LocalBitcoins.com - Unfair dispute handling

[poShor]

update:

Nov 26 - LocalBitcoins admins are still supporting the seller to back out of the trade (I bought 13 BTC with $7367.23 AUD on Nov 18),
saying they will return the amount of BTC that is remaining in escrow to the seller, and let him return the AUD to my bank account!  This would be outrageous.

What?
So, the deal will be cancelled even though you have sent the seller money on time?
That is just unbelievable.

[willisr]

Wow that sucks!

[ginbank]

Update

Dec 3 - LocalBitcoins.com have released the remaining ~12.7 BTC out of escrow back to the seller.  The case is with my lawyer.

[Gomerlin]

Please _Gin_Bank_ you have my personal email. contact me ASAP it's very important!

[ginbank]

Gomerlin is continuing to make up stories about hackers accessing his account on LocalBitcoins.com, indirectly threatening me. The stories he is coming up with are ridiculous and don't make any sense, he is just trying to make it look like he had nothing to do with the person who came to my house. 

Dear Christina,
I hope you can read this and not share it with anyone. I know you are still posting about what happen to you and I totally understand you; but please be careful. I don't want anything bad happen to you because it will reflect in me. I just notice there was a "Guy" called "Garizzle" that replied to your post. I have serious suspicious this guy is the hacker. He contacted me to my personal email, that only the hacker could have access to. also he threaten me and asked me for one bitcoin and he will forget about the whole deal. the same as He wrotes to you when he hacked in my account. Please Christina, He might be trying to become your friend to harm you, remember that he had access to my account and he knows where you live and he speaks German. Now in this post you just informed him that you live alone. please find yourself a companion he obviously is a dangerous person.
With all my empathy
Juan Carlos
----

[yxusne]

Gomerlin is continuing to make up stories about hackers accessing his account on LocalBitcoins.com, indirectly threatening me. The stories he is coming up with are ridiculous and don't make any sense, he is just trying to make it look like he had nothing to do with the person who came to my house. 

Dear Christina,
I hope you can read this and not share it with anyone. I know you are still posting about what happen to you and I totally understand you; but please be careful. I don't want anything bad happen to you because it will reflect in me. I just notice there was a "Guy" called "Garizzle" that replied to your post. I have serious suspicious this guy is the hacker. He contacted me to my personal email, that only the hacker could have access to. also he threaten me and asked me for one bitcoin and he will forget about the whole deal. the same as He wrotes to you when he hacked in my account. Please Christina, He might be trying to become your friend to harm you, remember that he had access to my account and he knows where you live and he speaks German. Now in this post you just informed him that you live alone. please find yourself a companion he obviously is a dangerous person.
With all my empathy
Juan Carlos
----

What? Now in this post you just informed him that you live alone. please find yourself a companion he obviously is a dangerous person
lol

[niothor]

Gomerlin is continuing to make up stories about hackers accessing his account on LocalBitcoins.com, indirectly threatening me. The stories he is coming up with are ridiculous and don't make any sense, he is just trying to make it look like he had nothing to do with the person who came to my house. 

Dear Christina,
I hope you can read this and not share it with anyone. I know you are still posting about what happen to you and I totally understand you; but please be careful. I don't want anything bad happen to you because it will reflect in me. I just notice there was a "Guy" called "Garizzle" that replied to your post. I have serious suspicious this guy is the hacker. He contacted me to my personal email, that only the hacker could have access to. also he threaten me and asked me for one bitcoin and he will forget about the whole deal. the same as He wrotes to you when he hacked in my account. Please Christina, He might be trying to become your friend to harm you, remember that he had access to my account and he knows where you live and he speaks German. Now in this post you just informed him that you live alone. please find yourself a companion he obviously is a dangerous person.
With all my empathy
Juan Carlos
----

This is getting ridiculous.

[ginbank]

It's been ridiculous from the start, anyone who takes the time to review everything I posted can see it.

Gomerlin, if you are wondering how anybody would contact you on your personal gmail.com address, your blogspot page could easily be found with a google search and your gmail address is listed on the page. Since you took down your personal blog, it can still be found via web.archive.org ... (waybackmachine) as well as google cache. You can not permanently delete your blog.  

[sangaman]

Pathetic handling by LBC, good luck ginbank. And def stay safe although I can't admit I fully understand what's going on with strange men trespassing on your property. I won't ever be using LBC's escrow service.

[cryptoanarchist]

Sorry, I fail to see how this was bad support from LocalBitcoins. If the buyer didn't have the funds in by the deadline that was originally part of the deal, than it is what it is.

I think you should have just taken the 12.7 BTC and not been so fussy, ginbank. You still would have gotten a great deal. Shouldn't have gotten all greedy.

Just to note, there may be something to the hacking story. I had my sell price changed on it once to a way lower price, but I only do cash deals and just canceled it.

[sangaman]

Sorry, I fail to see how this was bad support from LocalBitcoins. If the buyer didn't have the funds in by the deadline that was originally part of the deal, than it is what it is.

I think you should have just taken the 12.7 BTC and not been so fussy, ginbank. You still would have gotten a great deal. Shouldn't have gotten all greedy.

Just to note, there may be something to the hacking story. I had my sell price changed on it once to a way lower price, but I only do cash deals and just canceled it.

The part about punishing OP for taking the issue to reddit was pretty bad, at a minimum.

[TiagoTiago]

Wait, wasn't he told to go talk on forums about it by one of their employees?

[cryptoanarchist]

Sorry, I fail to see how this was bad support from LocalBitcoins. If the buyer didn't have the funds in by the deadline that was originally part of the deal, than it is what it is.

I think you should have just taken the 12.7 BTC and not been so fussy, ginbank. You still would have gotten a great deal. Shouldn't have gotten all greedy.

Just to note, there may be something to the hacking story. I had my sell price changed on it once to a way lower price, but I only do cash deals and just canceled it.

The part about punishing OP for taking the issue to reddit was pretty bad, at a minimum.

I'm not sure we're getting the whole story about that from the OP. Notice how the message he copied was cropped. I have a feeling it had to do with information he was disclosing on reddit. Either way, he wasn't being "punished".

[ginbank]

Sorry, I fail to see how this was bad support from LocalBitcoins. If the buyer didn't have the funds in by the deadline that was originally part of the deal, than it is what it is.

I think you should have just taken the 12.7 BTC and not been so fussy, ginbank. You still would have gotten a great deal. Shouldn't have gotten all greedy.

Just to note, there may be something to the hacking story. I had my sell price changed on it once to a way lower price, but I only do cash deals and just canceled it.

The part about punishing OP for taking the issue to reddit was pretty bad, at a minimum.

I'm not sure we're getting the whole story about that from the OP. Notice how the message he copied was cropped. I have a feeling it had to do with information he was disclosing on reddit. Either way, he wasn't being "punished".

Yes, I was told by one of localbitcoins employees (nikolaus) while talking to him on IRC to ask the public:

> Why can nobody see my point of view.    I am putting myself in the situation of the seller, too .. and he has received the money quickly ..
<nikolaus> well, you can ask forums what the community thinks"

Then a while after I did this, he himself replied to my support ticket via e-mail (and I have the full email including headers if anybody cares):

Please also note that we  would have released the escrow
for you already, if that reddit post would not have happened. Now it can
take quite a time to get a peaceful resolution here.

[ginbank]

I think you should have just taken the 12.7 BTC and not been so fussy, ginbank. You still would have gotten a great deal. Shouldn't have gotten all greedy.

It has nothing to do with greed, there was no justification to get less BTC than the 13 BTC I paid for. 

cryptoanarchist, I have the impression you might not be completely up to date with this case to be able to make a judgement as yet.
The reason I believe this is that you refer to me using the masculine pronoun, where it could already be established that I am female after reading the complete story.

I understand that the entire series of events and messages is a lot to read, and that the minority of people will have the time to read it all. Even in this post, only the critical events are shown in screens, and of course screens are cropped, otherwise it would take even longer for people to understand the case.
I am happy to put the complete dialogues on pastebin or somewhere else. If anyone would like to check on any details. It would only get more embarrassing for the seller and for localbitcoins. I had previously gotten into trouble for trying to protect myself in case something happens to me by posting the real name of the seller gomerlin on reddit, even though anybody could find his real name from his website. The posts containing the real name were removed, but the other posts should still be there.

[cryptoanarchist]

I think you should have just taken the 12.7 BTC and not been so fussy, ginbank. You still would have gotten a great deal. Shouldn't have gotten all greedy.

It has nothing to do with greed, there was no justification to get less BTC than the 13 BTC I paid for. 

I read the entire thread, including what localbitcoins wrote you, and I find that they tried to be fair. You didn't have all the money in on time. The fact that your bank had a limit and you couldn't send it all in time isn't the seller's fault. You can make justifications and say that the money came in over night and it didn't make a difference, but it doesn't matter.

[ginbank]

I read the entire thread, including what localbitcoins wrote you, and I find that they tried to be fair. You didn't have all the money in on time. The fact that your bank had a limit and you couldn't send it all in time isn't the seller's fault. You can make justifications and say that the money came in over night and it didn't make a difference, but it doesn't matter.

Then explain to me where did the seller have any disadvantage that justifies me receiving less BTC than originally traded?
Where was his loss?

Had I not been so kind to keep him up to date via the message system, he would not have even known that the amount was split into two transfers. Next day the money was in his account very well in line with what could be expected of a national bank transfer in Australia.

He only took it up as a reason to hold on to, because he wanted to cancel the trade during the BTC value surge and he was being proven wrong in his accusation that I am a scammer. He needed something else to hold on to and to make a big deal of.


Also, in legal terms: I acted in good faith during this trade, the seller acted in bad faith.

[cryptoanarchist]

I read the entire thread, including what localbitcoins wrote you, and I find that they tried to be fair. You didn't have all the money in on time. The fact that your bank had a limit and you couldn't send it all in time isn't the seller's fault. You can make justifications and say that the money came in over night and it didn't make a difference, but it doesn't matter.

Then explain to me where did the seller have any disadvantage that justifies me receiving less BTC than originally traded?
Where was his loss?

Had I not been so kind to keep him up to date via the message system, he would not have even known that the amount was split into two transfers. Next day the money was in his account very well in line with what could be expected of a national bank transfer in Australia.

He only took it up as a reason to hold on to, because he wanted to cancel the trade during the BTC value surge and he was being proven wrong in his accusation that I am a scammer. He needed something else to hold on to and to make a big deal of.


Also, in legal terms: I acted in good faith during this trade, the seller acted in bad faith.

not really. You want him to adhere to the contract despite him taking a huge loss because a contract-is-a-contract, and you want him to stick to it, even if he wants to back out of it (which IS bad faith IMO. I've had similar situations where I at least split the difference when there is a huge price change).

Yet, you feel that you can slightly bend your end of the agreement and its 100% justifiable. Nope, sorry dude - a contract-is-a-contract.

I wouldn't sell to you either. I think localbitcoins did an excellent job moderating the situation and this actually makes me feel better about doing business with them.

[jook]

Does it boil down to a disagreement over whether the fiat transfer finished in time? They buyer claims that the bank transfers of the full amount cleared on the day following the trade request. LocalBitcoins claims that the payment has not been initiated within the requested timeframe. This looks contradicting to me.

It might help if both parties published the exact times of:

- Opening of trade request on LBC
- Initiation of bank transfer #1
- Initiation of bank transfer #2
- Receipt of bank transfer #1
- Receipt of bank transfer #2

These can be compared to the official contract to come to a conclusion.

[ginbank]

jook, the details have been published in my first post. There is a full description of the events and there are links to the screens in the text.
There should also be screens of the seller confirming that both transfers were received the next day.