Warning: Bitcoin4Cash trades cancelled! Won't do business with Madhatter again.

[imanikin]

I don't know who is telling the truth here, but i believe the Madhatter, because his great reputation in the community is long-standing and at the top tier, imho.

He has done a great deal to promote Bitcoin, and has given all of us valuable information and advice many times, which is recorded in this forum...

Whatever really happened in this deal, the Madhatter and his Bitcoin4cash is certainly NOT a "fraud," imho...

[eMansipater]

This is another "fun" case... allow me to explain:

This person claimed he mailed me letters for locked in trades from months ago. But alas, no such letters ever arrived. I'm not going to accuse him of lying, but I will say that he has a history of not mailing in a timely fashion.

He has, in the past, booked trades and never mailed anything for several months only to email me promising to send the cash promptly. Eventually he makes good on his word, but it is always extremely late.

The last time he pulled this shit the rate hadn't moved much so I just honored an *very* old rate. This time I didn't honor it (it was 2 months overdue!!!), and he threw a fit.

He contacted me only after the price skyrocketed to offer to replace the missing (?) cash as long as I honored the rate from 2 months ago.

The booking was already 2 months old so I told him "no". The trades were expired. (My system automatically expires locked in trades after 60 days. You can mail a letter from anywhere on the planet to my location in 2 months. It's very lax. Yes, I will add this to my FAQ - before you all ask.)

Anyway.. despite my firm answer he didn't listen and mailed me letters for these expired trades and expected me to honor the old rate. I returned the mail to him promptly, as I told him I would.

Oh, and yes the changes to Bitcoin4Cash's website are a coincidence. No, I'm not broke. No, I'm not shutting down. No, I'm not scamming.

These 2 people are yelling because they tried to scam me and I caught them. I promptly returned their cash and deposits - would a scammer do that??

I think the Madhatter may either have allowed recent exchange rates to get the better of his greed, or mismanaged the risk in his business.  He has similarly dishonoured two locked in trades of mine, with mailed payments unaccounted for (net loss to me in excess of 2000 USD all told).  I inquired early on when the payments seemed to be taking longer than usual, and he repeatedly assured me that everything would be fine and I needn't worry, without ever mentioning that he intended to cancel the payments.  When he cancelled one of them without warning I wrote immediately for clarification and offered to expresspost additional money if the payment delay (which I presumed due to postal problems) was an issue for him.  He completely refused this and numerous other workable options, even cancelling the second trade after I had already sent an expresspost to re-cover the amount.  He has also refused to update his website with regards to this supposed "cancellation policy" and numerous misleading statements such as the one claiming no mail has been lost up until January.

Although I initially trusted him implicitly and made every effort to find a win-win solution to the problem, I am feeling forced to consider that he has gotten in over his head somehow and his customers are paying the price; or even that he is intentionally defrauding people.  I am at present somewhat inclined to publish the record of our exchanged emails here so that the community might see how patiently I sought any other possibility before reaching this difficult conclusion.  At this time I would advise people not to send money to the Bitcoin4Cash service, at the very least until the situation can be thoroughly clarified.  Perhaps he will post here to speak for himself.

This is the most offensive thing to me about this situation--not the monetary loss, but the fact that the Madhatter has first implicitly and then explicitly accused me of trying to defraud him.  Some of the claims in the above post appear improperly researched, and others are outright false.  With your permission, Madhatter, I will post our entire (digitally signed) email exchange here, to compliment the complete information I have available to me in other forms.

If I was trying to scam the Madhatter I would have to be the most foolish criminal in the world, and I think it's pretty clear from my participation in the community here that I am neither foolish nor a criminal.  He runs an anonymous service, so only an idiot would attach both his real-world and (well-established) online identity to the trades in question during the precise period the Madhatter claims I was trying to knowingly scam him.  Yet this is exactly what I did when seeking to honour my own obligations at worse rates to me than the market of the day, and I will provide ample evidence to prove it.  The recent surge appears to be the only reason my trades aren't being honoured.


Continuing:
You should all understand that the underlying context for the situation here is persistent and rampant problems in the Canada Post postal system.  My sister-in-law, for example, recently had a package going from my city to the same province as the Madhatter which was lost for several months before turning up.  Some useful references:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/story/2010/11/23/mb-letter-carriers-sorting-dispute-winnipeg.html  (I live in Winnipeg, the "testbed" for Canada Post's new system they are developing)
http://savemoneyinwinnipeg.blog.ca/2011/02/22/problems-with-the-mail-10660686/
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/story/2010/11/15/mb-canada-post-complaints-mail-neville-winnipeg.html
http://www.leaderpost.com/mail+moves+slowly/4681185/story.html
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/canada-posts-little-secret-121374374.html
http://winnipeg.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20110413/wpg_strike_vote_110413/20110413/?hub=WinnipegHome
http://postandparcel.info/39044/news/canadian-postal-union-talks-pick-up-pace-under-strike-threat/
etc.

This person claimed he mailed me letters for locked in trades from months ago.

I did not mail you letters "for locked in trades from months ago."  I mailed them on time months ago, and have been in regular communication with you since then wondering why they are taking so long and asking you whether I should consider them lost or stolen.  You have repeatedly assured me there was no problem, and never once mentioned that you planned to cancel the trades.  Had you requested it or warned me at all of the impending cancellations, I would have immediately re-sent additional money.

I do not have a history of untimely mailings.  The postal service has a history of untimely mailings.  Case in point--my first three trades:

1GHrztccFjTVnrzpk1QmR8XeVmniH2fEqP  transaction 536-927 booked on January 7
14e9e8uWGpgZUwarcWDNGmpQbcFKbarrds  transaction 205-192 booked on January 13
1CV2TbssjiDwHwExvBn4CLR6QXJELdKCwv  transaction 399-754 booked on January 14 (mybitcoin to mybitcoin trade so no record in blockchain but I am happy to allow a trusted member to log into my mybitcoin account and verify it)

These trades were all mailed shortly after booking, yet as you can see they were processed in a clump on January 24th.  If the Madhatter had only bothered to look at the postmarks he could have verified for himself that Canada Post, and not me, was the cause of the delay.  Yet despite this the letters still arrived within a maximum period of 10 business days.  It was long enough to make me uncomfortable since they only had to travel two provinces over, but it's well within the time you later quoted me as typical for your trades.

He has, in the past, booked trades and never mailed anything for several months only to email me promising to send the cash promptly. Eventually he makes good on his word, but it is always extremely late.

This statement is patently false.  The only way I can think that you would make it is if you were conflating my expresspost for a separate trade with these two letters which are still missing; or if you have somehow confused me with someone else.  The latter is perhaps the only reason I can think of that you would turn on a trusted customer and community member so abruptly.  The following is the entire history of my trades with you, continuing from the above three:

On February 10th I booked my fourth trade with you for 100 CAD, and sent the letter shortly thereafter.  Although I was prepared from my previous experience to expect a certain amount of delay, I didn't expect this to be a problem.  These coins are for people who plan to hold them for a long time.

On March 6th, still taking the previous trade on faith, I booked my fifth trade with you for 100 CAD.  These are the two trades which are in dispute, and they are for a combined total of 214.45 btc, plus 21.44 btc in deposits that have been promised back but which have not yet been returned.  Neither letter has shown up so far, but since they were mailed at different times I find it exceedingly unlikely that both are lost or stolen.

By the time I booked additional trades on the weekend of March 18th-20th (50 CAD, 500 CAD, and 100 CAD) I was getting worried that I still had not had either the February 10th or March 6th trades processed.  Therefore I emailed you wondering if you had had problems with delayed mail, to which you responded that although one letter had once taken 3 months I didn't need to worry.  I also asked if you would accept a registered mailing for the new trades (the website said not to send these).  You said this would be okay in your email of March 24th, which I read a couple of days later.  Going on your description of what constituted normal timing for your trades, I waited a couple more days to offset the cost of the expresspost by including another trade on April 4th (20 CAD) and then mailing right away.  At the time of mailing, everything except the 20 CAD had been done at worse rates for me than the current market rate, as can be verified by examining that period in bitcoin charts.  But since I am in BitCoin for the long term I didn't mind, and also took away from the experience that even if my two missing letters took a long time to arrive they would still be honoured.  Nothing was mentioned about anything being cancelled after a certain amount of time.

This delay in mailing of approximately one week is the longest I have ever delayed in mailing a trade, and since I sent it by expresspost the trades still arrived within 10 business days of when you authorised me to send them by that method.  The quoted statement is false.  It should also be noted that when I inquired about the two missing letters I identified myself as eMansipater and signed my real name to the email, which no scammer would do if they were trying to defraud you via those trades.  All my trades have also included my email address and return address.  But most significantly, as I have already drawn your attention to in an email, the two trades in question were at a disadvantage to me when I began inquiring after them, and remained so for nearly a month afterward.  I am clearly not a scammer.  Your accusation that I was somehow trying to defraud you is both baseless and extremely onerous to me.


Continuing:
On April 30th, with exchange rates now rising, I logged into the tracking option and was surprised to see that my February 10th trade was marked "cancelled."  Since neither the website nor any of the Madhatter's emails had ever warned of cancellation, I was extremely concerned and emailed him immediately, telling him if there was any problem I could simply re-send the cash or even transfer Mt. Gox dollars.  On May 3rd, he emailed me back and told me for the first time ever that he had configured his system to cancel trades at 60 days and that he did not plan to honour the trades past then despite still telling me it was "probably too soon" to write off the missing letters.  The trade from March 6th had still not reached 60 days and after another email exchange patiently attempting to find a "win-win solution", I quickly mailed an expresspost with additional (repeat) payment for the not-yet-expired trade, and also included repeat money for the February 10th trade since I expected the situation would be resolved amicably upon a review of our correspondence and my trading history, which he seemed initially confused about.  I even offered that the repeated money could be held as collateral (or the bitcoins escrowed with clearcoin) until the original two letters show up.  But he became obstinate, cancelled the second trade, and refused delivery of my expresspost despite having the tracking information in hand that showed it had been mailed before the second cancellation.  He implicitly accused me of attempted fraud with phrases like "How convenient. I wasn't born yesterday."  His treatment of me despite my forbearance and patient seeking of win-win solutions has gotten me somewhat riled up about this--which should be significant for anyone who has read my posts here.

I intended to wait until receiving the refused expresspost back before posting here on the forums, but when "Bobby" posted I felt it was important to mention my own experience at the same time.  I emailed the Madhatter to let him know about this thread, and have today received back the refused expresspost (An indication of how slow Canada Post continues to be).  Although he has my information he has not yet returned my deposits, which he promised to do when he began insisting the trades had to be cancelled.  I refuse to email him a request to do so since that would be a tacit acceptance of the cancellations which were never mentioned either on the website nor in our extensive correspondence (which included an anecdote by him of mail taking 3 months to arrive).

I have gone to great lengths to resolve this amicably, but the current situation is unacceptable.  Without warning of the cancellations I had no way to mitigate the risk they exposed me to, and the cancellation of the second trade after I had already sent a repeat payment for it is totally inappropriate.  But most of all, the accusation that I have attempted to defraud him is libellous and abhorrent to me.  I expect better from someone who so many people have trusted, and most of all I expect an in-depth explanation for how on earth he has himself been exposed to any risk by my proposed solutions.  What will he do when the two delayed letters arrive?  I already held all the risk in this relationship from the beginning, and now he has accused me of trying to scam him.  This has to be thoroughly and carefully resolved in complete transparency.

Vlad has put it very concisely.  If the time-limited nature of the trade had been made clear from the beginning, it would be equivalent to a call option.  I did not intend, however, to contract for a call option.  I considered the trade made and the coins reserved, with my deposit as the Madhatter's hedge against non-payment.  Despite this I have been very open to re-sending payment if warned and given time to, escrowing, etc. since I understand neither of us can control delays in the mail.  All I want to know is how any of these options expose the Madhatter to risk, rather than simply affording him an opportunity to profit off the increased value of already reserved bitcoins.  I also demand that he change his website to declare that trades will expire, and when.  When I made the trades all it said was:

Once your letter arrives we will return your deposit and honor the locked-in rate.

[Ian Maxwell]

eMansipator, I believe you are within your moral rights to post this exchange with or without permission, since you were party to it and no promise of secrecy was made. In fact I hope you do. This case is impossible to judge on relative reputation.

[Cryptoman]

This is an example of why I don't do trades through the mail.

[MoonShadow]

It's entirely possible that neither side is fradulent, but that a failure of the government managed postal system is to blame.

[MacFall]

It's entirely possible that neither side is fradulent, but that a failure of the government managed postal system is to blame.

Possible.

[The Madhatter]

This is the most offensive thing to me about this situation--not the monetary loss, but the fact that the Madhatter has first implicitly and then explicitly accused me of trying to defraud him.

This doesn't make any sense.

I insinuated that you were possibly trying to scam me via email due to the fact that this is the 2nd time you've mailed to me late and expected me to honor an old rate. The first time could have been the mail system, but twice? It's definitely suspicious, to say the least.

With your permission, Madhatter, I will post our entire (digitally signed) email exchange here, to compliment the complete information I have available to me in other forms.

We all know that you are going to do it anyway.

The recent surge appears to be the only reason my trades aren't being honoured.

What recent surge? I refused 2 pieces of mail in a year's time. The first one was yours - an expired trade. The 2nd one was an letter that was mailed late on purpose. (Bobby)

Continuing:
You should all understand that the underlying context for the situation here is persistent and rampant problems in the Canada Post postal system.  My sister-in-law, for example, recently had a package going from my city to the same province as the Madhatter which was lost for several months before turning up.  Some useful references:

If you knew that your province was having mail troubles when you did your first batch of locked in trades, why did you proceed to do it again?

I do not have a history of untimely mailings.  The postal service has a history of untimely mailings.  Case in point--my first three trades:

What about the other batch of ancient trades that you emailed me about and then sent them with expresspost?

It was long enough to make me uncomfortable since they only had to travel two provinces over, but it's well within the time you later quoted me as typical for your trades.

I have a "boiler plate" response for emails regarding delayed mail. I get about 30 emails a day and time constraints don't permit me to investigate each case in depth. I usually have to send those boiler plate emails to save time.

Anyway, there is a huge difference between 1-3 weeks and 2 months. Especially when the letter is mailed from within the same country.

This statement is patently false.  The only way I can think that you would make it is if you were conflating my expresspost for a separate trade with these two letters which are still missing; or if you have somehow confused me with someone else.  The latter is perhaps the only reason I can think of that you would turn on a trusted customer and community member so abruptly.  The following is the entire history of my trades with you, continuing from the above three:

You are the only person who has ever used expresspost to mail me. The first expresspost you had sent me was for 3 (or 4?) late trades.

February 10th or March 6th trades processed.  Therefore I emailed you wondering if you had had problems with delayed mail, to which you responded that although one letter had once taken 3 months I didn't need to worry.  I also asked if you would accept a registered mailing for

Boiler plate email. I send out gobs of those. People mail me from Europe all of the time for open rate trades. I've had a few letters in the past (2?) that took a couple of months to arrive. More specifically, from Germany. I don't remember every single person I email. I send too many per day.

This delay in mailing of approximately one week is the longest I have ever delayed in mailing a trade, and since I sent it by expresspost the trades still arrived within 10 business days of when you authorised me to send them by that method.

I told you I didn't want MTGOX credit. I also told you I would accept the recent expresspost at an open rate (by creating a new booking). You refused. I proceeded to tell you that the trade was cancelled and I was even willing to refund your deposit without any penalty. All of this fell upon deaf ears. You mailed me the cash anyway expecting me to just eat it. I RTS'd the expresspost as soon as it arrived and let you know via email. You never gave me a Bitcoin address to refund your deposit to, even when I asked for it.

But he became obstinate, cancelled the second trade

Trade cancellation is automatic, btw. It happens at the 60 day mark. That piece of code has always been there.

He implicitly accused me of attempted fraud with phrases like "How convenient. I wasn't born yesterday."  His treatment of me despite my

The emails you were sending me reeked of childish behavior and general time-wasting. I had enough of arguing by that point. My system had already canceled the trade. I am under no obligation to wait around for a "replacement" letter. I refused your business and you proceeded to mail me cash anyway, despite my numerous protests. I have the right to refuse business to anyone. I don't have to take your money.

I emailed the Madhatter to let him know about this thread, and have today received back the refused expresspost (An indication of how slow Canada Post continues to be).

I returned it as I said I would from the beginning. Hardly "scamming".

Although he has my information he has not yet returned my deposits, which he promised to do when he began insisting the trades had to be cancelled.

You never did give me an address to send your deposit back to. I'm still waiting.

What will he do when the two delayed letters arrive?

I explained this in email. I would return them as well. The trades are expired. Tell you what: if they arrive with a roughly-accurate postmark on them I'll publically state to everyone that you didn't try to scam me. Until that happens, I really don't believe you.

All I want to know is how any of these options expose the Madhatter to risk, rather than simply affording him an opportunity to profit off the increased value of already reserved bitcoins.

I'm not exposed to risk. I'm exposed to future losses. When I have to hold your coins for months and months while the price skyrockets I'm losing. I could be selling them to someone who actually sends me a letter in a timely fashion.

What am I do to? Hold rates forever? Try pulling this with a bullion dealer like Kitco for example. They'd nail your credit card with price difference within 30 days or less. 60 days is more than fair.

In summary: I don't hold locked in trades forever. I have the right to refuse business, especially from those who have an established history of jerking me around.

[MoonShadow]

This thread has made me realize something new.  My employer has begun to block bitcoin trade sites, including bitcoin4cash.com.

[NghtRppr]

This is why I prefer exchanges. There's no temptation on either side to cancel a trade before settlement or take their time with sending to see how the market moves. The trades are only executed when both the BTC and USD are ready to change hands. Otherwise, since either side has such a huge motive to lie, even if you are telling the truth, many people will still have doubts.

[eMansipater]

This is the most offensive thing to me about this situation--not the monetary loss, but the fact that the Madhatter has first implicitly and then explicitly accused me of trying to defraud him.

This doesn't make any sense.

I insinuated that you were possibly trying to scam me via email due to the fact that this is the 2nd time you've mailed to me late and expected me to honor an old rate. The first time could have been the mail system, but twice? It's definitely suspicious, to say the least.

What are you talking about?  There have been no trades except for the ones detailed in my post, and everything there (except for the missing letters which are still m.i.a.) has arrived within 10 business days.

With your permission, Madhatter, I will post our entire (digitally signed) email exchange here, to compliment the complete information I have available to me in other forms.

We all know that you are going to do it anyway.

Email conversations have a reasonable expectation of privacy, and I will not be accused of violating someone's privacy except as a last resort.  If you prefer to do it differently, I am happy to have you publish the entire exchange yourself.  Stop playing these bantering games and let's just lay everything out.  I couldn't care less if either of our egos are bruised--let's just get this thing resolved to the satisfaction of the entire community here, and for goodness' sake double-check your records before getting all personal.  If this whole anonymous business thing is going to work, transparency and community response are going to have to take the place of courts and mediators in resolving disputes.  Too tired to respond more tonight, will reply to the whole thing after I can get some rest and clear out a growing backlog in my business.


p.s. edited the OP's thread title as I also feel "fraud" is too strong of a word and the discussion is largely focussing on my situation now.  If he has a problem with that he can edit it back.

[Anonymous]

It's entirely possible that neither side is fradulent, but that a failure of the government managed postal system is to blame.

I tend to agree.

Ive had a trade with madhatter before and everything went smoothly.

[The Madhatter]

What are you talking about?  There have been no trades except for the ones detailed in my post, and everything there (except for the missing letters which are still m.i.a.) has arrived within 10 business days.

I'm talking about the other expresspost you had sent me before to cover late mail. You know what I'm talking about.

Email conversations have a reasonable expectation of privacy, and I will not be accused of violating someone's privacy except as a last resort.

I don't expect any emails I send someone to remain private. I'm conducting business in public view. Do as you wish.

If you prefer to do it differently, I am happy to have you publish the entire exchange yourself.  Stop playing these bantering games and let's just lay everything out.  I couldn't care less if either of our egos are bruised--let's just get this thing resolved to the satisfaction of the entire community here, and for goodness' sake double-check your records before getting all personal.  If this whole anonymous business thing is going to work, transparency and community response are going to have to take the place of courts and mediators in resolving disputes.  Too tired to respond more tonight, will reply to the whole thing after I can get some rest and clear out a growing backlog in my business.

So you are planning on wasting even more of my time? So I'll have to login to the forum each day and argue the meaning of each sentence I previously wrote? No thanks. I really have better things to do with my time. I won't return to this thread.

Note: I made the 60-day time limit more clear on Bitcoin4Cash. I am also accepting locked in trades again and my Bitcoin inventory is being replenished.

[SgtSpike]

So you are planning on wasting even more of my time? So I'll have to login to the forum each day and argue the meaning of each sentence I previously wrote? No thanks. I really have better things to do with my time. I won't return to this thread.

Note: I made the 60-day time limit more clear on Bitcoin4Cash. I am also accepting locked in trades again and my Bitcoin inventory is being replenished.

Better things to do than defend your company/reputation?  If I were you, that would be rather high on my priority list...

[happyland]

Somewhat OT, but does Canada Post offer delivery confirmation or tracking options on mail?
I know the USPS lets you add it to First Class mail for just $0.18.  I now make it standard practice to put tracking on all my outgoing First Class pieces to help arbitrate non-receipt disputes like this.  Even then, I feel like the USPS delivers things with tracking in a more timely manner, as each mailpiece is being monitored through the system.
Perhaps MadHatter should encourage (or require) his customers to add tracking to their Bitcoin4Cash orders and provide that number to him, especially when sending cash through the mail.

[Bobby]

Oh boy.. where do I begin...

Basically this person tried to scam me so I refused his business. I have the right to refuse business don't I? I mean, everyone does. Try starting a fist fight at your local bar and see how willing they are to serve you afterward.

He booked a locked in trade and mailed the cash "when he felt like it". Better described as "when he was sure the rate would go up". He mailed a letter from the same country and his post mark and order date were almost 1.5 months apart. I'm sorry, but I can't be expected to hold rates forever. I simply can't do that.

I reversed his deposit and mailed his cash back to him. Not once did he email me about it. He decided to wait until I revised my site (a week later) to post here. Tsk tsk.

Avoid doing business with this guy. I know I will.

So I booked a transaction three and a half weeks ago for 288 BTC at $350.  I send a 10% deposit to lock in the rate at around $1.2 Canadian.  I mail the money the next day and then wait and wait and wait for over three weeks.  Then yesterday I find out that my deposit has been refunded and the Mr. Madhatter is "unable" (more likely unwilling) to honor the locked-in order because he decided that the prices were "too volatile" currently for him to honor his own word.

...

Sorry it took me a while to reply. As I'm very busy, I only have a few minutes each day to visit the forum.  You must be mistaken about which transaction this is concerning because my trade was booked on April 22, 2011:  https://www.bitcoin4cash.com/status.php?tcode=bfc81c4efeb1779ed2b9c49699c700705387e1a0 and was marked canceled on May 13, 2011.  I first noticed on May 13 but only had time to make my post on the forum on May 14.  Sorry for the lack of private communications in trying to resolve this issue but since I don't have much time to access the Internet and since I felt that your statements made on your website were unambiguous in their intention, I felt compelled to warn the community as quickly as possible of the situation. 

I'm not sure where you get 1.5 months from since my transaction was already canceled by you after only three weeks of being booked.  It may have taken me a few days to get the payment mailed off although I did send it as soon as I could get the money together at my earliest convenience.  If it had been mentioned anywhere that there was a maximum delay to mail the letter then I would have respected that deadline but there was no such indication and I could only assume that I was allowed to mail the payment whenever was convenient for me.  Since I'm very busy operating several different businesses and since I was making this transaction on the behalf of a friend of mine who had to first give me the money to send to you it was not my highest priority time-wise and may have indeed been delayed by a few days but obviously not 1.5 months as claimed (since the transaction was booked less than one month ago at this time). I'm not sure how you can know what my intentions were and claim that I was attempting to scam you while admitting no responsibility in the matter when I was respecting all the terms specified on your website.  I had done business with you four times in the past and was very satisfied with the service every time (even though on a few occasions it took a several weeks between the time I mailed the payment and the trade was completed) so had no reason to be worried that there would be any problem this time around.  I think a 60-day time limit is reasonable however this time limit is still more than a month in the future so I'm not sure under what grounds my transaction is being canceled and I'm being accused of wrongdoing.  If you would consider reversing your decision and completing my transaction then I would be very appreciative, would retract any accusations I made against you and would certainly continue using your services many times in the future.

I have to say I don't think Madhatter had any wrongful intentions or had the intention to scam anyone (unlike he accuses me of doing) but rather made some important business mistakes by not properly anticipating his own risks, by making the terms of use of his service overly ambiguous and by choosing to resolve these mistakes in such an unprofessional manner.

[minerX]

This thread has made me realize something new.  My employer has begun to block bitcoin trade sites, including bitcoin4cash.com.

You should grab yourself a VPS server.  Putty + Firefox portable = gold.  It's incredibly easy and bypasses all forms of internet "blockage."  Assuming your SSH tunnel is open.

The best they can see is there is bandwidth traffic through a specific port.

I bring it with me to every job now!

[Bobby]

p.s. edited the OP's thread title as I also feel "fraud" is too strong of a word and the discussion is largely focussing on my situation now.  If he has a problem with that he can edit it back.

I agree that the accusation of "fraud" was too harsh.  The situation is more of a misunderstanding as I see it since there doesn't seem to be any malicious intent on the part of anyone involved.

[lonestranger]

I'd ask to see the email, but I'm not sure what it would prove.

It could prove a lot! I'd like to see the email correspondence. Let their words speak for themselves!

[lonestranger]

It's entirely possible that neither side is fradulent, but that a failure of the government managed postal system is to blame.

Sending cash in the mail has always sounded a little daft to me. At the very least shouldn't it be sent in a trackable way, like return receipt or something? Madhatter's site (and others) should recommend this, in my opinion.

[NghtRppr]

Sending cash in the mail has always sounded a little daft to me. At the very least shouldn't it be sent in a trackable way, like return receipt or something? Madhatter's site (and others) should recommend this, in my opinion.

My business is based on a niche. It's for people that want to buy/sell BTC with anonymity. Therefore, tracking a package defeats that purpose. If you want security, I would recommend that you use a wire transfer and buy/sell on Mt Gox.