[Solved] Shorted 20BTC by BitBills

[Josh]

Today I opened the letter addressed from BitBills with my order. It contained 6x1BTC and 1x5BTC bills. This was odd, because I know that I ordered a 20BTC bill, which was not included in the delivery. I even checked the receipt from mybitcoin, which is where I sent the funds from. So in short, I was shorted by BitBills by over $300 at current market prices. That's a big error. Otherwise the Bills look good.

D:   50416
Date/Time:   2011-05-13 18:44:44
Payer:   Josh
Payee:   1MjBecWKrHPg... [SEND PAYMENT] (1MjBecWKrHPggWYViUQcYUnkuzJP4r1Y98)
Amount (BTC):   -33.43
Payment Note:   6 1 btc cards, 1 5 btc cards, 0 10 btc cards, 1 20 btc cards

[1714175991]

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[Josh]

Good news in short time. I got a response from BitBills already (about 15 minutes later). Below is the exact transcript. I will report back when I do receive the 20BTC BitBills once I confirm that all is valid. I want to be fair in reporting the error, and also fair in reporting if it is resolved promptly. The openness of BitCoin is what will keep it alive and prosperous.


Hi Josh,

I am very sorry about the issue with your order. So that you know what happened, this was caused by a human packing error. This mistake was exactly that. There was no malintent whatsoever and I sincerely apologize for any inconvenience it caused you. Your 20 bitbill card will be postmarked tomorrow. If you would still like to post this to the forum, that is of course your prerogative. Mistakes do happen though, especially as we are trying to keep up with the volume of orders coming in.

Thanks for your understanding,
Ben

[SgtSpike]

Don't lose faith in the system.  I've had orders I paid for with USD from typical retailers short-shipped before.  I've had my credit card info stolen.  I've had cash stolen.  If you're short, contact them and see what they'll do about it.  Don't gripe and act like they did it on purpose before you even know.

It's not BTC's fault. It's the nature of people making mistakes or the nature of the criminals of this world.

[1.21gigawatts]

too quick to bad mouth a company before you even try to resolve the issue with the company...
Now if you had emailed them, contacted them and they ignored you for a month, it would have been worth posting

[Josh]

I edited the wording on my original post to more neutrally reflect the factual nature of the issue. No blame is intended, but human error shouldn't be acceptable in money exchanges. Imagine if you went in to buy some gold and silver, paid cash, and they miscounted a few rounds short... it would be upsetting.

[SgtSpike]

Human error is GOING to happen in ALL types of exchanges.  If they fix the problem, and you're still upset about it, that's your problem.

[Josh]

They sent the new $20 BitBill, so everything is good.

The bills are nice looking. They definitely have a hand made look to them. The corners show that they used a rounded cutter to trim the square laminate. There is a slight square bulge where the private key is folded into a square. The hologram is slightly different in position between the few cards. I don't think you could easily get the private key out without taking it apart, but I have not cut any of them open. I checked them all using the validation tool and they show up with correct the amounts on Block Explorer. The QR code only pulled up the GUID value of the transaction, and did not actually link to the block explorer, so was not really very useful with my phone. It would have been more useful to be able to open a webpage with the GUID in the query-string using the QR scanner on the Android. Otherwise, everything seems pretty good visually. I'm not sure how water proof these would be if submerged, since the laminate is cut along the edges and no longer heat sealed. I think that water would make it's way through the laminate to the private key and probably render the ink unreadable. They do seem fairly durable otherwise. This is definitely a beta product, and there is room for improvements, but the idea is good, and I am ultimately happy with my purchase now that it is all complete.

[The_JMiner]

Wow first time seeing this.

So let me get this straight.  They sell bills which have the keys/date to a wallet with bitcoins?

I read the website but still do not understand completely how this works.

[Arxan]

Wow first time seeing this.

So let me get this straight.  They sell bills which have the keys/date to a wallet with bitcoins?

I read the website but still do not understand completely how this works.

The bills have the public and private keys for a bitcoin address QR encoded on them.  You use one of their tools to import the keys into a wallet, then you can use them normally.

OP - maybe you should edit the title of the thread to show the issue has been resolved.

[Maged]

OP - maybe you should edit the title of the thread to show the issue has been resolved.

Josh, I hope you don't mind, but I did this for you.