Dealing with Increased Traffic and Transaction Delays

[Yankee (BitInstant)]

Dealing with Increased Traffic and Transaction Delays

The last few months have seen some growing pains here at BitInstant that you may have, unfortunately, had to deal with. Let’s get this blog rolling by flat out apologizing for that. We’re sorry for delays in transactions and communication. We understand how much it sucks to be sweating your money without great communication. So, keep reading and you’ll learn what’s been going on and how we’re changing to make these problems a thing of the past.

Why the Problems?

With all the popular media attention bitcoin has been getting lately, people have been getting wise to the idea that this is the future. As a result, BitInstant been slammed with new and return users alike. And it’s not just us; our partner exchanges have been feeling the burn too. So why exactly does that cause problems?

How BitInstant Works

To understand this it’s important that you realize exactly how BitInstant works. It takes time to move funds around, even digitally. We created BitInstant to help you get money faster by creating accounts at the different exchanges and putting our own funds into them.
When you make a new BitInstant transaction we aren’t able to magically move YOUR funds faster – we take some of OUR funds out of OUR account and move them into your account on whatever exchange you’ve chosen. When things are running smoothly our funds show up in your account and you go on your happy way. Then we patiently wait for your funds to catch up to our account and repopulate our reserves – a process that can take days.

What are you doing with my money when I don’t see it?

We’ve heard a lot of complaints suggesting that when you don’t get your money immediately it’s because we’re hanging on to it so that we can make more money. So let’s set the record straight, this is definitely not what’s happening. We don’t hold bitcoins and don’t make more money when your orders are delayed; it actually hurts us because orders are processing more slowly. When you send us your funds we immediately initiate your requested transaction and queue the funds to enter your requested exchange. We aren’t trying to game the system and we’re not making more money when your transaction is delayed.

What’s the Problem?

High volume with lots of requests for fund transactions increases the demand on our accounts. Because it can take days for us to receive the funds that previous customers sent, our reserves on the different exchanges can get low. When many people make near simultaneous demands on our system it’s been hard to keep up with the demand.

How are we fixing this?

We are working to be aware of issues sooner so that we can temporarily disable transaction methods when backlogs exist. This will ensure that customers who have placed transactions will have their orders fulfilled before new orders are entered into the system. We have backup liquidity providers that we are working on getting online to help prevent these situations. So when you see an exchange temporarily disabled from our list of transaction methods – this is what’s going on. We’ll also alert you via @bitinstanthelp on Twitter when we make these temporary changes to the transaction methods.
We take these problems very seriously and work every day to improve our customer experience. In the last six weeks we’ve hired four new full-time support staffers to help process tickets and we’ve been training them on our systems. There’s a lot to know to help process your orders but we’re starting to turn the team loose to help out which should make a notable difference on our support ticket turn-around time.
We’ve added a support form to our website to help collect the information that we need to solve your problem quickly (https://www.bitinstant.com/contact). This will reduce the number of interactions that are required to solve problems. You can also access this form from our Facebook page by clicking the “WuFoo” icon at the top of the page.
We’ve also launched a Twitter account to help alert you to potential delays in our system. Please follow @bitinstanthelp – we will be updating this account regularly when our support team is working.
We will still be working through the tickets that are still outstanding in our system but you are welcome to submit a new request through the form to make sure we have all the necessary information to solve your problem.

Conclusion We’re sorry that we haven’t been able to keep ahead of the Bitcoin demand, but we’re actively trying to solve these problems. The items listed above are only the beginning of the support improvements we have planned for the coming weeks. We hope that you will bear with us through some of our growing pains and understand that we value our customers and want nothing more than for your transactions to be quick and painless. We will always do our best to try and turn problems into happy customers. If you think we’ve made a mistake let us know and we’ll work with you to refund fees and resolve the situation.

Thanks

Charlie Shrem
CEO, BitInstant

[oblongmeteor]

I've been following your business for some time and since you've posted this - it needs to be said; your current implementation of your business model is awful. Everything you've listed above is either an excuse or addressing a symptom not the cause. Support is great, but most businesses do not need to bias their entire workforce in favor of support agents. So - objectively - lets look at where you really should be focusing on:

-> Based on the numerous complaints and the common theme that runs through them, your primary focus should be on gating your system so that you can manage demand and resolve your outstanding issues. You seem to have no mechanism to prevent users from creating orders. You know your liquidity is finite, you know (or should by now) how long it takes to transfer capital funds through the traditional banking network, ergo you should be able to estimate how many orders you can fulfill in a given time period. If you do not know this, break out Excel. If your existing development team cannot gate your system, hire developers who can.

-> User experience is key. Your website User Interface is awful. No field validation, no feedback - frankly, you put some of the relics on the waybackmachine to shame. If you have customers complaining that they don't know if "the box should take my Mt.Gox account number or Username" - you should have validation to ensure only the correct format of value is accepted...this is 10 minutes with the JavaScript RegExp object. At the very least, you should have a step-by-step tutorial *with screenshots* showing customers what value you expect and where they source it from. Send one of your support drones to document the entire process for each exchange/partner that you operate with. Make things easy and transparent for your customers.

-> Software development. Clearly whoever is responsible for your software stack needs a refresher course in software development. When you are sending customers emails with failed API responses - you should tweak that somethings up. It stinks of laziness and a rotten software core that you're basically spitting out 'whatever' the exchange sends you without any sort of pre-parsing or consideration of the response. As a result, you're getting customers pasting entire Mt.Gox redeemable codes, error messages, your exchange fund balance and other embarrassing information into the public domain. Work out what you know to be a successful response and only send that to your customers; Regular Expressions are your friend. The intricacies of your business should be abstracted from your customers. Your automated responses to your customers should be tailored to the product which they have purchased. Bought an Mt.Gox coupon? Stick a hyperlink to your step-by-step instructions on how to redeem it. Don't just assume they know. Finally; *DONT* send 'Success' emails when your process has failed. As an aside; if you have software development tasks stacking up; hire new software developers not support agents (antibiotics vs a band-aid).

-> Guarantees. You can't meet them so stop offering them. It's only costing you money and making you look incompetent. Unless you are a bottomless pit of cash, you will not continue to be able to refund the difference between the quote price and the final amount you deliver - especially if the price continues its exponential upward trend. It's clear that you are not at fault on all occasions, but you should by now be well acquainted with just how rickety the Bitcoin support infrastructure really is, and should alter your terms and conditions to reflect this. A reasonable best-effort delivery of 24hours would probably be advisable. You aim for an hour, but your order may take longer in busy times or when one of your partners suffers a outage. This is business - with many links in the chain it happens - people will understand and those who don't should take their business elsewhere.

Although I have no vested interest in your company, I do not want to see you fail. Your heart seems to be in the right place and you appear to have the enthusiasm and drive, but don't for a minute think that all eyes aren't on you. You won't get much more grace to sort these issues out before you do irreparable damage to your business, fall by the wayside and into irrelevance.

Genuinely; I wish you the best of luck.

[bg002h]

These are just growing pains Charlie.  Eat well.  Sleep when you can.  This too shall pass.  Thank you for what you do for the community. 

[Haole]

Without any mention of infrastructure spending and upgrading your systems to handle increased demand and usage, this is just excuses.

Now BTC doesn't even need bad press, the exchanges themselves and the entire global BTC network grinding to a halt is enough to make Bitcoin look like a complete and utter joke.

I won't use your service precisely because of what has gone down today but I wish you guys luck as a believer in the Bitcoin idea.

To the exchanges and payment processors out there:

Spend some money on upgrades to hardware and software and do it now unless you want to be responsible for Bitcoin falling on it's face and being relegated to being a geek gimmick just as it starts walking.

[buddhacoiner]

tough love, eh, oblongmeteor?  without any further butting of heads, Charlie's post and your response stand to serve each other quite well going forward.  this balanced complEment should allow for some positive implementations

[Epicblood]

So i have been waiting for over a week now and still have yet to hear anything back from you guys.
Are you still working on the problem? if so why is it taking so long?