Did Coinbase scam me?

[crazyfingers]

I was supposed to receive nearly $700 in my checking account today for selling BTC to coinbase, but it never showed up.

Support has not bothered to respond to my emails.

This has happened after I have had BTC that I tried to transfer from coinbase to another wallet completely disappear on me after never even registering on the blockchain.

So are they scammers or just incompetent, or both?

Do they even have a phone number??? How about a physical address I can show up at??

Can anyone help? This has caused me to lose complete faith in cyptocurrencies in general.

[ethanol]

CoinBase is a well-regarded site... I've sold them bitcoins and usually received the $$ in my checking account two business days afterwards, which is earlier than the 5-day or so time that they promise.

Your issues might be related to a recent anomalous slow period on CoinBase. See their twitter feed @coinbase ("Apologies for the slow transactions - things appear to be back to normal now.") Various CoinBase transactions were kept in the unconfirmed state too long for some reason. If your cash was supposed to appear today at the latest, I'd give it one more day to show up. If it doesn't, I would tweet them and email support at the same time; their support has never ignored me, although the response time can sometimes leave a bit to be desired (48+ hours).

Let us know what happens, but don't panic just yet.   

[crazyfingers]

Thanks for the reply. It's just that it said "Your money WILL arrive BY TODAY". Not "sometime in the next few days". I guess I have no choice but to see if it shows up tomorrow.

When I first started having problems with the transfers a couple of weeks ago some guy named "Olaf", who appears to be the only customer service rep who works there, replied to me a couple of times. Since then nothing despite the transfer problem never being fixed and now this cash out issue.

If they are unable to handle their current responsibilities they should stop taking on new customers.

[ethanol]

I don't have any pending transactions with them, but I think the verbiage was along the lines of "Your money should appear in your Chase Bank Account #xxxxxx1234 by Friday, July 26, 2013". If it says "will appear" vs "should appear" then I stand corrected.

Olaf seems to be the customer support "grunt" over there. Here's his LinkedIn profile for no good reason   

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/olaf-carlson-wee/62/966/b97

I don't know if this slowdown was CoinBase's fault or something with the general bitcoin P2P network, but yes, the irregular time lag for some transactions to propagate are very nerve-wracking. But CB is definitely not a scam operation. Here's their phone and address courtesy the SEC:

http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1565553/000156555312000001/0001565553-12-000001.txt

[crazyfingers]

Yes, it definitely says "will arrive" by today, which I stupidly took for granted as I really need the money asap to pay a freaken fine to stay out of jail 

Thank you so much for the contact info! I will give them a call if it doesn't show up tommorow.

[ethanol]

Hmmm... was just doing some Googling, that info might be outdated (it's from late 2012). The phone number has a Connecticut area code too...??!

I believe this is their current info (from May 2013):

http://www.secinfo.com/d1G3x8.xe.htm

1 BLUXOME STREET, APT. 410
SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94107

Phone: 415-843-1515

If you look at this thread (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=147341.80) it appears someone called them at the 415 number and successfully reached them, so I'd go with this newer info.   

[mike_c]

Fwiw, I had a similar experience with coinbase and they fixed it.  I went through their "level 1" buying experience and had to wait a week for my coins.  After a week, when the price had risen 20%, they canceled my order for fraud purposes.

But support did reply in two days to my angry response and they fulfilled the original order.  So there is hope.

[crazyfingers]

Fwiw, I had a similar experience with coinbase and they fixed it.  I went through their "level 1" buying experience and had to wait a week for my coins.  After a week, when the price had risen 20%, they canceled my order for fraud purposes.

But support did reply in two days to my angry response and they fulfilled the original order.  So there is hope.

]

Yes once they canceled a small order on me for "fraud" reasons (or much more likely because BTC had gone up) and they reinstated it after an angry email. But that is not the problem now. The problem is that I cashed out nearly $700 of BTC with them and the money was supposed to be in my checking account but never showed up despite them taking my BTC. And they have not responded to my emails regarding this.

I tried the above phone number just now and no one answered and voicemail box was full. It's still early in CA though so I'll try again.

I will never use coinbase again after this experience and if I do not get the money I'm owed soon I will make it my business to let the BTC community know about their terrible business practices/scam in every manner possible.

 

[crazyfingers]

Still no one is picking up. I urge anyone reading this to avoid coinbase as at the very least they are incompetent if not outright criminals.

[crazyfingers]

Well I submitted a complaint to the SEC. Hopefully that gets their attention.