson2k]

Hey Gareth or Ursay,

I tried to buy some bitcoins today but received an email saying that while you had received my funds, the transaction had failed. The event log for the transaction at Bitinstant.com shows about 50 "Mt. Gox transfer error." Could you let me know what's going on here and look into this for me please?

Case #14321
Transaction ID: aabea6f3-097d-402a-8beb-e776cc4ceb85

Much appreciated and thank you,
Dan