Thank you Mt Gox: My money is in limbo for a month now

[marcusaurelius]

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Disclosure: This has also been sent to Adam as an email. I also sent MagicalTux a PM notifying him of this topic. I have no interest in bad-mouthing Mt.Gox, but i have a legitimate interest in getting my money. After trying the Support-route for several weeks, i now have the illusion that public exposure might help me get my money.
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Short Summary for the tl;dr-crowd: I withdrew nearly $4000 via SEPA a month ago and still haven't received it. I've opened a support ticket, which led to them asking me to give them my full name and adress, which i did. Then, two weeks later, i opened another support ticket, and they asked me the same thing, which makes me question if they even read my answer to the previous one. I am still waiting for my money, and now wondering what to do. Are you also waiting for your withdrawals, or am i the lone sucker here?

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I don't know if anyone remembers me, but i made the first bitcoin qr-code generator back in january ( http://qr.ma.eatgold.com/ ) a few people still use the images in their signature. I didn't post in the meantime, but traded a bit. :-)

On June 11, June 12, June 14 and June 16 I ordered a withdrawal of $3981.93 (in total) from my Mt.Gox account to my EU bank account via SEPA withdrawal. This shows up in my Account history just right. I had withdrawn money before (~$200), and it had worked, so i didn't worry too much. I waited. 3 business days they said. I waited some more. Then, the next week, all hell broke lose at Mt.Gox (i presume you remember). Now i was worried about Mt.Gox collapsing completely and my money being lost in there.

On June 22 I opened support ticket #2770, in which i described the transactions in detail. To my pleasant surprise i got an answer within the day. The told me that the bank in France rejected the transaction and that they needed my Full name and Adress for the transfer to continue.

PROBLEM#1: If the transfer got rejected, then why didn't they return the money to my Mt.Gox account? Or at least notify me that it got rejected? It is my money, not theirs!

Still on the same day (June 22) I gave them my full name and adress. And waited. And waited.
A week later, on June 28 i added a comment to the ticket asking for news on the withdrawal status. I got no answer.

PROBLEM#2: Is it that hard to get back to me?

Another week went past, and i didn't get anything from Mt.Gox. Neither my money, nor a reason for the delay. I was now waiting 25days in total and 13 since i told them my full name and adress (which supposedly was the reason for the delay).

So on July 5 i opened a new ticket #6617, in which i explained the problem (SEPA withdrawal) once again, gave the details of all the transactions again, gave my full name and adress again and also mentioned that it was a duplicate of #2770. For some reason, it now took only a day to get an answer. But what Bullshit.

   
      Hello,
      Were these the funds that you made?
      [details of four totally unrelated transactions]
      We checked over these and all of these has been already processed.

      Thanks,
      MtGox.com Team

PROBLEM#3: "Read the ticket, then answer." is not standard operating procedure at Mt.Gox Support.

So instead of reading my ticket (in which i detailed the transactions, including tx#, date, etc) they just took me to mean some random transactions, some of which happened more than a month earlier. I answered them:

It would be nice, if you had actually read my ticket! This is about 4 withdrawals (for which i gave you the transaction IDs!!!!), which are not arriving. If you look at the title of the ticket, it clearly says WITHDRAWAL.

What you sent me are bank transfers from me to you, that is me funding my mtgox account. i know that these have been processed, as i already used that money for trading (which you would also know if you had taken 5 seconds to look at my transaction history).
[...]
I also request that the priority be increased from "low" to "high". 4 weeks of withdrawal time is not a small matter.

This new tone seems to have had its effect, as within two hours i got an answer:

We have located your withdraw status and it shows that it has been rejected.
Could you provide us with full street address and full name.

So once again, instead of reading my ticket (in which i gave them my full name and adress) or looking at the related ticket #2770 i referenced (in which i gave them my full name and adress more than two weeks earlier) they just wrote something random. Well, of course, i pointed out to them where they could find my name and adress in the ticket (it is line 7).

I am now waiting for three days to get any new information, and for a month in total. Which sucks. Hard.

TRUE STORY.
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Well, i am now giving them another week (until Friday, July 15). If by then the money has not arrived on my bank account or on my Mt.Gox account (in which case i will buy BTC, transfer them to another Exchange and sell them there!), i will ask my lawyer to look into this. I know that i probaly is quite expensive to go after them legally (they are in Japan after all), but i would rather spend the 4 grand on my lawyer than just giving it up to Mt.Gox - they didn't do anything to deserve it.

Do you have any alternative ideas what i am supposed to do? Do you have similar experiences?

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[BitBuster]

People who complain about people who they've voluntarily given their BTC to make me laugh.

Bitcoin isn't regulated, neither are the exchanges. No argument to be had, although I sympathise with you.

"going after them legally" is clearly not applicable.


BB.

[Jack of Diamonds]

Bitcoin isn't regulated, neither are the exchanges.

Mt. Gox is a registered company in Japan with a physical office in Tokyo (Cerulean Tower, Shibuya) which pays taxes.

So yes, they are regulated.

P.S. if I were you, I'd be very pissed off, but wouldn't waste a cent on a lawyer. Keep in mind the company deals with $20k+ dark pool orders and huge withdrawals/deposits daily. Their motive to snatch 4k from you is irrational at best.

What you want is money, not revenge. Keep bugging them about it until they send the money.

Or you can even send documents to Macaraja SAS in France and prove your identity; They'll have no choice but to send it. Remember EU anti-money laundering regulations are much stricter than american ones. Banks often have to report even sums past 2,500€ so it's natural they're just covering their own bases.

This is why I never withdraw more than $1000 at once.

[kiwiasian]

Lol.

Just lol.

[gonzas144]

I think you have to talk with your bank, and not with MtGox, actually I think they're doing everything they can to solve your problem. They don't have real influence over the transactions, probably is the bank that its screwing it up.

[Herodes]

I waited 21 days for my last withdrawal.

I think mtGox should provide clear statements of actually holding the complete client funds that are deposited. If it continue like this, word will get out, and surely investors will be very reluctant to invest with mtGox.

And at the very least, when funds are 'rejected' at the bank at mtGox's end, there should absolutely be procedures in place to catch this, and the customer should be notified.

It seems that mtGox have hired some cheap labour to deal with support tickets. Some of the answers these people provide are basically useless, and only leads to them getting more mails because customers becomes frustrated and upset. It would be better in my opinion to hire support personell that got better paid, and actually cared about solving real cases. This might be harsh, but it's my impression that this is what's going on. Answering to an e-mail is not equal to solving an issue, unless the issue at hand is dealt with properly.

Unregulated or not, any business that do not deal with client funds or provide proper services will lose out in the long run, esp. when better services (ie. exchanges) pop up.

Communication and dealing with client funds in a proper manner is paramount to the continued success of mtGox.

Everyone that holds substantional assets in mtGox should be worried now, and demand that mtGox can show proof that they actually hold all client money that's deposited. We have no reason to believe they're not, and I'm not claiming they aren't, but the more people start to worry, the worse it will be for both mtGox and bitcoin as a whole.

And for those people in this thread that has no compassion, and is laughing, well, one day you might be the one stuck in limbo. Laughing about other peoples problems is only mean and shows what a 'little' person you are. But I am not surprised, these people are around everywhere.

[Maged]

DO NOT OPEN NEW TICKETS! Replying to the original one is the only way that you'll get an answer. Once you re-open your original ticket, it can take up to a few weeks before they get to it. Is it unacceptable? ABSOLUTELY! But it's what you'll have to deal with until MtGox catches up on their workload.

[Herodes]

We all understand they have a backlog of support tickets. But they also have systems where they can have an oversight over withdrawal requests, these should be priority number 1. And it's also very important to communicate with the customer the status of the withdrawal request. What happens if enough big investors get a bad experience? They leave, simple as that..

[MagicalTux]

Hi,

Contacting the bank in France from Japan by phone and telling them your address is a long and painful process, and for security reason I am the only one allowed to do that at this point. I have been busy during those past 3 weeks with other "matters" (like getting the site back online, fixing bugs, etc).

For this reason your request could not be handled timely, and I apologize for this. We modified the "withdraw" page to make this kind of problem less likely.

Mark


PS: Correctly providing your address results in your funds reaching you within 1 week (up to 2 weeks in case of large amounts, we will fix this soon)

[Seraphim401]

I withdrew money on June 26 and received it on July 8.
That is 10 business days!Have you seen this statement on their support site?

- June 21, 2011 -

We have been receiving reports of severely delayed withdrawals to countries in the SEPA region. It appears that the volumes of transactions being handled by our bank in France is exceeding our daily limits, which seems to be holding things up. We are working to get these limits raised both for our daily/weekly/monthly volumes. We apologize for any delays in processing.

I mean come on!They deal with so much money daily and still fail to raise their limits?
The excuse that they've been taken by surprise by bitcoins' success  no longer flies!
They need to stop acting like Obama and stop blaming everything on Bush (so to speek).

[lettucebee]

The exchanges are such a weak link with bitcoin! In fact, I'll include the bitcoin businesses as well (since bitcoin stalwart MyBitcoin has just ripped off myself and many others.)  It's so ridiculous to see how brilliant is the bitcoin idea and yet how crooked and screwed up are the businesses around bitcoin.

[1.21gigawatts]

Contacting the bank in France from Japan by phone and telling them your address is a long and painful process, and for security reason I am the only one allowed to do that at this point. I have been busy during those past 3 weeks with other "matters" (like getting the site back online, fixing bugs, etc).

This is nonchalant reply is why I don't have a mt gox account.
Long and painful?  How about email?  How about picking up the damn phone.  We're not sending letter telegrams by boat anymore.
Why not hire someone else to do this?  How about trying to help your customer or give solutions?  Basically you're too busy to help your customer. 

[Herodes]

>Why not hire someone else to do this?

^^^ This.

I'd gladly pay 0.05% more comission if that could make enough money to hire an accountant to deal with transactions in a swift manner. Provided it's the money issue that's preventing this from happening already. As I said previously, all big companies have accountants to handle transactions. One man can't do it all. It's impossible.

[Jack of Diamonds]

Long and painful?  How about email?  How about picking up the damn phone.

Maybe you didn't realize there are tens of thousands of other people with tickets and issues as well. The site also deals with about $1 million per day in volume.

[Vod]

So once again, instead of reading my ticket (in which i gave them my full name and adress) or looking at the related ticket #2770 i referenced (in which i gave them my full name and adress more than two weeks earlier) they just wrote something random. Well, of course, i pointed out to them where they could find my name and adress in the ticket (it is line 7).

I am now waiting for three days to get any new information, and for a month in total. Which sucks. Hard.

Why give them an excuse to delay you further?

I would have replied with my full name and address instead of referencing an old ticket.  Be redundant - don't expect them to go out of their way to give you money.

[RandyMarsh]

We've all had out ups and downs with MT Gox, so Have you heard of CampBX (or use the refferal link in my sig)? Very Professional new exchange, all kitted out with margin trading, short-selling, dark pools etc. I think once it gets off the ground volume wise it will really be phenomenal. unless we start to see alot more professionalism and features to be frank from Mt gox.

[Jack of Diamonds]

so Have you heard of CampBX.com/register.php?r=RgHgGvhe4pw (or use the refferal link in my sig)

lol, I love this forum

[Seraphim401]

We've all had out ups and downs with MT Gox, so Have you heard of CampBX (or use the refferal link in my sig)? Very Professional new exchange, all kitted out with margin trading, short-selling, dark pools etc. I think once it gets off the ground volume wise it will really be phenomenal. unless we start to see alot more professionalism and features to be frank from Mt gox.

Have you read his post?CampBX is of no use to anyone living in the sepa zone.
We realy need some good sepa zone competition for Mt.Gox.
I hate being Goxed!

[RandyMarsh]

We've all had out ups and downs with MT Gox, so Have you heard of CampBX (or use the refferal link in my sig)? Very Professional new exchange, all kitted out with margin trading, short-selling, dark pools etc. I think once it gets off the ground volume wise it will really be phenomenal. unless we start to see alot more professionalism and features to be frank from Mt gox.

Have you read his post?CampBX is of no use to anyone living in the sepa zone.
We realy need some good sepa zone competition for Mt.Gox.
I hate being Goxed!

That is true, but Bitcoins are international, I've traded on CampBX and im SEPA too , BTC via Gox, but i suppose for actual honest to god buying BTC yes it suppose campbx is not of use to a Euro head.
We do need direct EUR-BTC trading, Bitmarket.eu seems great but of course low volume at least for now.

I do dislike being a shill, just so you know but i feel like i need to feed my family, and well posting here will keep the main post alive longer. justification city.

[1.21gigawatts]

Long and painful?  How about email?  How about picking up the damn phone.

Maybe you didn't realize there are tens of thousands of other people with tickets and issues as well. The site also deals with about $1 million per day in volume.

I understand this.  The time it took for Tux to reply, he could have personally solved the problem.  Even if you just had the time to solve one customer service problem all month and nothing else, I would have picked the one to solve publicly and quickly.  It goes to help the image of the exchange, at least pretend to care.  Tux doesn't have to give a crap about his customers.  I'm sure he could have told this customer to F off, and say if you don't like to wait 6 months for your money, take your business somewhere else.  Problem is people continue to trade at his exchange.  Only a full boycott of his exchange by the bitcoin community and a worthy competitor is the only thing that will make him care about his customers