More and more users of Coinbase are lamenting that this crypto trading venue whipped away off-limits funds from their accounts. In some instances, people were left with their below-zero-credit accounts and now are not capable of covering their living needs.
Weird Withdrawals
One Reddit user, who writes under the nickname vancitywebguy, in a post, claimed that he/she bought BTC, ETH, and LTC on Coinbase for $300 in general last Friday. After some time, as the user stressed, the transactions duplicated several times and cost him/her $1,500 despite the fact the user had not bought anything else. Therefore, vancitywebguy also faced bank charges. In particular, the user wrote:
Our top trading bots
"My bank account went from very comfortable to negatives balance, not to mention extra $5 charges and overdraft fees. As a result, my rent check bounced, and my bank went further into negative for an NSF charge for $25. My landlord is not a nice person and is on my CASE, and I have nothing to offer him. I am FREAKING OUT."
Not The First Case
According to CNBC, representatives of this crypto burse had been dealing with parallel grievances for about 14 days. However, as it seems, the number of complaints scaled up within the last day. People started informing about resembling cases in discussions on Twitter.
The media outlet also contacted another Coinbase user, based in the US state of Virginia, – Pete Kingree. He provided a screenshot with, according to his words, unallowed charges to the trading venue and complementary bank dues. If the last ones were just $7.54, the first ones totaled $931.
Cyber money exchange’s another customer Mike Baldesarra also showed CNBC a screenshot from his bank. It read replicated operations were totaling approximately $300. Even though money for one of the charges was sent back to him in nearly two weeks, later Baldesarra suffered another ghostly repeated fee which has not been paid back as of writing. The user pointed that he knows the cases where people have to face more massive unauthorized withdrawals by Coinbase.
Another striking example is that exchange’s client Joel Hirtle faced two ghostly charges for $100. The first charge sent his Scotiabank account into minus and ended up for Hirtle in $144 in overdraft fees. Fortunately for him, two $100 charges were paid him back, however, with some delay.
Interestingly, an analogous case happened to this exchange nearly two years ago – in late spring 2016.
Why is Coinbase Withdrawing People’s Money?
On February 4, a Coinbase rep claimed that some of the clients were double charged. However, it was not clear whether that happened as a result of the latest change to credit cards classifications to exchange’s transactions. Hence, all the users, who faced the issue, were asked to report about duplicated charges, providing to the crypto trading venue their bank and dates of financial operations. By the way, this initiative was met with a backlash, as some people considered it to be safety jeopardy.
After ten days, on February 15, another exchange’s rep posted on Reddit:
“The unexpected charges are originating outside of our control, and are related to charges from previous purchases."
The Coinbase’s employee also added that currently they are trying to refund the money, but he did not mention whether overdraft charges, which came as a consequence, will be paid back as well. Also, the rep said that the case is being probed and any findings will be reported as soon as possible.
At the same time, as CNBC informs, the exchange refused to comment on how many of their customers were negatively influenced, what the key reason of the issue is, and whether the overdraft charges coming as a consequence of repeated withdrawals will be refunded. In an email, Coinbase’s rep said:
"We're aware of the issue and will be posting updates via Reddit, Twitter, and our company blog. We'll be reaching out to affected users to solve the issue as required, as well as posting updates via social channels."
It is also noticeable that the current week has been quite challenging for the California-headquartered crypto burse operating worldwide. Notably, it transiently shut down PayPal transactions and deactivated adding new credit cards as a payment method for US-based customers. On top of that, the exchange presented a new product for negotiants named Coinbase Commerce. And this all against the background that bitcoin recovered to $10,000 after dropping significantly on February 1 – February 6.
