Something very interesting happened today. Something that I did not expect to happen for some time, if ever.
Some Bitcoin I transferred from my Poloniex account to my Coinbase account roughly 4 months ago finally showed up.
No, I am not talking about the transaction being unconfirmed and then finally it got confirmed, that is another issue entirely, but one that is very prevalent never the less.
To fully understand what happened in my case you will need a little bit of the backstory.
About 4 or 5 months ago I transferred a small amount of Bitcoin from my Poloniex account to my Bitcoin wallet at Coinbase. I had done this numerous times in the past and never really had any issues, well besides the slow transaction times, but that is nothing everyone hasn't experienced from time to time.
The amount in question was roughly .03 Bitcoin. At the time I believe it was worth somewhere around $35 dollars.
The transaction confirmed from my Poloniex account and it was sent over to my Coinbase account where it was also confirmed, although it took several hours which was a bit longer than usual.
However, the Bitcoin itself never showed up in my account. The transaction was shown as completed but my account was never credited with the confirmed Bitcoin.
I thought this was pretty strange but something I thought might resolve itself in a couple days.
It didn't.
I contacted customer support and filed my complaint with them.
Weeks went by without even a response from them besides the confirmation that they had received my complaint.
So, I filed another one.
This time a few days later I received a response back apologizing for the delay in helping me but that their support staff had been swamped with the sudden explosion in activity the site was getting.
I understood that and patiently waited for them to resolve the issue.
Another few weeks went by and then another email came, this one asking me if my issue had been taken care of yet.
I responded that it had not been resolved and it had now been a couple months without any kind of resolution.
A few more weeks went by, then a few more, then a few more.
At this point I pretty much figured I was never going to get that .03 Bitcoin back, all the while Bitcoin was climbing higher and higher by the way.
As the weeks turned into months without any more responses from Coinbase, I had officially written off the transaction in my mind as lost money.
However, then out of no where, the lost .03 Bitcoin unexpectedly showed up in my Coinbase account today.
Is this Christmas?
I haven't heard any response from the company for months but my Bitcoin finally showed up.
It was ironic because at the time I was thinking of turning that .03 Bitcoin into fiat, which was worth about $35 dollars at the time.
Well after it was deposited today, I went ahead and turned it into fiat, giving me roughly $80 dollars.
By Coinbase locking up my Bitcoin, I effectively doubled my money.
So, in a round about way, Coinbase invested my money for 4 months and returned it to me with an incredible return. ;)
I still am not thrilled with what happened, but I can understand that the infrastructure is not quite set up yet for the amount of people that are soon to be using it. The customer service aspect is light years behind where it will be someday when these things reach mainstream.
So, while I wasn't happy with the process, I am pretty happy with the results!
I forgive you Coinbase!
Stay informed my friends.
Image Sources:
https://coinbase.com
https://support.coinbase.com/
http://www.greatcrawl.com/
