Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

171–180 of 191 posts

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

#172
Here's an interesting metric which I think is behind all the support troubles at Coinbase:

Take a look at Coinbase's Alexa ranking: https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/coinbase.com

220 - up from around 3000 12 months ago! That is simply incredible. A site like that would get buried in support tickets fast, especially after such growth.

Another interesting metric, they are beating Citibank:https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/citi.com

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

#173
post #97
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. After five months of brush-off, two hours on HN resolved the issue. That's insane. I guess that Coinbase folk must read HN.

Coinbase is complete scum, not surprising.

How so? Really asking, I've only had good experiences with them.

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

#174

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.

Sorry you had to go through this. It's pathetic that nowadays the only way to get the attention of a company is to shame them in a public forum. While I'm not a big social media fan myself, I'm glad it's there when we need it to call out people and companies like this. This is the only reason that "Kyle" reached out to you, not because they care about you as a customer. It's a shame really.

Social media has partially democratized access to public shaming, in the US at least, as you no longer need to know someone at a media outlet. But luck remains an important factor. If OP had posted an hour earlier or later, it could have never broken out of 1 or 2 upvotes on HN, and his issue would not have been solved.

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

#175

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.

Sorry you had to go through this. It's pathetic that nowadays the only way to get the attention of a company is to shame them in a public forum. While I'm not a big social media fan myself, I'm glad it's there when we need it to call out people and companies like this. This is the only reason that "Kyle" reached out to you, not because they care about you as a customer. It's a shame really.

You could see it as a positive. Until a few years ago, people with influence got preferential treatment. Now anyone with a twitter account can.

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

#177

Damn, I just opened a coinbase account, thinking they were the only reputable exchange around. Luckily I don't have that much invested. Does anyone have suggestions for competitors?

It works fine 99.9% of the time. I know many people who have used Coinbase / GDAX for years without any issues. You can also try Kraken (they just upgraded but had a lot of site reliability issues before) or Robinhood once it launches next month.

[deleted]

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

#178
post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's disappointing when a company that's as well funded and big as Coinbase leaves customers hanging. I'm a co-founder at a customer conversations management and helpdesk platform - Re:amaze, and we answer _every_ single customer question and conversation on email, social and on our site that come our way. Every single one. Any that we can't answer right away we let them know we're working on it and set a reminder to…

It is wierd that companies are like this. I love everything else about Gitlab yet I am having a less than stellar time with Gitlab support. Is it because for most companies the perception is that if someone needs support they are already more likely to be a bad / lost customer anyway so don't put too much effort into it?

Thanks for sharing your experience with GitLab support. I'm happy to follow up on your issue if you reference your ticket number.

We absolutely want to help every customer have a good experience. When we fail at that we want to do everything possible to turn it around. I look forward to helping you.

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

#179
post #5

They seem like a chronic bad actor. I believe small claims court, BBB, CFPB are all valid recourses. Better still - if you can make this a class action by eliciting similar victims to come forward, you may actually get them to change their ways. Right now it seems like they can simply fuck with you without consequence. And then there's the irony of coinbase being a middlemen in a market that aimed to remove the middl…

It really does seem like they don't care about the consequences. I was listening to Reid Hoffman's "Masters of Scale" podcast where he talked about LinkedIn simply unplugging their customer service line when they were in the midst of a particularly fast period of expansion. That's maybe acceptable if you run a social network, but I fear that Coinbase has taken that lesson to heart and applied it to a business where r…

Wasn't he talking about PayPal? (Also money service)

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

#180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you mean it has knocked down your age?

A 6-year old can't buy ETH? Crypto truly is mainstream.

Of course not? Try register an account with a 2012 birthday on Coinbase? Did you even read? I bet not?
Post reply on HN