SCAM - Coinabul owe me 81btc

[John (John K.)]

I've sent another PM couple days ago to Coinabul where he replied that Jay would look in this issue. I hope they will stand up and make good with the buyer in this case as it's quite clear that the buyer is correct in this case.

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[MisterRD]

Well. This is bad. Regardless of the fact that he harassed you or not. The customer paid for insurance charges, so he needs to be reimbursed. If he hadn't paid for the insurance and then only package was lost, you guys had no liability. Considering Coinabul already realizes that package didn't reach it's desired final destination, a refund is in order. If not, I'd sadly support the rest of the people and ask for Scammer tag.

[rpietila]

I've sent another PM couple days ago to Coinabul where he replied that Jay would look in this issue. I hope they will stand up and make good with the buyer in this case as it's quite clear that the buyer is correct in this case.

+1.

[astanix]

So what I see from this thread is that if a company ONLY steals 80 or so BTC once in a great while, it's not a scam, it's just bad business practice.
How many times does this need to happen before people consider it a scam?

[SgtSpike]

So what I see from this thread is that if a company ONLY steals 80 or so BTC once in a great while, it's not a scam, it's just bad business practice.
How many times does this need to happen before people consider it a scam?

I don't get that feeling.  Most people in this thread are calling for a scammer tag.

[thebaron]

The trend on this forum is that if you're not out to scam and refuse to use escrow or send the item first, you get labeled a scammer before you even get a chance complete your first transaction.

If you're actually scamming however, it takes a seemingly overwhelming amount of evidence to "convict" you of such.

I say continue scamming! The people here don't care, and it's obviously more profitable! God damn, has anyone even pressed charges against pirateat40 yet? lololol

[dirtycat]

The trend on this forum is that if you're not out to scam and refuse to use escrow or send the item first, you get labeled a scammer before you even get a chance complete your first transaction.

If you're actually scamming however, it takes a seemingly overwhelming amount of evidence to "convict" you of such.

I say continue scamming! The people here don't care, and it's obviously more profitable! God damn, has anyone even pressed charges against pirateat40 yet? lololol

I think its cute when the people who got scammed say: "lets take a road trip to their house"  

but on the off chance I'm still eagerly awaiting the first bitcoin beat down news story to pop up.. "nerd beats nerd over magic internet currency fiasco"

[zebedee]

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1a5cjg/coinabul_sells_silver_by_insured_mail_package_is/]Reddit post[/url]?[/b]

bravenec 4 points 1 hour ago

I have worst experience with coinabul - it is more then a month ago I have sent them 90 BTC and now I have not my gold nor my bitcoins. I have only email box full of excuses. I'm from central Europe and I think that Coinabul rely on the fact that it is hard to defend against the fraud outside from US.

This is my mail conversation with coinabul: http://bravenec.eu/coinabul

So this is a thing? Am I reading this correctly. Coinabul both couldn't send the package and then didn't refund the entire bitcoin amount of 90.7825 BTC to the person!?

Wow, these Coinabul guys really are the pits.

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1a5cjg/coinabul_sells_silver_by_insured_mail_package_is/]Reddit post[/url]?[/b]

bravenec 4 points 1 hour ago

I have worst experience with coinabul - it is more then a month ago I have sent them 90 BTC and now I have not my gold nor my bitcoins. I have only email box full of excuses. I'm from central Europe and I think that Coinabul rely on the fact that it is hard to defend against the fraud outside from US.

This is my mail conversation with coinabul: http://bravenec.eu/coinabul

So this is a thing? Am I reading this correctly. Coinabul both couldn't send the package and then didn't refund the entire bitcoin amount of 90.7825 BTC to the person!?

Wow, these Coinabul guys really are the pits.

Don't forget taking a month to ship an order while saying that it will be shipped in 2-3 business days every time.

[dirtycat]

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1a5cjg/coinabul_sells_silver_by_insured_mail_package_is/]Reddit post[/url]?[/b]

bravenec 4 points 1 hour ago

I have worst experience with coinabul - it is more then a month ago I have sent them 90 BTC and now I have not my gold nor my bitcoins. I have only email box full of excuses. I'm from central Europe and I think that Coinabul rely on the fact that it is hard to defend against the fraud outside from US.

This is my mail conversation with coinabul: http://bravenec.eu/coinabul

So this is a thing? Am I reading this correctly. Coinabul both couldn't send the package and then didn't refund the entire bitcoin amount of 90.7825 BTC to the person!?

Wow, these Coinabul guys really are the pits.

Don't forget taking a month to ship an order while saying that it will be shipped in 2-3 business days every time.

I don't recall ever having a order saying it was going to be shipped in 2-3 business days but maybe they had your/theirs/that item in stock at the time and just failed to send it promptly?

see: http://coinabul.com/index.php/coinabul-secure-bullion-shipping-and-ordering-process-how-to

from what that chart says they take your coin and convert it to whatever currency(probably why they don't refund coins).. order what you wanted from apmex or whomever.. then when they receive it repackage it and mail it to you.

pretty simple actually.. perhaps I'll give it a shot one day and start my own bullion store.. (and I'll be honest and direct too.. 2-3 weeks for shipping) hell I might just keep some in stock too so you won't have to wait.
and I shall name it.. DIRTYCOINS!! cause when you get em they will be all smudged with fingerprints and some strange sticky goo.. that kind of goo you are tempted to lick and see if it tastes sweet.

[Coinabul]

[Monday, November 05, 2012] [05:56:27 PM] <coingenuity> absolutely, and if I can't get them to properly cover the parcel I'll quite possibly end up covering a portion of the loss out of pocket in replacements

This is the standing offer I made to Kris on the same day I was told by our insurance company that they'd likely be unable to cover the cost of replacement. This offer was in place up until give or take the point that I saw him create a similar thread on the 17th of Feb at which point I lost patience with trying to help him. I always do my best to make sure each customer is satisfied, and that I've done everything I can to that end. Heck, as I type this, there are customers with insurance claims in various stages of processing that have already had a replacement shipped to them. That's exactly why I offered to cover at least a portion of the parcel's silver, and would have been very amenable to covering 100% of the replacement, but Kris never followed up with me about my offer even at the time that I made it. He'd just send "ping" and nothing else, and go offline before I could respond. He's had my email address since before he even placed an order, but aside from "ping" on IRC periodically he hasn't really been in contact with me regarding my offer. I got an email from him on 9/13 which I replied to, and then got nothing in my inbox until January 4th.


Yes, I flew off the handle a bit when I saw this thread: I worked Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Thanksgiving, my birthday, and New Years' Eve, New Years Day, et cetera, both this year and last. I generally work 6 or 7 days per week, and get 8 hours of sleep perhaps two nights out of the month. Instead of taking care of my financial needs, I invest every spare cent back into the company and staff, and vicariously my customers. Just one example of that is me to this day driving a car that is past the age of majority for voting, having children, drinking etc in many countries. In any possible way I help the company's growth via minimizing my own expenditures, and increase customer satisfaction by having a larger amount and variety of inventory in our vaults. So between Kris not even emailing me about the offer I made him before posting here, combined with the countless sacrifices I make as a general rule to help my customers, I of course took his accusation and the inaccuracies of his account very personally.

My apologies for losing my cool: I'm normally pretty even keeled, but this really rubbed me the wrong way in concert with some major personal stress over the last few weeks(very ill relative). Combined with the fact that I've had a standing offer to him for ages as far as taking care of him in metal or fiat, but instead of even asking me about it he just complains on here on the forums about 80btc, I really took it too personally and lost my temper. I didn't even mind the continual messages on IRC. What got to me was the lack of communication with us substantively via email or other mediums, but the effort put into fairly constant posting here of half-truths and fabrications instead. Look at the content and title of this thread, as well as his last thread: both inflationary and confrontational, demanding 80btc instead of replacement products as I offered him all the way back in November.


I'll put my offer back in place for Kris, since he IS our only failed insurance claim to date, throughout our entire history of thousands of parcels to countless countries. I always want every customer to have the best possible experience no matter what kind of exigent circumstances come into play. However, for the sake of posterity, I should make a few things clear:

-We don't self-insure parcels, for a variety of reasons. Insurance requires a high level of specialized interfacing to carriers, many hours of phone calls, and extensive fraud investigations. Not only would our ability to self-insure be subpar compared to the professional commercial offerings we utilize, but it would open us up to a huge potential for fraud and cause much higher shipping rates for our customers and decrease efficiency dealing with carriers/governments.

-We never use carrier insurance coverage- they specifically exclude precious metals via fuzzy language buried deep in the insurance disclaimers and policies.

-We always use private insurance that is specifically vetted for precious metals coverage and designed for higher than average value coverage.

-We ALWAYS use tracking numbers, no matter what, even on uninsured shipments. There would be no way to correlate orders to shipments if we did not, and I'm not even sure there's a low-grade enough USPS service that even comes sans tracking number.

-USPS insurance itself is off the table for our shipments: if you read the insurance documentation provided by USPS in-depth you can see that the maximum coverage they'll provide for bullion on non-registered-mail shipments is $15.

-Registered Mail is off the table for high-volume shipments: it's a service rarely utilised by average consumers, and when it comes down to how we are able to integrate with carriers to produce prepaid shipments Registered Mail is for all intensive purposes unavailable. In terms of value, once a shipment reaches the point where Registered Mail would be engaged(more than $500 for an international shipment), security protocols and insurance companies get upgraded quite heavily as does the carrier. USPS, even with registered mail, is only suitable for low-weight low-value shipments.

-We always buffer the value of a shipment's insurance by a wide margin, at great cost to us, to ensure that even during heavy market volatility the insured value can remain valid.

-We cover random expenses that come up for orders on a regular basis, whether it's upgrading the security protocols / insurance for $100 out-of-pocket to ensure a volatility buffer+coverage, paying insane government fees for bizarre demands($400 to Thailand recently, for example), sending PCGS instead of standard uncirculated coins when the market dries up, eating the cost of insuring large orders beyond what we actually charged($1100 for one single order recently), et cetera. We spend a TON of money making sure customers are well taken care of, and would have done so for Kris had he actually communicated with us and taken me up on my offer to replace.

-Unfortunately, as a rule we encounter a LOT of fraud. I'm not quite sure how we compare to more traditional fiat-based dealers, but without writing an instruction manual for potential scammers I can tell you that there are a variety of ways that people routinely attempt to defraud us for quite large sums of money.

-We don't hoard your coins for weeks or months at a time. This would in essence equate to gambling with customers' funds instead of engaging in our conversion process. We maintain metal reserves, and continually replace our reserves to account for products ordered.

-As I said before, out of thousands of shipments this has been our only failed claim to date. Our loss rates, claim-success-rates aside, are around 0.25%, which is exceedingly low. That's why I offered Kris some replacement metal happily in November.



I'm not quite sure what the uproar is about: Nearly 5 months ago I tried to open the door with him as far as my willingness to cover some, if not all, of the cost of his failed insurance claim. Instead of taking me up on it, he just sent non-substantive IRC messages continually and posted on the forums complaining about 80btc. I'm re-extending that offer to him again, despite his less-than-truthful portrayal of events. As my long-term customers and peers will tell you, I tend to be a very reasonable person if you take the time to talk to me and will always bend over backwards to enrich Bitcoin in any way possible.

-Jay

[shiftybugger]

If the offer is full replacement of my coins, then -- Offer accepted. I eagerly await my replacement silver.

But, for posterity, I'll respond to some of your points. You state that I've been less than truthful. I maintain that I haven't, but I'll meet you halfway and concede that there does appear to have been a rather large breakdown in communication between us.

[Monday, November 05, 2012] [05:56:27 PM] <coingenuity> absolutely, and if I can't get them to properly cover the parcel I'll quite possibly end up covering a portion of the loss out of pocket in replacements

This is the standing offer I made to Kris on the same day I was told by our insurance company that they'd likely be unable to cover the cost of replacement. This offer was in place up until give or take the point that I saw him create a similar thread on the 17th of Feb at which point I lost patience with trying to help him...  That's exactly why I offered to cover at least a portion of the parcel's silver, and would have been very amenable to covering 100% of the replacement, but Kris never followed up with me about my offer even at the time that I made it.

At no point did I get the impression that an offer was being made. There was no, "Nope they won't cover it, I'll replace it (or x%). Do you accept that?". It was all, "I'll keep chasing them, but if they don't, then I may (or probably will)". In my opinion, your 'offers' were non-committal and indefinite.

I was waiting for a final decision. I certainly didn't realise that I had to somehow accept something, or that there was anything definite to accept. I assumed that if you decided to, you'd send replacements and let me know.

He'd just send "ping" and nothing else, and go offline before I could respond. He's had my email address since before he even placed an order, but aside from "ping" on IRC periodically he hasn't really been in contact with me regarding my offer. I got an email from him on 9/13 which I replied to, and then got nothing in my inbox until January 4th.

As previously stated, I'd just log on to see of you were on. If not, I'd try again later. Email had proved ineffective so I had largely abandoned it as a comms channel. I think perhaps you attributed bad intentions when there were none. It was simply a real pain in the arse trying to communicate across the globe with email not being effective.

So between Kris not even emailing me about the offer I made him before posting here, combined with the countless sacrifices I make as a general rule to help my customers, I of course took his accusation and the inaccuracies of his account very personally.

I emailed Jon on Jan 8, he forwarded it to you on Jan 9. I purposely waited over a month before starting the thread on Feb 17. I didn't receive any contact from you until I started that thread.

Look at the content and title of this thread, as well as his last thread: both inflationary and confrontational, demanding 80btc instead of replacement products as I offered him all the way back in November.

In hindsight, my choice of words for the title was ill thought out. I didn't intend to imply that I expected 80btc replaced -- I even explicitly clarified this on page 3. I was just quantifying my original loss.

Confrontational? Hell yes. I felt particularly hard done by.

Edit: better werds.

[rpietila]

  Congratulations! 

[boonies4u]

Offer accepted. I eagerly await my replacement silver.

What did you accept exactly?

[shiftybugger]

Offer accepted. I eagerly await my replacement silver.

What did you accept exactly?

Full replacement of my order.... I hope.

Edited the above post to remove ambiguity.

[eldentyrell]

Having insurance coverage on bullion shipments, let alone worldwide coverage, while being able to provide shipping service at a reasonable cost to customers is a nearly impossible challenge. Carrier level insurance doesn't even cover bullion, and if it appears to do so the likelihood of them making good on any submitted claim is slim to none.

Then why on earth are you advertising insured shipping and accepting payments for it?

I ordered once from coinabul about a year ago and although the goods arrived the shipping security precautions were, to put it mildly, reckless.

I've ordered many times from APMEX and I know what's possible and prudent.  APMEX makes all shipments via registered mail (not just insured) with ID check required on delivery and a huge pink fluorescent CARRIER MUST CHECK ID ON DELIVERY label.  Coinabul just stuck the coin in an envelope, slapped an insurance sticker on it, and tossed it in the mailbox.  It got delivered to the guy next door to me.  Fortunately he's honest and/or didn't look inside.

So I didn't order again, figuring this was an accident waiting to happen.

[eldentyrell]

I do not guarantee anyone will receive what they ordered unless they pay for insurance

...

As far as I'm concerned, if the customer didn't pay for insurance, then any insurance I might have is to benefit me, not them.

I think you missed this part:

MY STORY: I paid Coinabul 81.8251 btc for an order of silver on July 30, 2012. I paid extra for insured shipping.

[Raoul Duke]

con-a-bull.

Best wordplay ever. Thanks, Goat! 

[Phinnaeus Gage]

con-a-bull.

Best wordplay ever. Thanks, Goat! 

I didn't get a badge for Psytoshi.

In regard to Jay's explanation above, I wish that something akin to that came out earlier,  but fully understand his frustration level at the time. We all sometimes snap back wrongly, needing latter to correct that stance.

Until there's a myriad of unhappy customers of Coinabul, there's probably no reason to further concern ourselves about them, but vigilant eyes remain on them, as well as on a host of other entities, thus keeping the systems of things in check.

Peace, Jay.

~Bruno K~

[flound1129]

[Monday, November 05, 2012] [05:56:27 PM] <coingenuity> absolutely, and if I can't get them to properly cover the parcel I'll quite possibly end up covering a portion of the loss out of pocket in replacements

This is the standing offer I made to Kris on the same day I was told by our insurance company that they'd likely be unable to cover the cost of replacement.

Sorry, but "If X happens, I may do Y" does not constitute an offer capable of being accepted.

Yes, I flew off the handle a bit when I saw this thread: I worked Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Thanksgiving, my birthday, and New Years' Eve, New Years Day, et cetera, both this year and last. I generally work 6 or 7 days per week, and get 8 hours of sleep perhaps two nights out of the month. Instead of taking care of my financial needs, I invest every spare cent back into the company and staff, and vicariously my customers. Just one example of that is me to this day driving a car that is past the age of majority for voting, having children, drinking etc in many countries. In any possible way I help the company's growth via minimizing my own expenditures, and increase customer satisfaction by having a larger amount and variety of inventory in our vaults. So between Kris not even emailing me about the offer I made him before posting here, combined with the countless sacrifices I make as a general rule to help my customers, I of course took his accusation and the inaccuracies of his account very personally.

None of this is in any way relevant to the issue at hand.  Nor is your information about your insurance and shipping policies.

-As I said before, out of thousands of shipments this has been our only failed claim to date. Our loss rates, claim-success-rates aside, are around 0.25%, which is exceedingly low. That's why I offered Kris some replacement metal happily in November.

Except you didn't.  You said that if "his" claim wasn't paid, you *might* possibly wind up covering a portion of his loss.  That is nowhere near the same as offering him a replacement.

I'm not quite sure what the uproar is about: Nearly 5 months ago I tried to open the door with him as far as my willingness to cover some, if not all, of the cost of his failed insurance claim.

What do you mean by 'his claim'?  Your language indicates that you still somehow view this as his problem when the consensus in the thread has been that it is not.

Instead of taking me up on it, he just sent non-substantive IRC messages continually and posted on the forums complaining about 80btc. I'm re-extending that offer to him again, despite his less-than-truthful portrayal of events. As my long-term customers and peers will tell you, I tend to be a very reasonable person if you take the time to talk to me and will always bend over backwards to enrich Bitcoin in any way possible.

I think you owe him his 80 BTC back or full shipment of whatever he bought, plus interest. If you lived in the same country as him you'd probably be getting hauled into court about now.