Ask HN: How is coinbase allowed to have atrocious support?

4 points

9 years ago

To give some context: I mined bitcoin in the Mt. Gox days before it went under. Forgot about BTC for a while, and then bought bitcoin on coinbase about 4 months ago. I had registered my account a few years ago, and had been already been fully verified. When suddenly crypto started dominating the news, coinbase started having many issues. I chocked it all up to fast growing pains. Suddenly they wouldn't let me deposit it a little bit more money because it couldn't verify me. They seemed happy to take my money a few months ago and give me full verification but now they wouldn't let me do it. Their verification page is also completely broken. (Auto forwards after an error and error messages are not helpful) To get around this, I wired the money in. Once the money came in, I was still unable to buy BTC because I' was not verified.

Throughout this process I've been emailing them and I haven't gotten one email back. How is this possible? If you look at the coinbase subreddit [1] you can tell I'm not alone. Coinbase has about ~8k of my money. I even tried deleting my verification and re verifying, but now my USD wallet just disappeared. I'm starting to get feeling of deja vu from the Mt. Gox days.

They also seem to have over 100M in total funding [2]. One would assume they would prioritize resolving customer issues but it seems like they just don't care. If you email them you get an automatic response saying that they're busy. Aren't there laws they are supposed to follow regarding customer support when they handle money? i.e. respond to questions, or at the minimum respond to requests to release my money. I'm a little lost and worried. What should I be doing?

Thank You,

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/CoinBase/

[2] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/coinbase#/entity

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