Coinbase feedback thread

[demonmaestro]

hell ive sold and buy bitcoin from them and no issue. well execpt my very first time i try to buy bitcoin but sent them an email and all was squared away.

[accord01]

hell ive sold and buy bitcoin from them and no issue. well execpt my very first time i try to buy bitcoin but sent them an email and all was squared away.

this is getting frustrating.  I am getting a bit anxious.  Does anyone know their merchant support phone number?  I know they don't have a support phone number for customers.

[turt1e]

Hey, I kind of have a problem with coinbase at the moment. I haven't bought any bitcoin for a while using coinbase recently and finally decided to make a purchase. Well, I didn't realize they changed policy... I didnt even receive an e-mail about the policy changes. So now I made an 800$ purchase and have to wait a week to get them? BS!!! I e-mailed them to cancel the order.

I thought I was level 2 and all that. Do you guys think I should  go withdrawal my money out of an ATM right now, so I'm not at a loss of my cash? A week is a long time for bitcoin, and especially since it's 200 dollars per coin.

Hopefully somebody responds tonight.

[accord01]

Hey, I kind of have a problem with coinbase at the moment. I haven't bought any bitcoin for a while using coinbase recently and finally decided to make a purchase. Well, I didn't realize they changed policy... I didnt even receive an e-mail about the policy changes. So now I made an 800$ purchase and have to wait a week to get them? BS!!! I e-mailed them to cancel the order.

I thought I was level 2 and all that. Do you guys think I should  go withdrawal my money out of an ATM right now, so I'm not at a loss of my cash? A week is a long time for bitcoin, and especially since it's 200 dollars per coin.

Hopefully somebody responds tonight.

It tells you ahead of time when you will receive your bitcoins.  So it is actually your fault.

for me, I made 3 transactions and expected it to be processed by the agreed upon date.  On that date, at the last minute, I receive emails saying that all 3 orders have been canceled.  This is after they have taken the money out of my bank account for several days.  I initiated the original transactions almost 2 weeks ago.

This is what I expect for a "reputable" company that they claim to be; give BTCs at the originally agreed upon price, and pay interest for holding my bitcoins/money against my will.

This is annoy especially after I already initiated successful transaction in the past.

[turt1e]

I guess you can put blame on me, because I admit, I didn't really read the prompt. I wasn't really blaming coinbase for this either. I just assumed the process worked the same as it always did in the past, and was really surprising when that didnt happen. I just think a simple courtesy e-mail of policy changes should be in order. I think most legitimate businesses do that, right?

Thanks for your quick response, I think I'm just gonna take my money out of the ATM and deal with canceling my order and overdraft, if that happens.

[demonmaestro]

Do keep in mind that now if you want bitcoin instant you need to be a level 2 plus a credit/debit card on file

Verify a Credit Card "Instant Buy 10 BTC / week — Level 2 required"

[accord01]

Also, coinbase REALLY need to rephrase their high risk transaction letter:

Unfortunately, we have decided to cancel this order because it appears to be high risk. We do not send out any bitcoins on high risk transactions, and you will receive a refund to your bank account in 3-4 business days.

Please understand that we do this to keep the community safe and avoid fraudulent transactions. Apologies if you are one of the good users who gets caught up in this preventitive measure - we don't get it right 100% of the time, but we need to be cautious when it comes to preventing fraud.

really you guys don't get it right 100% of the time.  3 out of 4 transaction canceled in the past...  the honest statement is "we don't get it a decent amount of time, because there is a lot involved with automated detection of fraud/high risk, but we are working on tweaking/enhancing the system so it will be more effective."  

You may have more luck trying again in a few weeks. Best of luck and thank you for trying Coinbase.

Wow, why would you say this ?  WHY?  This is something a casino would say after taking your money in craps or blackjack.

Kind regards,
The Coinbase Team

I will give an update on how they handle this.

[turt1e]

Do keep in mind that now if you want bitcoin instant you need to be a level 2 plus a credit/debit card on file

Verify a Credit Card "Instant Buy 10 BTC / week — Level 2 required"

I did try this, but keeps coming up with an "address does not match" error. I googled, and apparently one other person had tweeted coinbase having the same error, but got tweeted back with the response of "please send a support ticket e-mail," (he said he sent two e-mails and got no response for a while from what he implied) and there was no update that I know of about this. There was also talk of this error on reddit that I saw, but nothing with what can fix this from what I read. They are probably working on it..

[tvbcof]

I only saw this thread now, but I searched for something like it and missed this one before starting a similar one in the service discussion section.

My biggest complaint is that I did not find it very easy to understand their methods before signing up.  I wish they (and damn near every other service) would make a better FAQ and more detailed terms available before signing up.  Had they done so, I would have become a customer sooner.

It took me only like three business days from when I signed up to when I had made a sale and had money in my bank account.  And the price seemed fair as well.  Very cool!

I am particularly sensitive about sending my identity document scans out.  I choose to do so in Coinbase's case because they used real names for the principles and don't seem to use a foreign shell company or try to obscure their domain.  As it happened, I didn't seem to need to supply my identity papers for what I wanted to do anyway.  At least so far.  (Logic indicates that hooking up to a bank, or even sending a wire for that matter, should eliminate questions about identity and reporting, and it seems that Coinbase has figured out how to leverage that.)

Support has gotten back to me in a few days for both questions/issues I've had.  I do wish they had a more formal ticketing system though.

I wish they had a way to sign documents with a sending key, but I probably would not choose to use Coinbase as an on-line wallet even if they did.  Maybe they have this feature, but I've not found it nor have other users who I've asked.  I didn't bother to ask support.

All around I give Coinbase high marks, but I use if for limited things and am a new user.

[darkmule]

Also, coinbase REALLY need to rephrase their high risk transaction letter:

Agreed.  Seriously, guys?  Who wrote this shit?

I've never received this particular letter (I generally sell BTC through Coinbase and it's been excellent for me), but if I had, I'd be pissed!

Does your fuck you letter have to be that offensive?  Hire someone who can write.

ETA:  Also someone who can spell.  "Preventitive?"  WTF?  Hint, it has a goddamn A in it.

[tvbcof]

I hate to be naive, but are there any educated guesses about what types of things Coinbase means by 'high risk transaction', and what sorts of potential risks they are supposedly attempting to guard against?

---

I didn't really see the mail as being highly offensive.  A bit amateurish compared to the more familiar legalese, especially the spelling error, but not necessarily insulting in and of itself.

I cold see it being somewhat infuriating to have very few clues about the problem and thus no way to rectify it unless somehow the details of the attempted transaction make it obvious.  It makes some sense for Coinbase to be circumspect about this, but I would hope that for the benefit of the innocent, things would be a little more clear.

[darkmule]

I didn't really see the mail as being highly offensive.  A bit amateurish compared to the more familiar legalese, especially the spelling error, but not necessarily insulting in and of itself.

I should emphasize that I use Coinbase myself and think they're one of the best BTC services available to Americans.  They've also implemented two factor authentication pretty well.

Still, that high risk email is downright goofy.  If you just tried to do something normal and got turned down, you're already going to be pissed off, so the email telling you why you just got shafted really shouldn't rub salt in the wound.  And that's exactly what it does.  It calls you an idiot and then misspells shit while doing it, then basically concludes by saying "better luck next time LOL."

It would be hard to design a worse "fuck you" letter.

[tvbcof]

...
They've also implemented two factor authentication pretty well.
...

Ironically, that was one of the things I didn't care for.  For one, it can be a bitch for one who lives outside of cell phone range.

For two, I don't consider my phone reliable enough from a security perspective to have anything to do with access to any financial related web site, and I don't even let it access my real mail.  Of course allowing it to receive access codes is not going to allow it to be used as a sole attack vector, but the attacks that I worry most about would be highly sophisticated ones where an attacker could compromise all of my communication methods simultaneously.

Anyway, I hope they eventually allow users to make their own choice about OTP.  I never trust any institution with more funds than I can afford to lose, and have a special checking account to hook up to their service such that Coinbase could not be used as a vector to siphon money out of my mainstream bank account (in quantity.)

[accord01]

see this thread:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=322229.0

[tvbcof]

see this thread:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=322229.0

Thx for the pointer.  I actually have been following it.

It remains unclear in my mind exactly what types of things can trigger a cancellation, and I would dearly like to know.

It is a completely valid hypothesis that cancellations are nothing more than a stop-loss on Coinbase trades gone sour, but the argument against it is that it would make little sense for an outfit which is well capitalized to ruin their reputation for a few peanuts on a 10BTC trade.

A hypothesis which strikes me as more likely is that Coinbase relies on various triggers and flags which are generated 'upstream' in the bowels of the USD financial services system.  This is a much more interesting area to me generally and is why I am keen to discover any reliable information about these cancellations that I can.

[accord01]

see this thread:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=322229.0

Thx for the pointer.  I actually have been following it.

It remains unclear in my mind exactly what types of things can trigger a cancellation, and I would dearly like to know.

It is a completely valid hypothesis that cancellations are nothing more than a stop-loss on Coinbase trades gone sour, but the argument against it is that it would make little sense for an outfit which is well capitalized to ruin their reputation for a few peanuts on a 10BTC trade.

A hypothesis which strikes me as more likely is that Coinbase relies on various triggers and flags which are generated 'upstream' in the bowels of the USD financial services system.  This is a much more interesting area to me generally and is why I am keen to discover any reliable information about these cancellations that I can.

but they cancel the transactions after the money has reached their end.  they are not receiving any new information, except money.  a good way of doing that would be to deny the transaction to be taken place altogether.

It isn't a few peanuts though.  $800 off one customer is quite a lot.  They've got a 300k customer base.  So there are lots of "peanuts" to be gathered.  They said it themselves, "We don't get it right all the time." 

[tvbcof]

...
It isn't a few peanuts though.  $800 off one customer is quite a lot.  They've got a 300k customer base.  So there are lots of "peanuts" to be gathered.  They said it themselves, "We don't get it right all the time." 

Fair point.  The best way to explore that would be to identify if it is systemic.  Hard to do without a random sample of user's providing data though.  Alas.

[accord01]

Also, just by implementing a "high risk transaction" system that does not discriminate, it will still guarantee that they profit and the customer loses, because bitcoin prices in general is going up.  For example, say the high risk transaction system randomly flags 5% of all trades and returns it, they will profit more in the long run because of the trend of bitcoin.  This is assuming the high risk thing doesnt discriminate.  If it does discriminate which it probably does at least a lil bit so people don't notice, they make even more and customer gets shafted more.

The deciding factor for what is high risk and what isn't should be the money that reaches them.  As far as I know, there is NO extra info that they will have gathered by the money reaching them.  Hence, they could very well flag a transaction as high risk BEFORE taking one's money, but they don't do that.  They cancel it after they receive the money and have 2 choices: release the bitcoins or keep the bitcoins and send the money back to your account.

[Ipsum]

I give them props for their AML and anti-fraud systems, which are why those limits exist. I was maxing my buys through them for awhile, and started getting hit with those high-risk letters. Complained to customer service, talked to them a bit, and they whitelisted me so I don't get hit by that. Really liked that level of customer service. I know my mainstream bank doesn't give it to me, no matter how much cash I run through/store in their system.

[accord01]

I give them props for their AML and anti-fraud systems, which are why those limits exist. I was maxing my buys through them for awhile, and started getting hit with those high-risk letters. Complained to customer service, talked to them a bit, and they whitelisted me so I don't get hit by that. Really liked that level of customer service. I know my mainstream bank doesn't give it to me, no matter how much cash I run through/store in their system.

The anti fraud system called "high risk transaction" is an intricate system to defraud the customer.  The reason is because you don't gain any extra info by receiving the ACH transfer that would dictate the chances it would be fraudulent.  Verification of bank is all the info they have and they could very well reject prior to taking the money.