cryptothrift.com discussion

[geckoman]

What do you guys think of cryptothrift.com?

Since bitmit closed down, I've been looking for an alternative, and some weeks ago, I made an account there. Unfortunately, so far, my experience with them has been quite negative...

Minor problems:

• Annoying animated ads on the frontpage. This is already a site centered around selling me goods for money, why do you need to annoy me with animated third party ads on top of that?
• Altcoins everywhere. Normally I just ignore altcoins, but in this case they just help clutter up an already cluttered page layout.
• When clicking on a category on the left, not only is the layout completely switched around, there are no subcategories offered to click on, the search bar disappers, and the (broken) location filter is not even offered any more.

Problems of moderate importance:

• The location filter simply does not work unless you are logged in. For an internationally operating site like cryptothrift, it is really important for visitors to be able to filter out stuff that the seller won't even ship to them, otherwise finding things you are looking for is only that much more of a chore.
• There are too few categories, and only two levels of them.
• There are no category-specific attributes for searching (for example video memory, chip manufacturer and connectors for graphics cards).
• In the background, all prices are in USD. This is not useful for me. I live in the EU, USD prices are not important to me in every day life. I'd like to price things (including delivery options) in any currency, including Bitcoin if I so choose!

Major problems:

• You can give only two shipping options when listing an item, local and worldwide. This is a major problem for someone in the EU. Back when I was selling on Bitmit, the majority of my buyers were from inside the EU but outside my home country. In cryptothrift, I can now choose between offering those potential buyers really unattractive shipping rates or exposing myself to the risk of making a major loss on shipping if someone from Australia, for example, decides to buy my item.
• The items I put up for sale are only visible when browsing the appropriate category when I'm logged in. When I'm not logged in, they just don't show up. I don't see myself ever selling my items this way.

On the plus side, the support is usually pretty quick to answer. On the downside to the plus side, they don't always manage to solve my problems...

As of right now, the only reason I'm still even using cryptothrift is because they are the only game in town when it comes to selling small time items for Bitcoin. I'm hoping they will step up their game and/or get some serious competition. If things continue like this, I'll probably rather just sell my things on ebay (or maybe hood.de) and exchange the proceeds for Bitcoin manually...

*edit 2014-04-09:
The issue with my items not being visible when I'm not logged in has been solved. I still don't know what happened there.

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[nahtnam]

I have made 2 purchases through cryptothrift using their escrow service and the sellers did indeed give what they promised. I personally think its NOT a scam. Think of it like Ebay.

[ajw7989]

I have made 2 purchases through cryptothrift using their escrow service and the sellers did indeed give what they promised. I personally think its NOT a scam. Think of it like Ebay.

I do not think he is saying this site is a scam. I have purchased and sold multiple items on this site with no problems. The support is pretty good however I do feel the site needs some improvement and the altcoins may be an issue but I only accept bitcoin anyway so doesn't affect me. I am personally glad they allow multiple altcoins to be accepted (although their may be too many litecoin namecoin and bitcoin would be sufficient)

[nahtnam]

I have made 2 purchases through cryptothrift using their escrow service and the sellers did indeed give what they promised. I personally think its NOT a scam. Think of it like Ebay.

I do not think he is saying this site is a scam. I have purchased and sold multiple items on this site with no problems. The support is pretty good however I do feel the site needs some improvement and the altcoins may be an issue but I only accept bitcoin anyway so doesn't affect me. I am personally glad they allow multiple altcoins to be accepted (although their may be too many litecoin namecoin and bitcoin would be sufficient)

I said that is is NOT a scam.

[Bit_Happy]

What do you guys think of cryptothrift.com?

Since bitmit closed down, I've been looking for an alternative, and some weeks ago, I made an account there. Unfortunately, so far, my experience with them has been quite negative...

Minor problems:

• Annoying animated ads on the frontpage. This is already a site centered around selling me goods for money, why do you need to annoy me with animated third party ads on top of that?
• Altcoins everywhere. Normally I just ignore altcoins, but in this case they just help clutter up an already cluttered page layout.
• When clicking on a category on the left, not only is the layout completely switched around, there are no subcategories offered to click on, the search bar disappers, and the (broken) location filter is not even offered any more.

Problems of moderate importance:

• The location filter simply does not work unless you are logged in. For an internationally operating site like cryptothrift, it is really important for visitors to be able to filter out stuff that the seller won't even ship to them, otherwise finding things you are looking for is only that much more of a chore.
• There are too few categories, and only two levels of them.
• There are no category-specific attributes for searching (for example video memory, chip manufacturer and connectors for graphics cards).
• In the background, all prices are in USD. This is not useful for me. I live in the EU, USD prices are not important to me in every day life. I'd like to price things (including delivery options) in any currency, including Bitcoin if I so choose!

Major problems:

• You can give only two shipping options when listing an item, local and worldwide. This is a major problem for someone in the EU. Back when I was selling on Bitmit, the majority of my buyers were from inside the EU but outside my home country. In cryptothrift, I can now choose between offering those potential buyers really unattractive shipping rates or exposing myself to the risk of making a major loss on shipping if someone from Australia, for example, decides to buy my item.
• The items I put up for sale are only visible when browsing the appropriate category when I'm logged in. When I'm not logged in, they just don't show up. I don't see myself ever selling my items this way.

On the plus side, the support is usually pretty quick to answer. On the downside to the plus side, they don't always manage to solve my problems...

As of right now, the only reason I'm still even using cryptothrift is because they are the only game in town when it comes to selling small time items for Bitcoin. I'm hoping they will step up their game and/or get some serious competition. If things continue like this, I'll probably rather just sell my things on ebay (or maybe hood.de) and exchange the proceeds for Bitcoin manually...

I'm glad to have any site as good as cryptothrift.com, so I didn't notice so many issues.
Let's hope they improve, since they have a pretty good start.

[coinnewbit]

crypothrift looks good, so no worries!

[Duetschpire]

• Annoying animated ads on the frontpage. This is already a site centered around selling me goods for money, why do you need to annoy me with animated third party ads on top of that?

This will change soon. We already made a 2 months deal with the customer and it's nearly over. Other ads you're seeing (BitPos and yPool) are partners. We send them traffic they send us traffic/services back.

• Altcoins everywhere. Normally I just ignore altcoins, but in this case they just help clutter up an already cluttered page layout.

I can't give a straight answer to this yet, but I can tell you that apart from LTC, we've only had ~$5,000 worth of sales with the other alts, so it's not looking so good

• When clicking on a category on the left, not only is the layout completely switched around, there are no subcategories offered to click on, the search bar disappers, and the (broken) location filter is not even offered any more.

Search bar will be available on every page along with the location filter next week. As for the layout, it's already been fixed. The location filter is a bug we introduced in our last update and we're looking into it.

• The location filter simply does not work unless you are logged in. For an internationally operating site like cryptothrift, it is really important for visitors to be able to filter out stuff that the seller won't even ship to them, otherwise finding things you are looking for is only that much more of a chore.

As mentioned above, this will be fixed soon.

• There are too few categories, and only two levels of them.

Please submit your categories using our support button and selecting "Category Suggestion", I personally look after these categories and would gladly add any which users see fit.

• There are no category-specific attributes for searching (for example video memory, chip manufacturer and connectors for graphics cards).

Should we make a category for gaming accessories? Would this make it easier?

• In the background, all prices are in USD. This is not useful for me. I live in the EU, USD prices are not important to me in every day life. I'd like to price things (including delivery options) in any currency, including Bitcoin if I so choose!

Shipping price in Bitcoin should be added this week as well. I will work on this tomorrow and we should have it replicating what you see for item price. Other currencies will need some extra work, but we have this on the list of features to be added.

• You can give only two shipping options when listing an item, local and worldwide. This is a major problem for someone in the EU. Back when I was selling on Bitmit, the majority of my buyers were from inside the EU but outside my home country. In cryptothrift, I can now choose between offering those potential buyers really unattractive shipping rates or exposing myself to the risk of making a major loss on shipping if someone from Australia, for example, decides to buy my item.

We will be adding a drop down list with every location available now as well as other location (i.e: North America Continent, EU, AP, etc...). and next to every location sellers will be able to add 3 prices (shipping, express shipping and insured shipping). The buyers will then be able to select the options on checkout.

• The items I put up for sale are only visible when browsing the appropriate category when I'm logged in. When I'm not logged in, they just don't show up. I don't see myself ever selling my items this way.

I responded to your support ticker, but was unable to replicate the problem. Both search and category views showed the items live. I've also tried to view the items whilst logged out with no issues.


I would gladly assist with any support matters, we are running short on support staff as one of our team members have had family issues lately, but please feel free to submit any issues and suggestions and we will look into them ASAP.

For more info about what we have planned, please find the list of features for Q2-Q3 2014 .

[paulthetafy]

Hi everyone,

geckoman, thanks for starting this thread and for your honest feedback of the site.  Our aim is to provide an easy to use site for buying and selling goods, and we are aware that there are a lot of improvements that we need to make in order to fully achieve this.  Our ethos has been to be customer-centric from day 1, so we welcome any and all feedback and suggestions from our users, whether critical or praise.  

What is perhaps not immediately clear is that cryptothrift.com is run by a small team, all working around our full-time day jobs (and raising kids!), for no pay.  We take no personal income from the site at this stage as the profit we do make goes back into paying for development, software/hosting, new hardware, marketing/SEO, and accounting/legal costs.  This is one of the reasons we have had to (reluctantly) allow paid advertising on the site until now, but as Duet said this is going to be removed soon.

We do share your view that we need to make some fairly significant enhancements quite soon, so perhaps now is a good time to share our plans for achieving this:-

 - We are currently in the process of registering the company here in Australia (we are Sydney based).  

 - Once registered, we will fully disclose our identities and contact details to increase your trust in us.

 - We are in talks with a number of venture capital companies and angel investors in order to raise early-stage capital to allow us to implement the features on our 2014 roadmap

 - Depending on the outcome of this, duetschpire and myself will either transition to working full time on the site ourselves, or we will employ developers to implement the features on our roadmap.  Or both!

 - We are being advised and backed by a number of prominent members of the bitcoin community and bitcoin-business owners (I'm not going to name-drop yet, but our strategic partners will emerge on the site in due course)

Anyway I hope that gives you some insight into our plans.  We do not want to be yet-another-bitcoin-startup that does a half-assed job and then disappears without trace after selling empty shares, hence our decision to avoid crowdfunding/public share selling until we have a solid and profitable product to back it.  

It's going to take us many months of hard work to get there, so in the meantime all we can do is ask our users to bear with us, try not to be too harsh on us, and to keep the feedback coming!

Thanks
Paul

PS please feel free to drop into #cryptothrift on freenode IRC and say hello!

[coinnewbit]

Hi everyone,

geckoman, thanks for starting this thread and for your honest feedback of the site.  Our aim is to provide an easy to use site for buying and selling goods, and we are aware that there are a lot of improvements that we need to make in order to fully achieve this.  Our ethos has been to be customer-centric from day 1, so we welcome any and all feedback and suggestions from our users, whether critical or praise. 

What is perhaps not immediately clear is that cryptothrift.com is run by a small team, all working around our full-time day jobs (and raising kids!), for no pay.  We take no personal income from the site at this stage as the profit we do make goes back into paying for development, software/hosting, new hardware, marketing/SEO, and accounting/legal costs.  This is one of the reasons we have had to (reluctantly) allow paid advertising on the site until now, but as Duet said this is going to be removed soon.

We do share your view that we need to make some fairly significant enhancements quite soon, so perhaps now is a good time to share our plans for achieving this:-

 - We are currently in the process of registering the company here in Australia (we are Sydney based). 

 - Once registered, we will fully disclose our identities and contact details to increase your trust in us.

 - We are in talks with a number of venture capital companies and angel investors in order to raise early-stage capital to allow us to implement the features on our 2014 roadmap

 - Depending on the outcome of this, duetschpire and myself will either transition to working full time on the site ourselves, or we will employ developers to implement the features on our roadmap.  Or both!

 - We are being advised and backed by a number of prominent members of the bitcoin community and bitcoin-business owners (I'm not going to name-drop yet, but our strategic partners will emerge on the site in due course)

Anyway I hope that gives you some insight into our plans.  We do not want to be yet-another-bitcoin-startup that does a half-assed job and then disappears without trace after selling empty shares, hence our decision to avoid crowdfunding/public share selling until we have a solid and profitable product to back it. 

It's going to take us many months of hard work to get there, so in the meantime all we can do is ask our users to bear with us, try not to be too harsh on us, and to keep the feedback coming!

Thanks
Paul

PS please feel free to drop into #cryptothrift on freenode IRC and say hello!

No problem! this site facilitates trades very well!

[Duetschpire]

Just a quick update:

Most of the features requested above have been sorted. We've also added some extra features like a break down of feedback (positive-neutral-negative) as well as a "Held In Escrow" menu for sellers to keep track of the payments.

The shipping now displays in all available currencies and the payments page got a revamp.

Keep your feedback coming, we're doing our best to fit the new requested features with what we already have, so bear with us

[nahtnam]

Just a quick update:

Most of the features requested above have been sorted. We've also added some extra features like a break down of feedback (positive-neutral-negative) as well as a "Held In Escrow" menu for sellers to keep track of the payments.

The shipping now displays in all available currencies and the payments page got a revamp.

Keep your feedback coming, we're doing our best to fit the new requested features with what we already have, so bear with us

Hey! Just a small suggestion. Maybe you should update the front end ui a little bit more and improve server speeds.

Thanks.

[hilariousandco]

Just made my first listing. Was pretty simple and quick. Lets see if I can close a deal.

Didn't cryptothrift used to offer FTC as a payment option?

[paulthetafy]

Just made my first listing. Was pretty simple and quick. Lets see if I can close a deal.

Didn't cryptothrift used to offer FTC as a payment option?

Hi there,

As of April 15th we stopped accepting all alt coins with the exception of litecoin, simply because there was nobody using them.  In the end we decided to better use our resources improving the site performance and adding features rather than adding coins that were not being used.  Full details can be found on our blog here https://cryptothrift.com/alts-important-announcement/

Thanks
Paul

[hilariousandco]

Just made my first listing. Was pretty simple and quick. Lets see if I can close a deal.

Didn't cryptothrift used to offer FTC as a payment option?

Hi there,

As of April 15th we stopped accepting all alt coins with the exception of litecoin, simply because there was nobody using them.  In the end we decided to better use our resources improving the site performance and adding features rather than adding coins that were not being used.  Full details can be found on our blog here https://cryptothrift.com/alts-important-announcement/

Thanks
Paul

Ah, well that's a shame. I'm sure people will use alts more with time. Your site is still growing too. The option to accept and pay in alts is always a plus and I think more people tend to part with them easier than Bitcoin, but I can understand if you think it wasn't worth keeping them.

[nahtnam]

Just made my first listing. Was pretty simple and quick. Lets see if I can close a deal.

Didn't cryptothrift used to offer FTC as a payment option?

Hi there,

As of April 15th we stopped accepting all alt coins with the exception of litecoin, simply because there was nobody using them.  In the end we decided to better use our resources improving the site performance and adding features rather than adding coins that were not being used.  Full details can be found on our blog here https://cryptothrift.com/alts-important-announcement/

Thanks
Paul

Ah, well that's a shame. I'm sure people will use alts more with time. Your site is still growing too. The option to accept and pay in alts is always a plus and I think more people tend to part with them easier than Bitcoin, but I can understand if you think it wasn't worth keeping them.

I never used alts on the site at all. It was a good choice removing it. The resources need to be allocated elsewhere.

[yomofo]

I have just gotten scammed by the operators of http://www.cryptothrift.com .

I advise staying as far away from that site as possible.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/23ni1c/psa_of_bitcoin_scam_by_operators_of/

[TheButterZone]

LOL bitmit was fucking escrows, now bitmit 2.0... any site that isn't doing multisig needs to be blacklisted.

[paulthetafy]

I have just gotten scammed by the operators of http://www.cryptothrift.com .

I advise staying as far away from that site as possible.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/23ni1c/psa_of_bitcoin_scam_by_operators_of/

This is totally harsh.  It appears you pasted the purchase address into the refund form instead of your refund address, then blamed us for sending the refund to our own address.  Why on earth would we scam you for $25?  We have put full details of this misunderstanding and in our reply on reddit.  Please don't label people scammers without thinking first.  We are two dads from Sydney trying to start a new business and it is unfair to post this stuff without thinking first

[yomofo]

I have just gotten scammed by the operators of http://www.cryptothrift.com .

I advise staying as far away from that site as possible.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/23ni1c/psa_of_bitcoin_scam_by_operators_of/

This is totally harsh.  It appears you pasted the purchase address into the refund form instead of your refund address, then blamed us for sending the refund to our own address.  Why on earth would we scam you for $25?  We have put full details of this misunderstanding and in our reply on reddit.  Please don't label people scammers without thinking first.  We are two dads from Sydney trying to start a new business and it is unfair to post this stuff without thinking first

It "appears" that i pasted the purchase address into the refund form.  I have no way to verify that was "my mistake" since your site does not allow me to review refund transaction history.  

when i registered to your site, i put my actual bitcoin address in the "personal info" section.  

[paulthetafy]

It "appears" that i pasted the purchase address into the refund form.  I have no way to verify that was "my mistake" since your site does not allow me to review refund transaction history.  

when i registered to your site, i put my actual bitcoin address in the "personal info" section.  

Just to put some closure on this, not only have we provided a refund, but we have also provided as much proof as we possibly can that you simply entered the wrong address into the refund page.  We intentionally don't use the address in your profile for refunds as there is no way to guarantee that address is still active and we would hate to refund to an address you no longer have access to.  All screenshots of emails depicting this are now linked to the reddit post so I won't include them again here.  I'm aware that we don't show a refund history on the site yet, but this is a feature that is planned for later this year. 

I realise that it took a while for you to receive your bitcoins back, but please see this from our perspective too.  We had no idea the address was wrong until you lodged a support ticket 2 weeks later.  We then took a few days holiday over the Easter weekend and then came back to your reddit post today.

cryptothrift handles several hundred thousand dollars a month in sales,  processes as much as 100 refunds a month, and often holds tens of thousands of dollars worth of BTC in escrow on any given day.  We really are not in the scamming business, and hope this matter is now closed.