The WORST support ever. Meet Coinbase.

[aboutblank512]

Hi,
I want to beware you all not to be very excited about signing up, or even depositing money at coinbase. It is already third week (!) since I started my signup process. The support is ABSOLUTELY HORRIBLE. They often reply just the copypasted response about escalation and doesnt care. First I was not able to even complete the signup process form because of bug in address field acceptation. Next, as I resolved this on my own - the system did not accept special character in my address WITHOUT any error message describing what is wrong (with NO assistance at all from them! even despite I sent maybe 3 emails with detailed description of my issue). It took cca one week of attempts (as there are only 3 attempts in 24 hours, and without feedback its hard to spot what is wrong) now I am unable to verify my identity, although I have sent maybe 5 different documents (at least 4 of them were 100% eligible).

TLDR: Go elsewhere. They may be the largest exchange but the support is AS TERRIBLE AS POSSIBLE. I have NEVER seen such tragedy of a support, EVER.

And if you are an active user. PRAY to the god that you will NEVER need support. They do not care at all and the response time are infinity.

There are MUCH better options. DO NOT trust them with your money as if anything happens, no one will help you.

Cheers

[mk4]

I'm definitely not going to side with Coinbase here(for obvious reasons), but my guess is that the bad bot-like support might most probably be due to the quarantine. They currently probably lack the manpower.

With that said, FIVE documents? I would've quit after 2 failed document submissions. I wouldn't be able to stomach the fact that one single entity has hold of 5 documents of mine. In this case Coinbase sure made LocalBitcoins look like a saint LOL.

[philipma1957]

    Yeah op is trying to open an account with a company that is mostly located in San Francisco area.  There is a heavy lockdown in that area so service is going to suck big time.

Give it a rest for a while they may get better next month.

[mk4]

    Yeah op is trying to open an account with a company that is mostly located in San Francisco area.  There is a heavy lockdown in that area so service is going to suck big time.

Knew it. Unfortunately, Kraken is also in the SF area, and Gemini is in NY(which is also under lockdown). Looks like you're going to wait a while OP. But look at the bright side— you have the perfect excuse to try out non-custodial exchanges like Bisq and HodlHodl.

[jackg]

With that said, FIVE documents? I would've quit after 2 failed document submissions. I wouldn't be able to stomach the fact that one single entity has hold of 5 documents of mine. In this case Coinbase sure made LocalBitcoins look like a saint LOL.

Yeah 5 documents is a huge amount to send. I remember only sending one and saying "if this doesn't get approved, I'm giving up" and it did within an hour or so.

A lot of comopanies are off and, especially if you're in Europe, expect a response when the virus is passed. The virus + gdpr means they've probably left bots to deal with everything (especially in places with lockdowns) and they probably won't be classed as an essential service in a lot of countries so will have been shut down (they might still be functioning in the UK though and outside of europe although a lot of companies use romania or india to deal with their support and if either of those are in a full lockdown both will be really slow to deal with stuff).

And yeah, from my sources san francisco wasn't allowing much movement at all.

[pixie85]

I have a coinbase account and had no problems with them but because of this lack of issues I had no need to contact their support.

Why are you trying so hard to get a coinbase account? There's so many competing exchanges. You can always go somewhere else. I have a binance account and I did not send them any of my documents. On many platforms if you don't exchange big money every month you don't even have to verify .

Most IT companies have all their employees working from home at this point so you can expect some delays everywhere.

[aboutblank512]

This is great, didnt expect so many responses that quickly.

Ad lockdown, I am experiencing lockdown myself in my country as well. However, I dont see this as an apology for inconvenience like this, because I consider home office absolute standard for these services. (By the way, Kraken and its support is absolutely excellent and quickly responding to any issue, by live chat or email, everything works. So in case of a company so large like Coinbase, for me this is just incompetence.)

I have been trying so 'hard' for few reasons.

First, given quite much effort to get through that signup process and was not able to simply give it up and tried it as I believed that one will be accepted. As they are just documents with details which they already have about me, for me it didnt matter, if its 1 or 5 docs with address and stuff. (im talking about address verification, not ID. This one passed on first try.)

Also I received positive references on coinbase - they should have low fees and I considered them to be one of the leaders.

But the main reason is that I wanted to have one place where I can
- deposit directly from card,
- buy, exchange and also withdraw various coins directly to my wallet,
- with low fees,
- trusted and verified service with reachable support in case of any problems.

Currently I am using one service for card deposit and buy basic coins, and for other altcoins another service (Kraken) as Kraken doesnt provide card deposits.

Could you guys maybe recommend me where could do all this on one place? What services do you use and why?

Thanks for advices.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Ad lockdown, I am experiencing lockdown myself in my country as well. However, I dont see this as an apology for inconvenience like this, because I consider home office absolute standard for these services.

As your issue with Coinbase is regarding verifying your identity against scanned documents, I would really hope that this could not be solved by someone working at home. A database of KYC documents shouldn't be able to be accessed from external connections, and you wouldn't want your documents to appear on a computer screen in an employee's home where they could be easily copied at will or viewed by any housemates or other occupants. Sending KYC documents to an exchange is a big enough risk as is without also distributing them to employee's houses.

(By the way, Kraken and its support is absolutely excellent and quickly responding to any issue, by live chat or email, everything works. So in case of a company so large like Coinbase, for me this is just incompetence.)

Coinbase only figured out how to batch their transactions last month. Incompetence is the name of the game for them. They do hold a reputation for having particularly awful support, though.

[malevolent]

As your issue with Coinbase is regarding verifying your identity against scanned documents, I would really hope that this could not be solved by someone working at home. A database of KYC documents shouldn't be able to be accessed from external connections, and you wouldn't want your documents to appear on a computer screen in an employee's home where they could be easily copied at will or viewed by any housemates or other occupants. Sending KYC documents to an exchange is a big enough risk as is without also distributing them to employee's houses.

I don't know about Coinbase specifically, but it's not unheard of for employees to work on and have access to sensitive information on their work-issued computers from home (often using a work VPN). As long as only they don't/can't install anything at will on that computer, and don't leave the computer/login info unattended for strangers to peruse, it's not a big deal. Only those who actually need access to PII for work-related reasons should have access to it to minimize the risk of leaks or abuse, let's hope Coinbase is big enough to be at least on top of this.

[o_e_l_e_o]

but it's not unheard of for employees to work on and have access to sensitive information on their work-issued computers from home (often using a work VPN).

Sure, it's a common practice, but it's not without risk and adds additional security considerations to any set up, from ensuring login credentials are kept secure to educating employees about preventing unauthorized access to their work laptops or devices. Given that processing KYC documentation isn't exactly a critical or time sensitive process in the vast majority of cases, I would hope for the sake of Coinbase's users that they aren't allowing remote access to their KYC documents, particularly since it isn't even Coinbase themselves who will be processing these documents but some third party they have farmed the work out to.

Their Privacy Policy states that they "enforce physical access controls" to their data, which I would hope would therefore mean only employees who can be verified in person on site can access the data. Having said that, Coinbase have previously sold users' data to third parties, so their Privacy Policy isn't exactly something you hang your hat on.

[aboutblank512]

Ad lockdown, I am experiencing lockdown myself in my country as well. However, I dont see this as an apology for inconvenience like this, because I consider home office absolute standard for these services.

As your issue with Coinbase is regarding verifying your identity against scanned documents, I would really hope that this could not be solved by someone working at home. A database of KYC documents shouldn't be able to be accessed from external connections, and you wouldn't want your documents to appear on a computer screen in an employee's home where they could be easily copied at will or viewed by any housemates or other occupants. Sending KYC documents to an exchange is a big enough risk as is without also distributing them to employee's houses.

This is interesting, I haven't thought about it this way. You're right, it would be fine if the reason is just the fact that they cannot access the documents from home, only from workspace. However, I doubt that this is the main reason why they are in such delays.

Could you guys recommend me any exchange/site which do you use, and which is capable of all things I described above?

[figmentofmyass]

Hi,
I want to beware you all not to be very excited about signing up, or even depositing money at coinbase. It is already third week (!) since I started my signup process. The support is ABSOLUTELY HORRIBLE. They often reply just the copypasted response about escalation and doesnt care. First I was not able to even complete the signup process form because of bug in address field acceptation. Next, as I resolved this on my own - the system did not accept special character in my address WITHOUT any error message describing what is wrong (with NO assistance at all from them! even despite I sent maybe 3 emails with detailed description of my issue). It took cca one week of attempts (as there are only 3 attempts in 24 hours, and without feedback its hard to spot what is wrong) now I am unable to verify my identity, although I have sent maybe 5 different documents (at least 4 of them were 100% eligible).

TLDR: Go elsewhere. They may be the largest exchange but the support is AS TERRIBLE AS POSSIBLE. I have NEVER seen such tragedy of a support, EVER.

And if you are an active user. PRAY to the god that you will NEVER need support. They do not care at all and the response time are infinity.

There are MUCH better options. DO NOT trust them with your money as if anything happens, no one will help you.

Cheers

my experience with coinbase: they usually respond with boilerplate emails at least 2-3 times. if you don't keep pushing, they will mark your ticket solved and won't forward it to the next line of customer service reps.

are you having trouble verifying via webcam? i had the same issues when i verified---repeated failure, supposedly low quality. screw the webcam, download the mobile app, and use your smartphone camera instead. that worked like a charm for me.

Yeah op is trying to open an account with a company that is mostly located in San Francisco area.  There is a heavy lockdown in that area so service is going to suck big time.

Give it a rest for a while they may get better next month.

are their offices actually closed? financial services are exempt from the stay at home order. https://covid19.ca.gov/img/EssentialCriticalInfrastructureWorkers.pdf

[aboutblank512]

Hi,
I want to beware you all not to be very excited about signing up, or even depositing money at coinbase. It is already third week (!) since I started my signup process. The support is ABSOLUTELY HORRIBLE. They often reply just the copypasted response about escalation and doesnt care. First I was not able to even complete the signup process form because of bug in address field acceptation. Next, as I resolved this on my own - the system did not accept special character in my address WITHOUT any error message describing what is wrong (with NO assistance at all from them! even despite I sent maybe 3 emails with detailed description of my issue). It took cca one week of attempts (as there are only 3 attempts in 24 hours, and without feedback its hard to spot what is wrong) now I am unable to verify my identity, although I have sent maybe 5 different documents (at least 4 of them were 100% eligible).

TLDR: Go elsewhere. They may be the largest exchange but the support is AS TERRIBLE AS POSSIBLE. I have NEVER seen such tragedy of a support, EVER.

And if you are an active user. PRAY to the god that you will NEVER need support. They do not care at all and the response time are infinity.

There are MUCH better options. DO NOT trust them with your money as if anything happens, no one will help you.

Cheers

my experience with coinbase: they usually respond with boilerplate emails at least 2-3 times. if you don't keep pushing, they will mark your ticket solved and won't forward it to the next line of customer service reps.

are you having trouble verifying via webcam? i had the same issues when i verified---repeated failure, supposedly low quality. screw the webcam, download the mobile app, and use your smartphone camera instead. that worked like a charm for me.

Thanks for advice. However, I always ensure that I am uploading quite high quality photos and tried also PDF. No success.

Any recommendations?

[mk4]

Thanks for advice. However, I always ensure that I am uploading quite high quality photos and tried also PDF. No success.

Any recommendations?

Probably check this out if you haven't yet: https://help.coinbase.com/en/coinbase/getting-started/authentication-and-verification/identity-verification.html

While I doubt the solution to your problem is in there, it ain't gonna hurt to try things out. Best of luck.

[aboutblank512]

Thanks for advice. However, I always ensure that I am uploading quite high quality photos and tried also PDF. No success.

Any recommendations?

Probably check this out if you haven't yet: https://help.coinbase.com/en/coinbase/getting-started/authentication-and-verification/identity-verification.html

While I doubt the solution to your problem is in there, it ain't gonna hurt to try things out. Best of luck.

Thanks for reply. However my ID gets verified quickly and without issues. The problem is verifying proof of address document.

[CriptoBras1991]

If i don't have a valid ID or i do not want to give it to the exchange.
What are my options?

[o_e_l_e_o]

Thanks for reply. However my ID gets verified quickly and without issues. The problem is verifying proof of address document.

You are just going to have to continue to badger them in as many ways as you can until they finally actually pay attention to you. It's terrible customer service, but unfortunately that's the way it is with Coinbase.

Keep emailing them and keep opening tickets at their support center here: https://help.coinbase.com/en/contact-us.html
Try contacting them on various social media platforms. Some users have had luck messaging their representatives who are active on reddit, or opening a thread in their subreddit. See here for full details: https://help.coinbase.com/en/coinbase/other-topics/other/is-coinbase-present-on-social-media.html

If i don't have a valid ID or i do not want to give it to the exchange.
What are my options?

You are right in not wanting to hand over your KYC documents to anyone.

There are several options available to you. You can look in to decentralized peer-to-peer exchanges such as BISQ, Hodl Hodl, or localcryptos. You can also trade peer-to-peer on this forum, although be sure to use an escrow unless you fully trust the other party. These methods will allow you to exchange fiat to bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies. If you want to trade between cryptocurrencies, you can still use these methods, but there are some centralized exchanges which will let you trade between cryptocurrencies without completing KYC.

[bL4nkcode]

But the main reason is that I wanted to have one place where I can
- deposit directly from card,
- buy, exchange and also withdraw various coins directly to my wallet,
- with low fees,
- trusted and verified service with reachable support in case of any problems.

Currently I am using one service for card deposit and buy basic coins, and for other altcoins another service (Kraken) as Kraken doesnt provide card deposits.

Could you guys maybe recommend me where could do all this on one place? What services do you use and why?

Thanks for advices.

Have you check binance? I'm sure they have all of this, though you have to proceed with their kyc procedure as well when buying with fiat.

You can use localcryptos, KYC is not required as of the moment AFAIK and you can choose from different sellers with much cheaper price, it's important to use their escrow service for more secured transactions.

[gosha@e-coin]

I think it also makes a big difference in the number of transactions you do, the volume and where the bitcoins' source of income comes from. I know that Coinbase can use struct policies with acceptance from the bitcoin source. For example, you have a risk area when it comes to bitcoins that are related to gambling. Today, companies are increasingly strict in reducing the number of money laundering practices. They are forced to do this because of law. Companies may be more reluctant to use the help desk if they don't trust it.

[rexxarofmoknathal]

With that said, FIVE documents? I would've quit after 2 failed document submissions. I wouldn't be able to stomach the fact that one single entity has hold of 5 documents of mine. In this case Coinbase sure made LocalBitcoins look like a saint LOL.

Yeah 5 documents is a huge amount to send. I remember only sending one and saying "if this doesn't get approved, I'm giving up" and it did within an hour or so.

A lot of comopanies are off and, especially if you're in Europe, expect a response when the virus is passed. The virus + gdpr means they've probably left bots to deal with everything (especially in places with lockdowns) and they probably won't be classed as an essential service in a lot of countries so will have been shut down (they might still be functioning in the UK though and outside of europe although a lot of companies use romania or india to deal with their support and if either of those are in a full lockdown both will be really slow to deal with stuff).

And yeah, from my sources san francisco wasn't allowing much movement at all.

As most comments already pointed out, from the responses you managed to get you should have picked out their repetitive pattern and incompetent support since those were probably generic responses. In your defence, however, a company where human based customer support will be completely cut off, leaving only bots in place should at least be transparent about this. In this manner, issues like this one could easily be avoided.

[malevolent]

Given that processing KYC documentation isn't exactly a critical or time sensitive process in the vast majority of cases, I would hope for the sake of Coinbase's users that they aren't allowing remote access to their KYC documents, particularly since it isn't even Coinbase themselves who will be processing these documents but some third party they have farmed the work out to.

They might be using 3rd parties services to verify the authenticity of the provided documents, or check if the user isn't on some list, but they still probably use the provided data themselves for investigations, risk assessments etc. judging from the type of people they are and have been hiring.

[Little Mouse]

I would not say Coinbase that bad. I know that coinbase support is a very lengthy process which I have faced too but to be honest, at the end, I was happy because they have solved my issue.
However, it is not even a good idea to go with such centralize service to use crypto because we have better option than Coinbase.
 KYC procedure is one of the worst process you have to go with all the services. For me, I have recently tried with verifying my documents in currency.com and faced the same issue as your.

[buwaytress]

Never could use Coinbase because of my nationality/location, but I'm not surprised. I've experienced customer support at big boy exchanges and the one that comes to mind is Poloniex. Months of tickets never answered, I was glad I never had such a huge issue I just ended up withdrawing everything just before they started restricting accounts for kyc.

Each time a project pops up asking what's most important in an exchange? I always say it. Qualified, well trained, actually helpful customer support.

[Krislaw]

You should try and resolve whatever the issue is if you already have funds there. You should be careful during this period because there's lockdown ATM, and support can't respond as they used to. I'm sure they also left the KYC to bots which we all know might not be accurate sometimes.
Just hang tight.

[old fart]

It is really sad, this is not the first time i'm hearing same complain about coinbase, although i don't use it that much.
I use coinex to trade most of the time, support are pretty fast over there. Same as Atomic wallet, these are two crypto projects i've seen with an impressive support. Someone told me binance is good also, i hope so.

[condoras]

I used to use Coinbase not so for trading but as an online "wallet" for cheaper transactions.
Sadly I had an issue regarding a transaction that was delayed from their side, with no reason at all.
The communication with their support wasn't bad but it wasn't fast either, so I had to resend the BTC of that tx from another wallet. From this incident, I rarely use their service and I think I'm much better...

[aboutblank512]

So yesterday I received email that i can continue in verification process. I believe it is much more than 1 month since I tried it first time.

 It was successful, despite the fact that my document was rejected the same way like before (?) . I really dont understand this and lost any possible trust to coinbase.

[Lucius]

So yesterday I received email that i can continue in verification process. I believe it is much more than 1 month since I tried it first time.
It was successful, despite the fact that my document was rejected the same way like before (?) . I really dont understand this and lost any possible trust to coinbase.

It is possible that the reason for such a long process lies precisely in what other members have already mentioned, and this is a staff shortage caused by a pandemic that has hit the US pretty badly. To protect themselves from the possibility of all employees being infected, companies only work with half of their employees, while the other half is on forced leave.

Far from defending Coinbase, or any other crypto exchange - support is generally one of the weak points of their business. With the current situation, it definitely couldn't be any better.

[LeGaulois]

So yesterday I received email that i can continue in verification process. I believe it is much more than 1 month since I tried it first time.
It was successful, despite the fact that my document was rejected the same way like before (?) . I really dont understand this and lost any possible trust to coinbase.

It is possible that the reason for such a long process lies precisely in what other members have already mentioned, and this is a staff shortage caused by a pandemic that has hit the US pretty badly. To protect themselves from the possibility of all employees being infected, companies only work with half of their employees, while the other half is on forced leave.

Far from defending Coinbase, or any other crypto exchange - support is generally one of the weak points of their business. With the current situation, it definitely couldn't be any better.

Coinbase's employees are working from home now. For 2 months they created 3 levels with different types of decisions regarding the staff and depending on the location offices and how the pandemic increases. Starting from Level 1 limited to essential staff and the offices cleaning more frequently to Level 3 with all offices fully locked and all employees must work from home.
They're now all at the level 3

They post updates for the Coinbase's workers here and give them advice if they need help with mental health, social distancing etc

Coinbase is already considering as having a pretty bad support system so in the current situation it can only be worst. I'm not surprised to see @OP receiving a reply after near 1 month

[Lucius]

Coinbase's employees are working from home now.

I thought of that possibility as well, but somehow it seemed inappropriate that this kind of support could and should be done from home. First of all, I think about the security and privacy of information that employees access from their homes, which certainly cannot be considered a safe environment when compared to their offices.

In that regard, I remember an event that happened last year when someone tried to hack their exchange by sending e-mails to their staff. Consequently, all employees who are working remotely should be especially careful, because we all know that people are the weakest link in most cases.

[mrhelpful]

Just be aware of the covid19 situation have you looked into another option?

After a lengthy process I would just call it quits for them, try looking into cashapp for smaller increments since most of these crypto exchanges are based on no live chat or live phone number to talk with a real person.

I have personally gone through coinmama, of a horrible wallet confirmation prior with my kyc requirements only to still wait for a response.

I was considering coinbase if they changed how they approach customer service but apparently things are still the same with similar complaints.

[o_e_l_e_o]

I have personally gone through coinmama, of a horrible wallet confirmation prior with my kyc requirements only to still wait for a response.

I wouldn't recommend coinmama to anyone. Their privacy policy gives them carte blanche to share your data with pretty much anyone they like (emphasis mine):

We may share Personal Information with the following recipients: (i) our subsidiaries; (ii) affiliated companies; (iii) subcontractors and other third-party service providers; (iv) auditors or advisers of our business processes; and (v) any potential purchasers or investors in the Company.

In addition to the purposes listed in this Privacy Policy, we may share Personal Information with our recipients for any of the following purposes: (i) storing or processing Personal Information on our behalf (e.g., cloud computing service providers); (ii) processing such information to assist us with our business operations; (iii) performing research, technical diagnostics, personalization and analytics; and (iv) communicating promotional and informational materials, in accordance with our marketing policy (see below under "Marketing").

"Performing research, personalization, and analytics" is a fancy way to saying data mining and surveillance companies. Once such companies have your data, how many places and how many people it eventually ends up with is anybody's guess.

The best alternatively to crappy centralized exchanges like Coinbase, and the best alternative to keeping your private information safe, is to use a DEX such as Bisq or LocalCryptos.

[rexxarofmoknathal]

I've had the opposite issue with Coinbase actually, though I didn't really have a technical concern.

They verified my account within literally hours after calling them telling them it was urgent and they also provided a walkthrough on exactly how to use the site over the phone back when I was a noob.

things may have changed somewhat since then, but I continue to use Coinbase to this day because of this experience.