I understand the situation, you didn't want to destroy the exchange by telling people "Hey our accounts are frozen no one is getting paid!".
But really, that's probably what you should have said much earlier. I have a withdrawal from the 1st of August that's pending. Then I notice there's now a check option, I was not e-mailed about that option. I was not e-mailed about other options to cash out. Also my funds were not unfrozen so I could re-buy as Bitcoins value dropped. I'm not sure I would of but it would have been nice to have the USD back in the account since it was going to be weeks before it was sent.
I plan to keep using TradeHill they seem fairly honest and competent.
I understand that BoA pulled the rug out from under you. But the whole "we're working on it" isn't enough. 2 day air people certified checks. Heck even money orders. What I would have done is just e-mailed the people with pending withdrawals. Deal with them and avoid making a big blog post about it. That buys you some time and takes care of the main people effected.
I was surprised there wasn't more stink about it. TH kept accepting money, but wasn't able to send it back out via ach/wire. That's sorta important. Maybe it was my fault for not asking the money to be unfrozen so I could use another method. Maybe Paxum? Check? I don't know.
Next time work with people to get them the money quickly. Tell them the other options, tell them wires are down for the moment, people could have even withdrawn bitcoins and sold them on MtGox and gotten the money back out that way. Sure it sucks to send them to the competition, but that would have been then my deposit being on hold for 12 days. I don't need the money but it concerns me that all the wires/deposits were just in limbo this entire time. On August 2nd (I assume it started then since my deposit wasn't sent) everyone pending gets the usd back in their tradehill, informed of other options and it's done.
If they cash out and go to MtGox that would have been a lot better then having my money tied up with "we're working on it" for almost 2 weeks now. Like I said I'm still going to use TH but I'm not too pleased they weren't more proactive to solve the issue and just let my money rot in limbo. There were a number of solutions that would have resolved it and I would have been happy with, the only one that I'm not happy with is the delays while I keep waiting. The day you added the check option everyone with pending wires should have been informed.
Overall wires going down isn't that big of a deal. There's other options. People can buy back bitcoins, move it around, give them free trades for a week, use paxum, checks etc.. It became a bigger deal because wires were held in limbo with no timeline and honestly not enough solutions from your end. Next time put the usd back, tell them of the other options, tell them you're working on getting wires back, and that's the end of it. This whole 'wtf is going on with TH' could have been avoided day 1.
It's August 11, and still no word on the wires. My money is still in limbo, and my emails don't get replied to. This isn't looking good. Any chance of a status update?
Hi Golden,
As of today we activated a new bank account that can execute transactions. 90% of delayed transactions will be executed today, Monday, or Tuesday. You will receive an email once your transaction is executed. We have been responding to 90% of the emails each day as of 5/6 days ago. Our average response time has increased from 2 hours to 12 hours due to the volume of emails received.
Regards,
Adam – Tradehill
