Non-Existent Service in the CryptoCurrency Business Will Have Long-Term Impact
Right now the crypto market is red hot and like any market that’s so hot, company’s at the time often forget that customer service is for the long-term and that by not treating the customer right, eventually enough will move on. Crypto company’s won’t be feeling the pinch right now, but once a downturn hits is where we will see this play out in my opinion.
I’m speaking from my own experience, frustration and concern here. Just a heads up, this post is not intended to affect your financial decisions, it’s just purely as a review.
I have dealt with many different company’s and most of them will NEVER reply to you. Even worse most of them don’t have a simple contact form, e-mail address, phone number or built-in support system (I guess in all fairness it’s like getting help from PayPal only a bit worse).
A sampling of random experiences and exercise in patience.
Coinbase
It took a long time to get “verified” enough to even make a purchase with their high fee system but it is a quick, expensive and easy way to get into crypto once you are verified. However one thing I was unhappy with is that you cannot purchase directly to your own personal wallet (I don’t like leaving money in exchanges because of MtGox, Bitfinex and other hacking incidents where people lost real money). All I ever got was an apologetic generic reply and nothing more. If you’re having serious issues it is unlikely this company will ever help you so there is the real risk of their mistake or other problems costing you time and money.
JUN 20, 2017 | 02:19PM PDT
Josie replied:
This is an automated email. As we experience rapid growth, we are also experiencing a high volume of support requests and we regret not being able to answer your inquiry in a reasonable amount of time.
JUL 28, 2017 | 01:21AM PDT
Skye replied:
Hi,
Thank you for contacting Coinbase Support. We sincerely apologize for not answering your inquiry in a reasonable amount of time.
If you are still experiencing this issue, simply reply to this email with screenshots of error messages or other relevant information that you think would help us solve and understand the issue, and we be happy to work on a resolution for you. If your issue has been resolved, no reply is needed.
Thank you for your patience during this time and for your continued support while we improve our service.
Gatehub
I sent them USD in order to exchange for some Ripple but without my permission they converted it into EUR so I lost money on the conversion and wire. The reason I sent USD is because they said it was for USD and to top it off the bank was in Lithuania (a little scary to send to an unregulated market and does set off some alarm bells and concerns). This is typical of the crypto industry and I do think it will come back to bite and haunt them.
I did ask Gatehub to make it right but never received any response after a number of weeks. Even to verify my account it literally took a number of months to even get a response and to complete the process. During these bullish times anything will fly because there are only so many alternatives but all bets are certainly off after that point.
Poloniex
Poloniex is one of the biggest exchanges out there but you can find complaints all over reddit of people not being able to verify their account for months. I uploaded my information only to be sent through a third party verification process. This required me to use a live webcam that perfectly captured the details of my ID live (who has a webcam these days let alone one that would get the crazy macro shot they require!). The process told me the details weren’t clear enough, even the sending a selfie with your ID method was not supported. And if you didn’t get it right at that moment or even if you had no webcam you can’t even try to verify yourself again for several hours. Needless to say I’ve moved on and so have many others.
Kraken
I simply won’t trust them, initially I didn’t know who they were but somehow I was signed up without my knowledge or consent. I kept getting so much spam from them I didn’t even realize they were any sort of legitimate company. The fact that they essentially marketed themselves through spam and forcefully signing up clients makes me not trust them at all (even less than many other firms).
Coinmama
They aren’t cheap but I will give them this, they were quick with verification and when there are issues they reply usually within a number of days with an actual human response.
What Does This Add Up to?
Customer service in the crypto world is non-existent and so is the trust factor and reliability of many of the companies involved.
A very nervous and frustrating experience even for veterans and those who understand crypto, my level of trust in these companies is quite low. They don’t even have phone numbers or addresses for the most part and those that do you can never get to a human usually.
When things work fine you shouldn’t have a need to contact these companies, but when there are issues it is very likely you will be ignored regardless of the issue, or any reply is not helpful or may come weeks or months too late.
