WARNING: Beware of Overstock.com They Are Stealing Money From Customers
I write this to you urgently, PLEASE, do not go to Overstock.com.
There have been many reports of scandalous transactions and rampant ignorance from customer support. Yesterday I tried to make a purchase in Litecoin. The website checkout gladly accepts certain altcoins now. Behind the scenes, though, your altcoin is being converted to Bitcoin, so in essence, Overstock does not actually accept altcoins, but instead is acting like an automatic exchanger, and by converting your altcoin to Bitcoin YOU are paying the Bitcoin transaction fee, which is up to $30 in BTC right now.
What does this mean?
As I went through checkout, I was asked to enter my LTC address as a place to send possible refunds. This made me believe refunds would be in LTC, which they are not; they are in BTC. The checkout cart only informs you of your total price due, and that a conversion will take place. It does not inform you of the exchange rate or that the transaction fee will be additional. I found this out when I noticed that the amount of Litecoin I sent was actually $150, not $120 as the cart showed. Perhaps it was my fault for not doing the math, but the cart showed $120 USD was due, but that I needed to deposit 0.60664487 LTC, a much higher value. So tricky!
Wait, there's more!
After depositing the LTC to Overstock's wallet, the cart suspended the transaction while it waited for the blockchain to make the confirmations. After waiting 5 minutes, the cart displayed a message stating that the transaction failed for reasons unknown, and that I should expect a refund to my Coinbase wallet. Thank GOD I used Coinbase. Turns out if I had used any other wallet to send the LTC I wouldn't have received a refund at all! That "return" address was a complete farce!
Missing money
So I go to my Coinbase wallet to check on the refund and instead of my 0.60664487 LTC I see 0.00802899 BTC, a value of about $120 at the time. I've lost $30 and have nothing to show for it.
Notice that LTC is aprox. $245 at the time of this writing making 0.6142247 LTC worth $150, NOT $125.87 as the cart here is showing. They expect you to know!
Customer Service Is Absolutely Ignorant
So of course I call in to get my $30 back. I was never informed I would have to pay it, it's Overstock's fault the transaction failed; I want my money back. You will never believe some of the things said to me, including that I should contact "Bitcoin" to get my money, and that it's "Coinbase that charges that fee, not us".
The Strategy I used To Get My Money Back, in HOURS, not DAYS
If you are already in this situation with Overstock as I'm sure many people are, here's what to do. It's no use making threats against the company, the customer service reps just don't care.
But they do care about their own job.
As someone who has worked in many call centers I know that everything you do on the phone is tracked and recorded in order to monitor your performance. One of the things tracked is: did the customer call back? This makes the rep look really bad to their boss since if a customer calls back it's more of the company's money and time spent and it shows that the rep did not solve the problem.
When calling in, make it abundantly clear, in the nicest tone possible, that you plan to call in over and over again until this is resolved. Be prepared to actually do this. The first time you call there will be no record yet, so the first rep might not believe your threat. When the next rep takes your call they will see you have called in once before and they will definitely believe you. Repeat the agent's name so they know you know it. Explain very nicely that you do not want BTC or LTC and that a gift card for store credit will be OK. This is truly all they can offer you so take it. I went to the lengths of explaining that I will get $30 or more of value out of Overstock, whether that's through merchandise or through customer service. I even asked the supervisor how much they make an hour: stating that at minimum wage I only need to keep a rep busy on the phone for a couple of hours to gain this value.
BUT: I only got half my money back
They agreed to "meet me half way". Honestly, I know I could have pressured them into the total amount but I didn't feel it was worth it. I figure this $15 I couldn't get back is the price I paid for learning this lesson.
https://steemit.com/overstock/@inertia/why-did-overstock-take-53-days-to-partially-refund-my-bitcoin
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/6fca7k/coinbase_took_your_money/
https://themerkle.com/coinbase-users-funds-stolen/
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1959534.0
https://cointelegraph.com/news/coinbase-problems-continue-as-206k-lost-funds-slowly-return-to-users
https://www.trustpilot.com/review/coinbase.com
The list is too long. Go look this up. Get your money out of Coinbase. Don't use Overstock.
Thank you for letting us all know about this!!!!
Can you please upvote so we can get the word out? Thanks.
yes just upvoted!
Damn. I thought Overtook.com was legitimate..
What Overstock is doing is morally and ethically wrong.