Consumer complaint received 2022-04-11
Company: Coinbase, Inc.
Product: Money transfer, virtual currency, or money service
Sub-product: Mobile or digital wallet
Issue: Confusing or misleading advertising or marketing

Complaint:
I have an XXXX  app that I have been working on for more than a year. This app has a simple concept : the user plays some mini-games, earns some points, and later trades those points for cryptocurrencies. The app is powered by the Coinbase XXXX, to make those transfers. 

There were no major issues until XXXX of 2022. However, on around XX/XX/XXXX, my transfers suddenly started to be flagged as " suspicious '' and were delayed by 72 hours. My app users who made a transfer would see the transfer notification from Coinbase, but no funds in their account. If they clicked the transfer notification, the Coinbase app would just show a connection problem and no more proper explanation. This incident, lead my app users to think that my project was a scam and would just leave a really bad review on the XXXX XXXX. I contacted Coinbase support, but they looked like they did not have any clue about what happened and did not provide a proper explanation. However, on XX/XX/XXXX, the transfers started to be instantaneous again, and since the problem was solved, I decided to close the support ticket. This incident made me lose almost 50 % of my monthly active users, but I was fine with it and determined to regain all those users. 

Transfers went instantaneous until XX/XX/XXXX with no issues. But after that, the issue returned and all transfers were delayed again. I decided to contact the support team again, but I have been so disrespected and humiliated in my entire life. Until today ( XX/XX/XXXX ), I could not get a single proper explanation, hence this complaint. 

Please note, that those transactions are off-chain transactions. They are promoted by them, to be instantaneous transactions, hence me using their promoted service to power my project. 

After contacting them a second time, explaining the issue, and knowing how long they take to respond, I decided to give it a shot and call their XXXX team. Their XXXX team responded promptly and redirected the issue to their support team. A few hours later, I got responded with a usual copy/paste text from their FAQ. I responded, saying that those steps do not work and that I have tried them, but they just ignored my response and copied the same response. XXXX more attempts at saying that I have tried all those steps and it did not work, but they kept referring to the first email with the FAQ text. I have more than 14 approved identifications, and transfers are still delayed. You can see the entire conversation from this support ticket in the attachment ( Conversation - Case # XXXX ). 

I have worked for more than a year on this project of mine, 14 hours a day, including weekends and holidays just to be misled about a promoted service, with a no cooperative support team. In a desperate move, and seeing all my hard work and investment being thrown into the garbage like this, I decided to gather with a lawyer and proceed with legal action against Coinbase. However, I decided to rethink and gave up on that idea. I waited 6 more days, and my support case was closed without any more communications from them. 

I opened a complaint on their website after their last response ( XX/XX/XXXX ), but until today I did not get a single response from this complaint. 

After some days of me debugging this issue, I opened a new support ticket, explaining ( again ), what was the issue, and a possible lead of why it was occurring. At the time, I thought that due to the high number of transfers from my app, the Coinbase algorithm was detecting my transfers as suspicious and delaying them. I tried to explain this, but what was my surprise when they responded to me that they have blocked my account and I was not even able to log in. So, transfers were already being delayed which was causing a huge impact on my app, and for some reason, they have read my message and understood that my account was compromised and blocked it. In my support request, I never wrote something about it being compromised. I had just suggested a possible solution for the delayed transfers, and for some reason, they considered that my account was " compromised ''. To unblock my account, they have asked for a photo of me, showing my face, my ID, and a message on white paper. All in one photo. This is already pretty invasive since I have already more than 14 approved documents and have stated that my account was never compromised. But, I could not bear the hundreds of emails I was receiving from my app users and proceeded with the " verification ''. This process took one entire day to solve and after regaining access to my account I had to wait an additional 48 hours to regain access to transfers with my account. So, my app was completely useless for XXXX whole days. I have asked for a solution regarding the delayed transfers, and for some reason, they decide to make the situation even worse. 

After regaining access to my account transfers, I restained myself and never felt so scared to request support in my entire life. I had a feeling that for the minimum thing I would say, it would get my account blocked again. After some days, I updated the ticket, requesting an update and threatening about reporting this issue. But for some reason, they kept misreading my messages, and " delayed '' turned into " canceled ''. I am pretty sure that they don't even read customer messages. You can read the entire email conversation in the attachment ( Conversation - Case # XXXX ). 

Coinbase is a big company. I understand that they have a lot of support cases to respond to. I also understand that they can not share their security measures. But this is a complete disrespect to their more supportive users. I have brought thousands of users to their platform. Have spent thousands of dollars on their platform. I even bought all the funds in their platform, despite the excessive fees, just to support them so they could improve their service. At least, I expected a proper response or solution from them. 

They are promoting a service, misleading me ( and other users ), to invest in their services, and then blocking accounts left and right as they please. Not giving any proper explanation or solution. By now, I have lost 70 % of my daily active users. Been working so hard for more than a year, and invested thousands of dollars just to be deceived like that? 

Just for clarification, their API documentation, clearly says that I can do 1000 requests by the hour. I am not even doing 150 now. I used to do 600 and never had any issue. There are hundreds of apps like mine, with the same concept, and no issues at all. 

Why is only my account being limited? Why I can't get a proper explanation from them? I am pretty sure that they did not even read my case, so my only resource is to appeal this complaint.

Company response to consumer: Closed with monetary relief