Warning - Do not use Coinbase!

[Mausini]

Coinbase is keeping 100 BTC from me for two days now!!! I deposited 100 BTC in a Coinbase online wallet. I did not even purchase any bitcoin on Coinbase, I just stored them there. That may have been a stupid idea in the first place. When I tried to transfer the BTC out of the account, it got a "pending" status. After contacting the customer service, they put me of multiple times with "performance improvements" reasons and some deadlines when I would receive my BTC. It hasnt happend! It is still "pending", what ever that means.

Even btct.co has a transparent manual withdraw limit and they approve larger transactions within hours. Coinbase is an officially registered, funded company and they fail to keep up with that?

I feel this kind of behaviour is in no way accaptable! What were the benefits of BTC over traditional banking again??
I strongly advise everybody not to use their service, because it is a joke to the whole bitcoin ecosystem.

@Coinbase: I want my BTC back!!! Immediately!!!

[justusranvier]

They claim to be working on the problem.

Just wanted to drop a quick note about the pending transactions and down time over the past couple of days.  We have been working hard to re-architect our backend to keep up with growth.  The demand for bitcoin recently has been amazing and the site has received a large increase in traffic.  If you’d had issues, they should be resolved within the next 2 hours.

We realize it is very frustrating to have transactions stuck in a pending state.  Rest assured that they will go out.  This definitely wasn’t our intention; the growth caught us off guard and it’s been pretty embarrassing to let down our customers.  Thank you for bearing with us as we try to keep up with the growth of bitcoin!

This is probably as good a time as any to mention that if you are in SF and are an awesome software engineer, we’re hiring: https://coinbase.com/jobs

As you can tell, we have no shortage of things we need to build!

[Mausini]

They also claimed their problem was resolved this morning. However, my BTC transaction is still pending. And from what I have read in other threads, they seem to have a history of "playing" with their customers' money.

Fred Ehrsam replied:
Hi,

Our performance improvements are now complete and the vast majority of "pending" transactions or balances not refreshing should be cleared within the next 2 hours. For those technically inclined, this meant a a refactor of how we were processing transactions internally and a database migration that caused us to temporarily come out of sync with the blockchain - thus the pending transactions and balances which appeared to be off.

The good news: the site is much faster now. This paves the way for a lot of great things going forward, including an improvement to the site-wide buying limit soon. The bad: we definitely caused some unnecessary anxiety and a good deal of practical inconvenience. For this I want to personally apologize. I'm very sorry - this process took longer than expected, and we're taking steps to avoid such extended delays on the live in the future. Again, sorry for any undue stress caused!
Regards,
Fred

[shuadoom]

I have a btc - btc transaction that is stuck in pending since 11am est on 3/20.
It's actually a transaction to a member of the forum for some hardware..
A few hours later I sent the rest of my coins to my wallet, but they too are stuck in pending.
Serves me right for procrastinating..

[cbeast]

This is the second time in a row I had a transaction stuck at coinbase. I was willing to give thm a second chance, but not a third.

[MPOE-PR]

Doesn't sound too good, for the technically minded.

[boscorocks]

This is the second time in a row I had a transaction stuck at coinbase. I was willing to give thm a second chance, but not a third.

Same here. Had a problem last month and this time the problem has lasted even longer. I think their service is a great idea but unfortunately I can't trust them. I was going to use their service mainly for purchasing BTC and moving it then to a more secure wallet, but that is not possible at the moment. It is more like "Warning - Can't Use Coinbase!" (even if you wanted to)

[debianlinux]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_release_life_cycle#Beta

[davincisolari]

I am having a similar problem.  I made two transfers, one on the 19th and one on the 21st of March and they are still "pending".  I am definitely going to close my account if I every get my coins out.  I'm starting fear that the website will disappear soon.  It would be great if someone from Coinbase could reply to this tread and let us all know what the hell is going on.

[instaBoost]

I tried to withdraw just 1 coin and its still "pending" 6 hours later....

[Mausini]

My transaction is still pending. What really worries me is, they try to make the impression that everything is fine. They dont reply to emails anymore. Reminds me of cyprus in a way :/

I wonder if they will reimburse me when I will tell them I wanted to sell at 70 USD on bitstamp. Maybe they will get the idea that its absolutely not acceptable to hold their customers money hostage.

[notserp]

they wont give shit i just got my coins back  in my account after waiting 3 days for a transfer that they still didnt do

[Mausini]

still pending...

[Mausini]

still pending... not replying emails

[kakobrekla]

They are just kiddo mactards, don't trust them with a single coin. (the second goes for the majority of btc biz out there)

[rudeguy]

I've had 3.5 BTC tied up for over 72 hours. I'm sure that's pocket change for a lot on this forum, but it's still annoying!

I was going to make a purchase when they were worth about $70 USD each, but CB said "Hell nah!"

[Mausini]

ok, got my 100 btc back. still coinbase sucks monkey dick. i will never use their service again!

[cbeast]

I am curious about their security system that would allow transactions to get stuck. I'm sure they wouldn't use a hot wallet.

[MPOE-PR]

I am curious about their security system that would allow transactions to get stuck. I'm sure they wouldn't use a hot wallet.

Ever heard of a honeypot? 

[redwraith]

They are trying to provide a service that most other wallets and exchanges don't do, mainly letting you buy bitcoins thru ACH bank transfers.  That is very attractive to me and most casual buyers of bitcoin will probably agree.  Just try making a US dollar deposit into BTC-e and you'll see why what Coinbase offers if preferable.  
Along with offering this ease of use is the fight against charge-back fraud.  I read somewhere that they have developed a security system to fight such a battle and I suspect that their recent issues are as a result of that.  It's too bad that the growing pains involved in developing these bitcoin based businesses often leads them into being accused of scamming, due to lack of user's patience in dealing with temporary situations.