WE Exchange has my money and won't give it to me

[oaxaca]

Problem solved.

[Namworld]

Well non-wallet services shouldn't be used as wallets. They cannot support returns to sender address as the person withdrawing is often a different person than the one that deposited. They don't hold on to your funds on your addresses or spend withdrawals from your addresses. It makes any problem arising hard to resolve. BTC shouldn't be spent from a website's balance.

Their duty is to make sure no error occurs on their part. Once the funds are sent out, if they get sent back to weexchange and funds are withdrawn by the receiving user, I don't quite agree it's their responsibility.

They're not a third party/intermediary in the transaction. They don't offer a wallet service/manage transaction and outgoing payments. They only support deposit address -> your account. You want them to act like a wallet service who made a mistake on a deposit. They didn't.

They can contact the receiver and ask if they'd return the funds but that's pretty much it.

[felente]

aehm.
right thing to do WAS to provide YOUR address?
...you own wallet OR one associated to your account on weechange (although i do not understood for which reasons you used weechange at all in this case)

as a reference:
are there many banks which give you money sent to an account not belonging to you?
and bitcoin is even worse - there we have no charge backs.

you should know what are you doing before you do it, no?

i would suggest to elaborate it with WE in a nice way without complaining here that they simply won't give your money to you.
in best case MAYBE you will get the money then

ps
i'm not related with weechange in any way.

[noah tall]

They could ask the recipient if he could prove where the deposit came from.  If he can, end of story.  If he can't, they should give it to somebody who could prove it.  Seems fair.

[candoo]

The short version:

We Exchange has my money and won't give it to me.


The slightly longer version:

I bought Avalon chips in a group buy from a well respected Hero Member on this forum.  I recently sold those chips to somebody else and the Hero Member acted as escrow.  He sent the 5.16 BTC to the address it came from originally, one of the addresses controlled by WE Exchange.  They won't give me the BTC.  Their response: “tough shit, we gave it to somebody else.”


The long version:

Here is the response from them:

Hello,

I can tell you without talking to support that there is not much we can do about that.
We use a shared wallet system just like MtGox and many others.
There is also a help topic about this.
If someone sent funds to an address of ours that is not your account's deposit address then we can not "just move funds" because we are asked to.

I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news but there is little we can do at this point. This is how scams fall in bitcoin.
A user buys or does something and they get a deposit. Next we have to tell them:
"Sorry, someone sent 5btc deposit to your account by accident so we took it back."
They they get mad at us and the scammer has won. And we are responsible for taking funds from a users account.

Not saying you are a scammer or such but this is the reasoning we have strict rules in place to avoid situations like this and "social engineering".

Thank you for your understanding

Here is the problem with that response.

1 – If this were a simple BTC transfer between 2 addresses, then quite right.  Can't simply take it back.  This is not the case here.  WE Exchange is acting as a third party in this transaction.

2 – Their role as an intermediary is to get it right.

3 – The sender has provided me and WE Exchange a signed message from the sending account stating:

Code:

This payment of 5.16 BTC is for oaxaca

The message correctly verified the sending address.

4 – The recipient of the funds cannot provide this same proof.


I am submitting this question to the community:

What should be the correct response from WE Exchange:

a) Tell the recipient that the funds were credited by mistake and give them to me,
b) Ignore me and I will go away,
c) Tell me that I shouldn't have bought Avalon chips in the first place
d) make up your own


What is the right thing to do?

this is your fault. Every groupbuy tells to use THE OWN adresses-

[Namworld]

However, the point of my post was that there IS a fair solution.  Is it a fair penalty to not get my funds back?  Is it fair that the other unknown party gets them?

Wouldn't the fair thing be that they should go to where they belong?

Maybe, but that user might not be willing to return the funds. He might also have given his deposit address around as a donation address or such, and already spent the funds not knowing any better, or whatever other scenario. If he returns the funds, that would be nice. Otherwise, I don't see how weex can help, other than paying the loss out of pocket. But I don't think that would be fair.

[237]

Fair is when the guy who made the mistake pays the bill. Period.

[DannyM]

I bought Avalon chips in a group buy from a well respected Hero Member on this forum. 

And let's stop even mentioning that someone is a "Hero Member". That just means they are unemployed and post a lot.

[Namworld]

I bought Avalon chips in a group buy from a well respected Hero Member on this forum. 

And let's stop even mentioning that someone is a "Hero Member". That just means they are unemployed and post a lot.

What? I don't like being an employee.

[DannyM]

I stand corrected. It means they post a lot.

[felente]

And let's stop even mentioning that someone is a "Hero Member". That just means they are unemployed and post a lot.

What? I don't like being an employee.

I stand corrected. It means they post a lot.

lol )
hm... is that only this forum's hero members prerogative to not like being employee? 
i definitely gonna post more now, hehe.

[felente]

i would suggest to elaborate it with WE in a nice way without complaining here that they simply won't give your money to you.
in best case MAYBE you will get the money then

I opened a ticket and didn't get any response.
I called them for days and didn't get through.
I PMed a member who is associated with them (the response is quoted above).

I finally did reach them by phone and they said that they would contact the recipient to ask about returning.  On the phone, they told me to monitor the open ticket for progress.
They closed the ticket without comment or any communication.

I take it that their response to me is to hope I go away.  Posting here was not my first choice.  I seem to have run out of options short of public pressure.

look, that's bitcoins world.
i have nothing against women, but you can read this as a cliche "that's men's world".
=> this means you should be ready to lose sometimes, especially by self-mistakes...
or you can read this as "that's human's world".
=> this means people are helping each other if possible AND if asked in right way... ok, sometimes.

yes, you got a problem.
now you can solve it. or maybe not. but trying (again) doesn't cost anything.
you just must decide what and how to try to be successful then.

as far i see any needed info and thoughts are present in this thread already.
to be honest i don't know what to add more...
wish you good luck

[Namworld]

I stand corrected. It means they post a lot.

I meant I'm not employed as I don't like being an employee. Freelance.

[julz]

I have to ask.. why would WEExchange be reusing an address they sent from in such a way to credit it to some other user's account?
It seems like a poor design for a shared wallet system. 

[felente]

I have to ask.. why would WEExchange be reusing an address they sent from in such a way to credit it to some other user's account?
It seems like a poor design for a shared wallet system. 

i think there is nowhere stated about reusing of the address. i missed it?
also my address there is not reusing and remains permanent so far... THAT would be really big problem then, en mass.

[QuiveringGibbage]

The FAQ on Weex site reads:

Code:

Question: If I withdraw BTC, will I be credited if someone sends the funds back to the originating address?

Answer:
No. We use a shared wallet system like many other major sites.
Do NOT use WeExchange to send funds in cases where returns may only be made to sending addresses.
WeExchange is NOT a wallet service.
Any funds sent to the sending address will NOT be credited to your account as it will likely be credited to another users account.
We take NO responsibility for any funds sent to the wrong address.
This includes services such as Satoshi Drice.

We Exchange has my money and won't give it to me.

That's not true, the coins were returned/"refunded" back to the person who owned that particular address. Weex doesn't own that address and it's not possible for them to control the coins in that address (IIRC). Weex is not a Wallet service.

1 – If this were a simple BTC transfer between 2 addresses, then quite right.  Can't simply take it back.  This is not the case here.  WE Exchange is acting as a third party in this transaction.

So you contacted Weex to escrow your chip buy? I highly doubt Weex does that. When and how did Weex agree to act as a 3rd party for your chip trade? As far as I can see, Weex has nothing to do with your trade.

2 – Their role as an intermediary is to get it right.

I think in this case, it's the role of the user, to understand how the blockchain works. Further to follow the instructions and warnings posted to the user. i.e. You were told in the GB to use your own address and the Weex FAQ warns users not to refund to the sending address.

Cheers,
QG

[augustocroppo]

3 – The sender has provided me and WE Exchange a signed message from the sending account stating:

Code:

This payment of 5.16 BTC is for oaxaca

The message correctly verified the sending address.

Your case seem very interesting. I want to know if I got it right: you sold an order for Avalon ships for 5.16 BTC. The sale included an escrow agent, which happens to be the previous owner of the order. So the buyer sent first the 5.16 BTC to the escrow agent. You sent the details of the order to the buyer. Then the escrow agent sent the 5.16 BTC to the exchange address...

Something is wrong or I did not understand what exactly happened. Did the escrow agent sent to the address used to sign the message?

Could you provide more details, like the address used to sign the message and the "wrong" address? The address used to sign the message is the address which the exchange admitted to be shared?

As much detail you provide about every step in the transaction, much better is to determine the point of failure and who should compensate the loss.