Ask HN: 5 months and counting waiting for Coinbase customer support. Advice? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: 5 months and counting waiting for Coinbase customer support. Advice?

#61

Post by nikanj » Tue, Jan 30, 2018, 12:38 AM UTC

dna_polymerase wrote: post #28

At one point in the next few hours coinbase employees will enter this discussion. They will probably elevate your issue and make sure you are responded to within hours. This is of course just a measure they take to keep the crowd silent. And it will not help other people with the same/other problems. Please report them to BBB and other authorities within your reach. Companies should receive no love for this kind of b…

They seem to follow the modern model, where support is fully separated from development. People writing the software only learn of customer voes through annual recaps, sanitized for content of course, and the occasional HN post that makes front page.

This is a very, very successful model, as demonstrated by many of the biggest companies around.

Re: Ask HN: 5 months and counting waiting for Coinbase customer support. Advice?

#62

Post by madeofpalk » Tue, Jan 30, 2018, 12:40 AM UTC

cryptoz wrote: post #20

jlardinois wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a similar issue with Venmo—a friend tried to pay me back for a Cuban sandwich, and the transaction was held up because he just wrote "Cubans" as the description. Only in Venmo's case, the issue was resolved mere hours after he sent an email explaining the situation. I opened a Coinbase account back in college ~6 years ago when they were giving $10 in Bitcoin to anyone who signed up with a .edu email address. I…

Woah. Venmo parses and makes decisions on the description field before performing the transaction? That's wild. I would have thought that to just be a convenience field for the customers. So Venmo decides what you can spend money on and what you can't? Yikes, I'm happy to not use it regularly.

I Tried to Venmo $12.66 for 'ISIS' and the Government Was Pissed. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/5gqyzd/i-tried-to-venmo-1...

As the subtitle points out, neither Venmo or the Treasury Department shares the author’s sense of humour.

Re: Ask HN: 5 months and counting waiting for Coinbase customer support. Advice?

#63

Post by karmapolic » Tue, Jan 30, 2018, 12:40 AM UTC

sushid wrote: post #60

I've mentioned this in other threads but I had a very significant holding in ETH (more than enough to buy a car) stuck in limbo for about a week until I emailed them every day about it. I would say call and be on hold for about a hour (no joke, it was around 70 minutes when I called about a month ago) and talk to them to escalate your case to priority 1. It'll then be resolved in about two weeks.

get a linkedin premium for trial and inmail one of the top level executives.

Re: Ask HN: 5 months and counting waiting for Coinbase customer support. Advice?

#64

Post by karmapolic » Tue, Jan 30, 2018, 12:41 AM UTC

mv4 wrote: post #6

It's been over a month for me. My case hasn't been touched, except for one automated "read the FAQ" update. Lost my ETH transaction. Thousands are having the same issue (lack of support), based on Twitter alone. Tweeting at the CEO is useless, unless you're someone famous. The really sad part - with the amount of money they are making ($1B/yr), they should be able to handle support. It's only several categories (acco…

get a linkedin premium for trial and inmail one of the top level executives.

Re: Ask HN: 5 months and counting waiting for Coinbase customer support. Advice?

#65

Post by karmapolic » Tue, Jan 30, 2018, 12:41 AM UTC

get a linkedin premium for trial and inmail one of the top level executives.

Re: Ask HN: 5 months and counting waiting for Coinbase customer support. Advice?

#66

Post by benbreen » Tue, Jan 30, 2018, 12:42 AM UTC

Ok, an update, since I can't edit the original anymore. "Kyle" at Coinbase reached out to me via email: "I’m so sorry for the delay in our response. We were able to clear your account."

I can't imagine that it had anything to do with bad publicity from being on the front page of Hacker News... anyway, I'm glad it was finally resolved. Thanks HN.

Re: Ask HN: 5 months and counting waiting for Coinbase customer support. Advice?

#67

Post by mv4 » Tue, Jan 30, 2018, 12:43 AM UTC

DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #21

hellcow wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually founded a company that does ML-based customer service alongside humans. https://www.abotlabs.com If anybody at Coinbase wants to reach out, I can probably automate 20-50% of your queries with integrations into your backend systems. Email is in my profile.

> I actually do ML-based customer service. An alternative business model: An ML-based recommender for Coinbase's customers for how best to obtain satisfaction. The revenue model would be a little harder to design, but you might help more deserving people.

So far, the most effective way for a CB customer to obtain satisfaction has been calling out a CB employee on Reddit by name (who also happen to be active Reddit users) with a case number, at which point said employee personally looks at the issue and provides an update.

Re: Ask HN: 5 months and counting waiting for Coinbase customer support. Advice?

#68

Post by dataker » Tue, Jan 30, 2018, 12:43 AM UTC

This is pretty terrible support management. In our company, if a case is opened for more than 5 days, the entire team is notified.

If then nobody does anything, the entire department is notified. That never had to happen.

Re: Ask HN: 5 months and counting waiting for Coinbase customer support. Advice?

#69

Post by jandsgames » Tue, Jan 30, 2018, 12:43 AM UTC

I wired in a large amount of money to coinbase on the 12th of January and have yet to see my account credited. I have opened several support requests and call twice only to get the runaround. Anyone else have a similar issue? Did you eventually get credited? Everything was done correctly , confirmed with my bank as well as coinbase's bank

Re: Ask HN: 5 months and counting waiting for Coinbase customer support. Advice?

#70

Post by artursapek » Tue, Jan 30, 2018, 12:47 AM UTC

benbreen wrote: post #66

Ok, an update, since I can't edit the original anymore. "Kyle" at Coinbase reached out to me via email: "I’m so sorry for the delay in our response. We were able to clear your account." I can't imagine that it had anything to do with bad publicity from being on the front page of Hacker News... anyway, I'm glad it was finally resolved. Thanks HN.

Sad how that's what it takes. I had a similar experience getting Aetna to pay for my wife's home birth... they gave a gap exception and promised to pay for it months in advance. Afterwards, when I actually tried getting them to, they ignored me for weeks and stonewalled me on the phone.

Eventually someone suggested to write an angry tweet about them... it seemed stupid but I was out of ideas. I did it and they immediately reached out and paid for it in full. I often wonder how many people never think to complain in public and get screwed.