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The Great Robocoin Rip-off: How We Lost $25,000 Buying a Robocoin ATM

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Re: The Great Robocoin Rip-off: How We Lost $25,000 Buying a Robocoin ATM

#41

Post by Havvy »

skyjacker wrote: post #40

Personally, I've tried five times to make small purchases with Bitcoin (this was several years ago). In all cases I was ripped off and never received product. It's not going to be government regulations that kill Bitcoin, its the associations with illicit drugs, child pornography, and dishonesty of vendors like Robocoin.

On IRC, somebody once put a bug bounty of 2BTC for a geometric problem. I fixed the bug in two hours (including the time it took to look up the geometry formulas...) and did receive the bitcoin. This was at the time that Bitcoin was trending $850 each.

It seems to me though, that due to bitcoin's relative newness and grey market status, you're going to see a lot of scammers and bad businessmen related to it. It's high risk in that sense, and you need to do your research. Give it time, and the bad business practices will be weeded out, and stability will come. This is the pain of early adoption.

Re: The Great Robocoin Rip-off: How We Lost $25,000 Buying a Robocoin ATM

#44

Post by eric_bullington »

skyjacker wrote: post #40

Personally, I've tried five times to make small purchases with Bitcoin (this was several years ago). In all cases I was ripped off and never received product. It's not going to be government regulations that kill Bitcoin, its the associations with illicit drugs, child pornography, and dishonesty of vendors like Robocoin.

On the other hand, I've been into Bitcoin since early 2011, have made hundreds of purchases with Bitcoin, gotten made for major contract jobs in Bitcoin, paid other contractors in Bitcoin, and never been ripped off. You just have to exercise some caution and do your due diligence.

Unfortunately, Bitcoin has attracted more than its fair share of scammers -- in part because the core community was at one time pretty naive -- but it's also full of honest people who are attracted to Bitcoin for ideological reasons, and fellow technophiles who are happy to engage in honest commerce with other people.

Re: The Great Robocoin Rip-off: How We Lost $25,000 Buying a Robocoin ATM

#45

Post by flyinglizard »

jmathai wrote: post #30

Absolutely terrible. I have the feeling that Jordan knows exactly what he's doing. The amount of $20,000 is a lot but it's not that much once you start to hire lawyers and file a suit or go into arbitration. Sounds like he's stringing them along waiting to see how much more cash they're willing to invest to recoup that $20,000. Even worse Jordan might be setting himself up for a settlement of less than $20,000 where…

I wouldn't say Jordan has the upper hand. Managing the reputation of the company is critical for the survival of a startup. Andrew may lose, at worst, $20k, but Jordan can lose everything (unless its a scam or they already made a substantial profit from these machines).

Re: The Great Robocoin Rip-off: How We Lost $25,000 Buying a Robocoin ATM

#46

Post by jebus989 »

vmp wrote: post #12

Is it such a good idea to invest in something that's built on deprecated software (Windows XP)? And to handle money, no less. I'm a layman in regards to this, but is there a valid reason to choose XP over, lets say, a LTS Ubuntu release? Maybe some PCI ruling or something like that? Just seems strange and I've had a bad vibe ever since I read it.

I understand the confusion but this isn't Windows XP Home with MS Paint and pinball — it's XP embedded (XPe), a minimal OS tailored to specific hardward and still receives security updates until 2016-19 depending on version purchased.

Re: The Great Robocoin Rip-off: How We Lost $25,000 Buying a Robocoin ATM

#47

Post by PeterisP »

leovander wrote: post #37
flyinglizard wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, he's doing the morally right thing by calling them out after a fiasco spanning several months, backed by correspondence. Second, applying public pressure to get his refund is much better than going to litigious way, unless he seeks damages too (which I believe he doesn't - just wants his refund back).

I get that we are on the Internet and everyone gets a voice, but they should have let their lawyers do the talking. Both companies are run by adults I assume, but both are throwing sand in each other's faces running across the playground, in this case reddit, Twitter and HN. Either party can use this as slander I suppose. If Robocoin is still making money, this bad PR might go against them for just a bit, but their "…

Disregarding the legal issues, warning other customers of such behavior is pretty much a moral duty - keeping mum, as you propose, would be a shameful behavior and if everyone did that way then we'd have a worse society.

Re: The Great Robocoin Rip-off: How We Lost $25,000 Buying a Robocoin ATM

#48

Post by MattBearman »

vmp wrote: post #12

Is it such a good idea to invest in something that's built on deprecated software (Windows XP)? And to handle money, no less. I'm a layman in regards to this, but is there a valid reason to choose XP over, lets say, a LTS Ubuntu release? Maybe some PCI ruling or something like that? Just seems strange and I've had a bad vibe ever since I read it.

The original article has now been updated, the ATM was running Windows 7, not XP.

Re: The Great Robocoin Rip-off: How We Lost $25,000 Buying a Robocoin ATM

#49

Post by probably_wrong »

everydaypanos wrote: post #42

1. Going public on this shows lack of common sense, since the guy there said that contract had 0 refunds in it... 2. Expecting to pay $25k and pressing a button and then making $2k per month for eternity is NOT wise.

Regarding point 1: a contract is an agreement between two or more parties. In this case, Robocoin agreed to deliver a working Bitcoin ATM, and Andrew and Rajiv agreed to pay a certain amount for it.

Robocoin didn't do what they promised they would do, or did it badly. Therefore, A&R are not required to uphold their end of the deal - in fact, if they are willing to take the matter to court, they are also entitled to get a compensation for all the extra money they lost.

So even though the contract specifies "no refunds", that contract was broken by Robocoin, and therefore A&R should indeed get their money back.

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