"Confirmations" question, please help

[jbaxter68124]

I recently used bitcoin to purchase something out of the country.   I live in the United States.   The amount of the purchase was about $500.00 USD. After a short amount of time I started seeing the confirmations add up, making me certain the payment had been sent successfully. 

The receiving party did eventually receive the payment, but it took about a week!  I want to know what took so long since my confirmations started showing up within a couple hours.

The receiving party was claiming to have a DIFFERENT number of confirmations than I was showing on my end.  Is this possible?   Is this normal?   What's going on here?.....

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[DannyHamilton]

I recently used bitcoin to purchase something out of the country.   I live in the United States.   The amount of the purchase was about $500.00 USD. After a short amount of time I started seeing the confirmations add up, making me certain the payment had been sent successfully. 

The receiving party did eventually receive the payment, but it took about a week!  I want to know what took so long since my confirmations started showing up within a couple hours.

The receiving party was claiming to have a DIFFERENT number of confirmations than I was showing on my end.  Is this possible?   Is this normal?   What's going on here?.....

Two possibilities.

1.  Receiving party is using faulty wallet software that is not properly reporting confirmations to them (less likely).

2. Receiving part is lying to you (most likely).

[jekjekman]

That it is impossible that your are seeing a certain amount of number of your confirmations and they didn't see it on their part because once you receieve 1 confirmation other confirmations will easily follows up.

You can't cheat the blockchain though what is there is there and what you see there is for other people to see also or maybe they have a waiting period for their bitcoin receiving payments for them to release a certain product.

[Yuuto]

I recently used bitcoin to purchase something out of the country.   I live in the United States.   The amount of the purchase was about $500.00 USD. After a short amount of time I started seeing the confirmations add up, making me certain the payment had been sent successfully.  

The receiving party did eventually receive the payment, but it took about a week!  I want to know what took so long since my confirmations started showing up within a couple hours.

The receiving party was claiming to have a DIFFERENT number of confirmations than I was showing on my end.  Is this possible?   Is this normal?   What's going on here?.....

Please move this thread to beginner & help, you can do it by pressing move topic and selecting the subforum on the bottom left corner.

Could you please let us know the TXID of the transaction in question? I find it extremely odd that you have seen confirmations but they don't see it on their end. I can't really help you until you let me know the txid of the transaction.

It could be that their wallet isn't synced properly. They could be a few hundred/thousand blocks behind, by the looks of it. But i'd suspect that they're probably just saying this to gain time, if you're telling the truth. who was the merchant?

[jbaxter68124]

https://blockchain.info/address/1NwZqQ6YKq7j1mSvUHZq3KttMDM38Sy995

I think that is the number you were requesting. Let me know if that is incorrect. The name of the vendor should not really matter. I'd like to keep that confidential for now.

 And let me rephrase again, the transaction did eventually go through! It just took about a week. They were reflecting a different number of confirmations on the opposite end. I was suspicious of this from the beginning. On the "order" page of the vendor I could see my bitcoin info as it was progressing. It took a few days on their website to get one single confirmation. But on my end, on my Blockchain application, it only took a few hours to get the first confirmation.

 The question still remains, is it possible in any circumstances at all, to have a different number of confirmations at the sender vs the receiving end?

I asked them about this over and over, but they don't speak good English. They claimed over and over that bitcoin was "running slow" because it was international transaction. 

[HCP]

They're making stuff up... or they're using some crappy payment processor that wasn't forwarding on your payment to their account... or their wallet/wallet provider is lagging badly and not syncing in a timely manner. Bitcoin transactions propagate through the network in a timeframe measured in seconds.

Transaction confirmations obviously can take a while as you have to wait for the transaction to be included in a block... but again, once that happens, the block info is propagated in seconds. The goal is a block every 10 minutes, so you should average 144 blocks in a day (24hrs*60/10)...

Bitcoin doesn't "run slow because it is an international transaction"... that's just complete rubbish. If they insist this is what happened, then they're either lying to you to cover up something on their end (no stock, no cashflow etc) or they're idiots who don't actually understand how Bitcoin works.

I'd be very wary of doing business with them again... or at least, adjust your expectations in terms of quality and speed of service

[pooya87]

~
 The question still remains, is it possible in any circumstances at all, to have a different number of confirmations at the sender vs the receiving end?

I asked them about this over and over, but they don't speak good English. They claimed over and over that bitcoin was "running slow" because it was international transaction. 

1 confirmation means when your transaction is included in a block by a miner. more means your transaction is deep or in other words there have more blocks mined after the block containing your transaction.

all these blocks are forming what we call blockchain (the chain of blocks) and this is what we all share. it is not specific to one end to have a different blockchain than the other. so if your transction is included in block #467921 everyone in the whole world who is running a node and has the blockchain sees your number of confirmation as 6668 by the time i am writing this because there has been that many blocks on top of it.

now the only reason why someone else sees a different number of confirmation is that they don't yet have the whole blockchain. maybe their node was running slow in downloading the new blocks (re-syncing maybe) or maybe they were using a third party service that were giving them delayed info.
in any case if you see the transaction confirmed and the service is telling you otherwise, it is their fault.

in this case maybe by "running slow" they meant their node is running slow in re syncing or downloading the new blocks. and when they have blocks up to #467800 for example, they can't see your transaction which is in #467921 so they say it is unconfirmed.
the "international transaction" part is weird though

[reflector]

I recently used bitcoin to purchase something out of the country.   I live in the United States.   The amount of the purchase was about $500.00 USD. After a short amount of time I started seeing the confirmations add up, making me certain the payment had been sent successfully. 

The receiving party did eventually receive the payment, but it took about a week!  I want to know what took so long since my confirmations started showing up within a couple hours.

The receiving party was claiming to have a DIFFERENT number of confirmations than I was showing on my end.  Is this possible?   Is this normal?   What's going on here?.....

Normally when I send or receive bitcoin. I noticed that it takes with a hour to transferred. Totally 39 confirmation once it is been reached the destination wallet. If you get the payment with 1st confirmation also we can lease the trade involved item normally. I don't think other possibilities to find the partly receiving or something.

[DannyHamilton]

https://blockchain.info/address/1NwZqQ6YKq7j1mSvUHZq3KttMDM38Sy995

I think that is the number you were requesting. Let me know if that is incorrect.

The transactions associated with that address all confirmed on May 24.

The name of the vendor should not really matter. I'd like to keep that confidential for now.

It would be good to let others know so they can avoid using that vendor in the future.

And let me rephrase again, the transaction did eventually go through! It just took about a week.

No, it didn't.

They were reflecting a different number of confirmations on the opposite end.

Then they are either incompetent and using faulty bitcoin software, or they are lying to you.  Either way, everyone should avoid them in the future.

It took a few days on their website to get one single confirmation.

The receiving party did eventually receive the payment, but it took about a week!

Which is it?  Did it take a few days, or did it take about a week?

But on my end, on my Blockchain application, it only took a few hours to get the first confirmation.

The question still remains, is it possible in any circumstances at all, to have a different number of confirmations at the sender vs the receiving end?

Confirmations don't happen on your end or on their end.  Confirmations happen in the blockchain.  Both sides just run software that looks at the blockchain finds the block with the transaction and adds up the number of blocks that have been added to the blockchain since then.  That number is the number of "confirmations".  If the transaction was in the blockchain, then it was "confirmed".  If they say it isn't confirmed, then they are either running faulty software that is not properly finding the transaction in the blockchain, or they are lying to you.

I asked them about this over and over, but they don't speak good English. They claimed over and over that bitcoin was "running slow" because it was international transaction. 

That is a lie.  The blockchain doesn't know anything about international borders.  The blockchain is a global list of all transactions that have been confirmed by miners.  There is only 1 bitcoin blockchain.  If a transaction is in that blockchain, then it is confirmed for EVERYONE that it running proper bitcoin software that is capable of looking at the blockchain and finding transactions.

[CrewKitten]

The receiving party is straight up lying to your face.

Everyone in the world can see the same number of confirmations. There is no such thing as a "different number of confirmations".

The fact they told you there was a different number of confirmations is definitely a lie. However, at least you got payment, it could have been much worse for you.

[User365]

Have they claimed the amount of the confirmation (as integer) or did they just say "it´s not confirmed" ?

Because different wallets have different recommendet minimum confirmations.

I think electrum has 3 ?
Bitcoin core recommends 6
But many sellers accept one

so you might have talked of different things here (you and the service)