Consumer complaint received 2018-01-29
Company: Coinbase, Inc.
State: MD
Product: Money transfer, virtual currency, or money service
Sub-product: Domestic (US) money transfer
Issue: Other transaction problem

Complaint:
Coinbase currently is holding my funds which are a mix of Crypto and USD assets with a total of greater than {>= $1,000,000}. They have set my daily withdrawal limits to {$10000.00}. The withdrawal limits goes towards all withdrawals USD and Crypto equivalent. At this rate it will take greather than 3 months, most likely 4, in order to withdrawal my funds. I would like to move my money out in order to pursue other traditional / less volitile investments as well as move my crypto to a safe hardware wallet. A XXXX crypto exchange was just hacked to the order of {>= $1,000,000} and I do not feel safe with a centralized service such as Coinbase holding my funds. For reference my open cases with Coinbase are Case # XXXX and Case # XXXX. 

On XX/XX/2017 I submitted a request to have my limits increased to {>= $1,000,000}. It was almost immediately not approved so I submitted a second on for {$900000.00} on the same day. Since then it has been under review. The form says that " You should expect a response within 2 weeks. ". After a month of waiting I tried contacting them via Email, XXXX and XXXX. I then tried the phone support line. The customer service rep informed me that phone support is not the same deparatment that handles limit increase requests and the deparatment that does has no method of contact other than the simple form I filled out. You can only have one request pending at a time so there is no way for me to contact them. The customer service rep informed me that it looks like my request had been denied and there was nothing that could be done other than submitting another request. I informed the rep that I could not do so because the request was still pending. I asked if the request could be marked as denied so that I could try again and was told that they did not have the power to do so. After the call I received the follow-up email. 

" It appears your withdrawal increase request was denied because your account does not currently demonstrate a need for a higher withdrawal limit at this time, given the amount of funds within it. You can certainly apply again in the future when you have more funds on XXXXhe exchange to demonstrate this need. '' How does a greater than {>= $1,000,000} balance coupled with > 3 months of doing daily withdrawals that are greater than 24 hours spaced apart and having to enter verification codes not demonstrate the need? I was upset and not satisfied with the response so I called again. I essentially got the same response when discussing my situation over the phone but this time I got a sepearate follow-up email. 

" Ive taken a look at your account and it looks like your limits may not be appropriate based on your accounts positive history and status. 

I have escalated your request for a limit increase to our specialists. 

We do our best to complete all account reviews within 4-5 business days, though this may sometimes take longer depending on the case volume were experiencing. 

... Followed by a lot of text to explain why they have limits, the nature of crypto, scammers, etc, which did not apply to my situation and there is no evidence that it does.. 
" However they marked the case as closed. I waited past the amount of time again to expect a response and am beginning to suspect this was just a de-escalation email. I don't know what I can do and at this point Coinbase is effectively holding my funds hostage and making it very painstakingly difficult to get access to my funds.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation