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Comment by phodo | Hacker News Reader

I have been a long time coinbase user. I have been very unhappy with their support. I have been unable to add additional funds to buy both additional ethereum and btc from their site, even after contacting them repeatedly about this ... but never getting a reply. I did multiple identity verifications and connected bank and credit cards. No luck in being able to transact properly. Bitcoin Cash was a forcing function and last week I sent my funds to a private wallet. I am also buying additional crypto on Gemini and other exchanges. To give an idea of my frustration with them, I first tried to buy ethereum thru then at $40. I gave them benefit of the doubt in solving my issues ... and waited and waited. By the time I realized that they were not listening to me, ether had shot up to more than $200. I ultimately bought on Gemini. This was their business to lose and they did exactly that.

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I've had almost exactly the same experience. I recently withdrew all my btc into an offline wallet because I just couldn't trust having to deal with Coinbase support based on prior experience.

One example springs to mind. I bought some ETH once they initially began supporting it, just before it shot up in value. However, the transaction just seemed to disappear and I lost out. I tried contacting support by they just kept closing my tickets without explanation. Very, very frustrating.

The only weapon you have (that they care about) is a chargeback dispute.

I know a story when someone bought some coins with Visa credit card and they had some issues with Conibase service. Same story with tickets - open only to have it closed down next day with suggestion to look into knowledge base.

Then they proceed to the bank and opened a chargeback dispute based on false advertising (legitimate reason) that Coinbase promised to help and are not.

You see - since crypto-currency is not tangible item (you can call it service, if you will), neither Visa, nor Amex or Mastercard will have issues with your dispute, because there is even no tracking to proof you received your "product". Of course once the funds are returned to your credit card and bank notifies Coinbase about the dispute, Coinbase will take your coins away from you, but that's not the point. You see -- it doesnt matter to Visa if you process $1 billion in monthly transactions - if you have too many chargebacks, they will shut you down. End of the story. You open another account - you go on the MATCH list and owner(s) SSN/IDs are on it for 5 years so bye bye processing credit card transactions.

Coinbase might not care about you (I am sure they do per se, they just cheap and won't hire enough eyeballs to answer customer support), but surely they care about their chargebacks dispute level.

I've gotta say I've always been skeptical of posts like this because there is a lot of faux hate spewed on the Internet about Coinbase due to them having spoken the heresy of supporting bigger blocks.

That said I'm currently experiencing a problem where all emails from Coinbase to my email address are being lost and it isn't a spam filter. I emailed them describing the problem and they emailed me back with the boiler plate suggestions about checking your spam folder that can be found on their support website. Which I explicitly said I had already tried in my support request.

If all they are going to do is regurgitate information from there website why do they have support people at all?

If anyone from Coinbase is reading this all email sent from Coinbase to the Purdue Alumni email forwarding service @alumni.purdue.edu is being lost or not sent or something. It may have something to do with the fact that the alumni.purdue.edu server doesn't support TLS. I don't know just a guess but I know something changed in the past couple months and I don't even get marketing emails from Coinbase any more and it is preventing me from logging into my account.

> I emailed them describing the problem and they emailed me back with the boiler plate suggestions about checking your spam folder that can be found on their support website. Which I explicitly said I had already tried in my support request.

I had a similar issue. I posted a clear support ticket, heard nothing for at least a day or two (probably longer) then got boilerplate about checking the support website. I replied saying I did and that the information on the support page couldn't be used to solve the problem. Nothing from Coinbase for a week, then another bot email saying they'll close the ticket unless I reply (again!) saying my issue was not resolved. This back and forth lasted over a month.

It reflects pretty poorly on them as a company and I really can't recommend using them as a result. The underlying support issue was related to their verification software. If their verification software doesn't work for some reason and their support is isn't focused/careful, then you're out of your account for more than a month.

Working in higher ed, I'd say it's more likely your university is filtering it as spam before it ever hits your inbox. Bitcoin and it's ilk are giant red flags for over-protective systems. (I'm not endorsing it, just trying to give some advice).

It's just a forwarding account, I've had it for over a decade and have never experienced it filtering spam or coinbase emails before this past month. I think it is a lot more likely that Coinbase did something with their email system. The forwarding service doesn't support TLS so it seems plausible that Coinbase wouldn't want to send email to known insecure smtp servers but who knows.

I, too, have had terrible past experiences with Coinbase and I no longer use them. I now buy on Gemini for fiat -> BTC and use other exchanges for altcoins. That said, I no longer keep any crypto on any exchange, including Gemini. The whole point of Bitcoin is that you are your own bank via ownership of your private keys. By giving them to Coinbase, you centralize the system, concentrate the risk, and create honeypots for hackers. Remember, the government doesn't insure Bitcoin balances like it does with USD in banks and so much Bitcoin has been lost via exchange hacks in the past few years.

Don't let centralized authorities keep your private keys.

If you're an above-average HN reader who knows something about security, then absolutely you should hold your own coins.

But for the average person the chances are much higher that they will get hacked or lose their keys than losing their coins on Coinbase.

> The whole point of Bitcoin is that you are your own bank

There are several important differences between Bitcoin and traditional currencies. This may be the most important one to you, but it is not to everyone.

Given the high profile attacks on crypto exchanges over recent years, how much trust do you place in Gemini securing your SSN, proof of ID, and proof of address?

Not very much, but only because those are byproducts of a cryptocurrency hack. If they didn't control centralized private keys and thus implicitly have one of the biggest bug bounties, I would be less worried about people hacking my SSN, ID, etc. from Gemini.

That said, I also don't care as much if those get hacked as I can recover from stolen identity, while it's impossible to get back stolen bitcoin.

They are so convenient though :)

Terrible support, if you cant even get answers to basic questions then why would you want to potentially invest through their platform? I immediately sacked them off after not even being able to get a satisfactory response to ID checks

Not to mention that their website was pretty much constantly down during the recent period of Ethereum volatility. Whenever Ethereum price started to move (which is exactly the moment when people want to sell/buy) they would go tits up. And not just for a minute or two, but hours.

I've had a problem where 2FA would always default to the authy app I once used, but I just wanted the raw QR code to use a simple OTP app.

One week after contacting their support and not getting any response, I got an automated response asking if I am still interested in a follow up and if so, I should reply to this mail.

This continued for 2 months every week. I then decided to start complaining on their subreddit and twitter and coincidentally immediately got a mail helping me with my original problem and finally fixing it.

Now with the hardfork I withdrew all my funds as well and will never go back.

Interesting. I had mined some coins a few years ago, and finally decided to sell them off. I was able to sell them on coinbase within 5 days and get the USD into my bank account the following day.

I have had overwhelmingly crappy support as well: initially verified, but then revoked and impossible to reinstate. identity verification uploads that are never satisfactory, or are "processing" indefinitely. laggy orders that cause price shifts in counterparties favor. messages to help desk that go unanswered.

Also during this spring when BTC was up and down on a day to day basis, their services/app was down a few times. Just when you need the app the most, it fails you.

So I don't trust them and as soon as a viable alternative comes along I'm off Coinbase.

Same here. I got so fed up with their terrible support I left.

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