Today I was charged $86 in fees on a $250 buy order with Bitpay

[OdinsEye]

Bought $250 worth of bitcoin via Bitpay (to buy a product, not as speculative investment) and was informed the fee would be ~$10.

Turns out they charged $86. I wasnt notified beforehand about any additional fees being taken. It was charged and taken without my permission. Had this been disclosed to me first, I wouldnt have placed my order.

Worse yet, the amount remaining in my wallet ($160) is apparently too small to make a transaction.

This is insane.

Might have to get my bank's fraud department involved, though i have concerns they may not be able to do anything.

I had only decided to use bitcoin because this particular vendor offered a discount for people purchasing with btc. Little did I know the nightmare I was in store for. It's been almost 2 weeks, $500 (two transfers of $250 each), potentially close to half of that eaten up by fees, and Im nowhere closer to getting the item. I should've just opted for a direct credit card purchase. Lesson learned.

Does anyone know what I can do to get my money back? This has been a total disaster. I still have my other $250 sitting with Coinbase. If i transfer that to my bitpay wallet, i'll probably be out another ~$90+ in transfer fees.

I want to have all of these reversed so I can just buy the damn item with my credit card.

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[Dreamr]

Holy molly... $86 for a single transaction, bitcoin cash BCH will simply win the race in a year or so. OMG, I can't believe this is happening. 

[captainplauze]

Insane $ 86!!!, that seems the result of an algorithm bad calculated on their side and wasn't adjusted when BTC was cheaper, definitely get some help on this.

[bL4nkcode]

I'm sorry to hear your issues, but thats ridiculous.
But as what I understand you sent your BTC via coinbase to Bitpay to biy some product? Am I right?
If so, the one to blame is coinbase for this crazy thing, this should be controlled or you will lose all your funds because of the fees. Try to contact them with this issue.

[OdinsEye]

Update:

So I had tried calling Coinbase yesterday, was on hold waiting for a rep for over 1 hour 15 minutes before i gave up and just hung up.

I tried again today, and it was 1 hour 40 minutes before someone answered. I was a bit surprised, naturally, to get a hold of someone. Just to clarify, it was definitely Coinbase that i called. Its the toll free number listed on their site, has all the automated welcomes and prompts mentioning coinbase and the rep answered "thanks for calling coinbase".

I point this out because there's another number listed which i believe is fraudulent. When you dial that number, there's no automated voice greeting. Someone answers the call immediately and there's no mention of it being Coinbase, until you ask, then the person says "yes, this is Coinbase". I have some history working in the fraud department for banks, and this definitely is suspicious behavior, so watch out for that, regardless of what business you're dealing with. It's similar to email phishing scams.

Anyways, when I quickly explained my dilemma to the Coinbase rep, she asked me for my email address to look into it further and just hung up on me. I wasnt rude or anything, probably a bit too calm and patient if anything.

Not exactly the type of service you'd expect after having money stolen from you and waiting for almost 2 hours to speak to someone to deal with it.

Time to take these crooks down.

[tabas]

That's rude, hanging you down without saying a single goodbye or thank you for calling? Coinbase sucks that way. $86 fee is even cheaper with someone that I have read that paid $120 just for the fee. The problem goes to the network and it can go into higher fee if this will not be solved.

[OdinsEye]

That's rude, hanging you down without saying a single goodbye or thank you for calling? Coinbase sucks that way. $86 fee is even cheaper with someone that I have read that paid $120 just for the fee. The problem goes to the network and it can go into higher fee if this will not be solved.

I meant that she asked for my name/email address to bring up my file, then she placed me on hold or mute, never came back and then disconnected the call several seconds later. She definitely did it on purpose. I have to wonder if it was just something she didnt want to deal with, or if hanging up on customers who want their money back in these situations is encouraged by the owners. In order to keep making money, they can't be giving stolen money back to their customers, now can they?

I tried calling again shortly after and waited for 2 hours this time, unable to reach anyone.

[timerland]

Bought $250 worth of bitcoin via Bitpay (to buy a product, not as speculative investment) and was informed the fee would be ~$10.

Turns out they charged $86. I wasnt notified beforehand about any additional fees being taken. It was charged and taken without my permission. Had this been disclosed to me first, I wouldnt have placed my order.

Worse yet, the amount remaining in my wallet ($160) is apparently too small to make a transaction.

This is insane.

Might have to get my bank's fraud department involved, though i have concerns they may not be able to do anything.

I had only decided to use bitcoin because this particular vendor offered a discount for people purchasing with btc. Little did I know the nightmare I was in store for. It's been almost 2 weeks, $500 (two transfers of $250 each), potentially close to half of that eaten up by fees, and Im nowhere closer to getting the item. I should've just opted for a direct credit card purchase. Lesson learned.

Does anyone know what I can do to get my money back? This has been a total disaster. I still have my other $250 sitting with Coinbase. If i transfer that to my bitpay wallet, i'll probably be out another ~$90+ in transfer fees.

I want to have all of these reversed so I can just buy the damn item with my credit card.

If they charged a "deposit fee" or something that is tied to the current blockchain fee levels then really there is nothing you can do about other than just sucking it up... AFAIK bitpay has a receiving fee for every tx you send it to prevent dust txs clogging up its addresses and making sending them out more costly on their end.

Not sure if this is the fee you paid though, because $86 is insane.

Even in the times of high transaction fees and network congestions, i haven't seen anyone pay a $80-90 fee just to buy a product... The max i've paid today is probably 0.0015 BTC for a transaction($20 or so)

[Zadicar]

Bought $250 worth of bitcoin via Bitpay (to buy a product, not as speculative investment) and was informed the fee would be ~$10.

Turns out they charged $86. I wasnt notified beforehand about any additional fees being taken. It was charged and taken without my permission. Had this been disclosed to me first, I wouldnt have placed my order.

Worse yet, the amount remaining in my wallet ($160) is apparently too small to make a transaction.

This is insane.

Might have to get my bank's fraud department involved, though i have concerns they may not be able to do anything.

I had only decided to use bitcoin because this particular vendor offered a discount for people purchasing with btc. Little did I know the nightmare I was in store for. It's been almost 2 weeks, $500 (two transfers of $250 each), potentially close to half of that eaten up by fees, and Im nowhere closer to getting the item. I should've just opted for a direct credit card purchase. Lesson learned.

Does anyone know what I can do to get my money back? This has been a total disaster. I still have my other $250 sitting with Coinbase. If i transfer that to my bitpay wallet, i'll probably be out another ~$90+ in transfer fees.

I want to have all of these reversed so I can just buy the damn item with my credit card.

If they charged a "deposit fee" or something that is tied to the current blockchain fee levels then really there is nothing you can do about other than just sucking it up... AFAIK bitpay has a receiving fee for every tx you send it to prevent dust txs clogging up its addresses and making sending them out more costly on their end.

Not sure if this is the fee you paid though, because $86 is insane.

Even in the times of high transaction fees and network congestions, i haven't seen anyone pay a $80-90 fee just to buy a product... The max i've paid today is probably 0.0015 BTC for a transaction($20 or so)

Same here I haven't see on my own entire life in bitcoin world which a certain transaction do been charged up $80-90 fee on default on bitpay. I would say you cant do nothing if they would charged up like that since ive been using bitpay too specially when I do purchase some goods online and regarding on the fees need I do experience always paying up the default no matter how congested on the network is. Its still on the normal range compared to this one which I don't even know what happen why its too high.

[OdinsEye]

I never even got to the point of being able to purchase the product, because of weekly Coinbase limits staying at 250 (based on what i had read, it seemed like they increased the limits one week after your first buy) and then the fallout of this hidden fee disaster.

Over a week ago i noticed Coinbase charging 28 dollars for me to transfer my own money sitting there to my Bitpay wallet, so I thought maybe if I made my purchase with the Bitpay wallet, i'd be able to avoid that, or at worst I pay another 28.

When I put in my buy amount on bitpay, it displayed $9.57 as being the fee. $249.40 was my total. Happy with that, I hit confirm.

Then it sat in pending for over an hour.

Eventually I saw the confirmation that I've "successfully sent $164.27"

At which point I was utterly confused, because according to the prompt when I hit confirm, it SHOULD be $239.83.

Even at worst, if I wasnt able to avoid that ~28 dollar charge (which still would be theft, mind you, for not disclosing this first) itd be less that amount, not triple.

So now ive got money sitting in coinbase from the first buy of btc i did over a week ago, and money sitting in my bitpay wallet (which says 160 is too low of an amount to make a transaction with)

This is all after doing two bitcoin buys of 250 (total $500) within about 8 days. Im nowehere nearer to getting the item i was supposed to buy, and now also the bitcoin value has tanked while all of this happened, which annoys me further because i never bought this to buy and hold to begin with.

I even discussed sending in 2 payments to the vendor when all this started because I wanted to avoid the risk of holding on to any BTC, which he was ok with and was kind enough to make arrangements for, but all these unpredictable hidden fees have been absolutely devastating and prevented me from doing anything at all.

I have no idea what's going to happen to all that money i put in.

[Patatas]

--snipe--

Welcome to Bitcoin.

Being someone who is in the scene for about couple of years,I have seen cases like this n number of times.And you know what ? There is nothing you can do about it.Why ? Because that is how bitcoin works.The charges are not determined any third party service providers,they network is congested past few days and everybody ends up paying higher transaction fee to get their confirmations faster.

[tabas]

That's rude, hanging you down without saying a single goodbye or thank you for calling? Coinbase sucks that way. $86 fee is even cheaper with someone that I have read that paid $120 just for the fee. The problem goes to the network and it can go into higher fee if this will not be solved.

I meant that she asked for my name/email address to bring up my file, then she placed me on hold or mute, never came back and then disconnected the call several seconds later. She definitely did it on purpose. I have to wonder if it was just something she didnt want to deal with, or if hanging up on customers who want their money back in these situations is encouraged by the owners. In order to keep making money, they can't be giving stolen money back to their customers, now can they?

I tried calling again shortly after and waited for 2 hours this time, unable to reach anyone.

I wonder how many bomb threats they receive. Theyd certainly be deserving.

I guess it's intentional that she asked you those info and never get back to you. Just a simple word of saying that "I'll hold this call for a minute." is very unprofessional. They can't cater the numbers of calls that they are getting, oh well this is life in crypto or even in real world.

[stomachgrowls]

--snipe--

Welcome to Bitcoin.

Being someone who is in the scene for about couple of years,I have seen cases like this n number of times.And you know what ? There is nothing you can do about it.Why ? Because that is how bitcoin works.The charges are not determined any third party service providers,they network is congested past few days and everybody ends up paying higher transaction fee to get their confirmations faster.

I do saw those times which fees did really soar up high when theres a congestion into the network but I would say the fees on those previous years or congestion isn't the same on the amounts that we are experiencing as of now because it is much really higher compared into those previous years and as you said we cant do nothing but to pay up and that's really a pain because it isn't really worth of on the amount you do transfer.

[MinerHQ]

That's rude, hanging you down without saying a single goodbye or thank you for calling? Coinbase sucks that way. $86 fee is even cheaper with someone that I have read that paid $120 just for the fee. The problem goes to the network and it can go into higher fee if this will not be solved.

Yes, the fees are currently more than 100$. XAPO was charging over 120$ recently so I didn't go for it and waiting for the transaction fees to come down. As you said, it is all due to the number of pending transactions on the blockchain. If that pending transaction comes down then the only fee will go down but it looks like no miners are interested to do that because they are earning a lot of money from these expensive transactions.

[gentlemand]

Being someone who is in the scene for about couple of years,I have seen cases like this n number of times.And you know what ? There is nothing you can do about it.Why ? Because that is how bitcoin works.The charges are not determined any third party service providers,they network is congested past few days and everybody ends up paying higher transaction fee to get their confirmations faster.

Well, as these are effectively retailers they will always err on the side of raping you to stop you from calling up and complaining about your stuck transaction. More likely you're going to complain about being raped by the initial fee.

Coinbase and Bitpay at this point are verging on being bad actors in the Bitcoin space. Neither has bothered with Segwit or batching transactions and they're sticking extra fees on top that a direct transaction would not attract.

[greatfariola]

That is way too darn high for a $250 transaction. You're better off doing a bank transfer instead. it would have been a lot cheaper.

[OdinsEye]

That's rude, hanging you down without saying a single goodbye or thank you for calling? Coinbase sucks that way. $86 fee is even cheaper with someone that I have read that paid $120 just for the fee. The problem goes to the network and it can go into higher fee if this will not be solved.

Yes, the fees are currently more than 100$. XAPO was charging over 120$ recently so I didn't go for it and waiting for the transaction fees to come down. As you said, it is all due to the number of pending transactions on the blockchain. If that pending transaction comes down then the only fee will go down but it looks like no miners are interested to do that because they are earning a lot of money from these expensive transactions.

This is what I would have done, albeit I likely would have skipped using bitcoin altogether for the purchase, since the discount on the vendor's site was only for about a week.

The only fee that was indicated to me was $9.57, which I obviously had no problem with, or else I wouldn't have hit "confirm" and gone ahead with my purchase of the bitcoin.

The remainder was essentially stolen, since there was no disclosure or agreement on my end for any additional amount being taken.

[OdinsEye]

That is way too darn high for a $250 transaction. You're better off doing a bank transfer instead. it would have been a lot cheaper.

I don't think you're reading my posts properly.

[Rahar02]

Bought $250 worth of bitcoin via Bitpay (to buy a product, not as speculative investment) and was informed the fee would be ~$10.

Turns out they charged $86. I wasnt notified beforehand about any additional fees being taken. It was charged and taken without my permission. Had this been disclosed to me first, I wouldnt have placed my order.

Coinbase fees about BTC0.001 but recently the network ask for BTC0.002 to be confirmed faster, pretty high fees obviously.
But, BTC0.002 equal to $31. Don't know what happened there, how could it turned out $86 like there is a hidden fee without explanation.

I should've just opted for a direct credit card purchase. Lesson learned.

Actually, it happened due to two reasons; you use coinbase (exchange) and your transaction not at the right time, too many unconfirmed transactions on mempool which cause higher fees for faster confirmation.
I recommend to use a desktop wallet (electrum) or a wallet on your smartphone (electrum or bread wallet), you will pay lower fees compared with exchange fee to send bitcoin.

[OdinsEye]

Actually, it happened due to two reasons; you use coinbase (exchange) and your transaction not at the right time, too many unconfirmed transactions on mempool which cause higher fees for faster confirmation.
I recommend to use a desktop wallet (electrum) or a wallet on your smartphone (electrum or bread wallet), you will pay lower fees compared with exchange fee to send bitcoin.

It's pretty obvious that I'm a n00b and had no idea about this whole "right time" stuff - that also shouldnt factor into anything, because the point here is the amount taken for fees was changed AFTER I PRESSED CONFIRM. All I was looking to do was buy some BTC to send to someone so I could buy some (legal) goods. I even made a thread here the first day I was trying to figure out how to make this happen. I didnt get any clear responses.

So i asked him what i should do. He suggested i open an account with Coinbase. So i did that.

Then he suggested I use Bitpay to send it to him. Seeing that day the fee was $30 to send to bitpay (i didnt send it) i tried to find a cheaper solution on my 2nd BTC purchase. I saw we could buy directly with Bitpay (like I explained) and seeing as how this was - at least on my end - a single step transaction, it should be cheaper.

At WORST, they would charge me the $30 (but they werent going to, as the prompt told me $9.57), but would let me know first, because, uh, thats how business works. You tell the customer first what the price is, you don't steal whatever amount the mood feels like after your customer has committed to buying, with a set fee charge. You cant suddenly, out of nowhere after he has paid, change the transaction after the fact. Businesses could never work like this, it's brazen theft. I cant tell you a product is $249, for example, with a $1 fee to process the payment, then after you give me your money, i tell you oh, I took $249 for the fee. You've only paid $1.00, so you owe $248 more if you want your item.


https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2558243.0

[Rahar02]

You're right, business should not work like that.
I forgot to mention, bitcoin isn't in the best condition at the moment due to scale problems.
It's really the worst time to do a transaction using bitcoin, I'm sorry for your bad experience with bitcoin but you can check two things before transact using bitcoin.

First; how much unconfirmed transactions on the mempool (https://blockchain.info/unconfirmed-transactions). It's over 168K but normally less than 50K which indicate less fee to be paid, if it less than 20K or less than 10K unconfirmed transactions, you may pay only a few cents to send $250 worth of bitcoin.

Second; check recommended bitcoin fees at https://bitcoinfees.earn.com/ it's 650 sats/byte right now.
For the median transaction size of 226 bytes, this results in a fee of 146,900 satoshis. or equal to BTC0.00146 = $22.24

[Essaint56]

I don't think its a good idea to use bitcoin for your daily transaction. There is an arising problem right now in bitcoin with regards to its higher transactions fees and very slow confirmation of the transactions.

[crairezx20]

Not good right now to deal or to buy that asking for bitcoin payment because of the huge fee these days .. its not the same before that you can pay almost 10k sat every transaction but right now due to large amount of unconfirm transaction and converting miners to bitcoin cash the network is getting slow if you are just pay small miners fee.
I don't think if changing wallet into segwit wallet would be a good solution because i heard that it can decrease the size of the transaction and its more faster than a normal bitcoin wallet..
I recommend that better to wait for more days and see if the miners fee reduce you can transfer your bitcoin to bitpay with low fee..
Just keep checking the https://bitcoinfees.earn.com/ for updated fee..

[Macadonian]

I don't think its a good idea to use bitcoin for your daily transaction. There is an arising problem right now in bitcoin with regards to its higher transactions fees and very slow confirmation of the transactions.

I think I'm starting to agree with this. If the network has become this congested then it can happen repeatedly and could cost a lot of businesses money in the long term. It's why steam pulled their support for Bitcoin.