Long story short: do not buy bitcoins or anything else for that matter on Bitstamp.
I am usually buying on Coinbase, but the weekly card limit made look elsewhere.
Yesterday, I placed an order on Bitstamp to buy BTC with credit card in Euros. Payment getaway leads you to a third party cc processing provider, Simplex. I even had to take a shot of me holding my cc. This is beyond not being okay. On coinbase, or for that matter, anywhere else trading or buying bitcoin, I can immediately see all the data on my transaction and the blockchain track of the addresses, confirmations etc. and I receive an email about every step I do there. I got the email about the transaction to Simplex, but there is no record of it under my account transactions on Bitstamp. This is the first major fail of user friendliness. My credit card was debt, but not charged by that amount in euros. I cannot see confirmations on the blockchain, cause there is no access to transactions.This is really not ok. Third party gateway should be recorded and valued as some kind of transaction and it should be recorded in my transactions!
Simplex is currently verifying your transaction. It is possible that you will notice a charge on your credit card account. This is only a credit card authorization check, rather than a charge, automatically made in order to reserve the amount in case the payment is approved; the money was held by your bank pending approval or cancellation of this payment. If the payment doesn't go through (canceled, expired or failed), this authorization check will be voided in no more than 48 hours, and you will not see the charge in your account.
Cryptocurrency market is not stable, especially at the moment and the price of the Bitcoin is not the same one day later. The prices of cryptocurrencies vary from minute to minute, hours to hours and days make a huuuge difference!
I cannot wait for hours. it has been 24 hours now!
I asked them will the price I finally pay via my cc pay last night's price when I made the purchase( a transaction that is nowhere visible), or today's price in that exact moment you approve my transaction price? Also, it should at least be under FAQ and somehow explained on Bitstamp web. From the user perspective, this is absolutely unbelievable!
Frustration comes from the fact that I didn't know where my money was last night and this morning. Now that I know it's going to be okay, I'm not so scared anymore, just mad as hell as this is beyond absurd
After contacting support these are the answers I got:
For security reasons, your payment is currently being reviewed for manual approval - an analyst will go over it shortly. We apologize for the inconvenience - this was done to assure your safety. Your card was not charged on this payment. Since we are just the credit card processor, we do not have direct access to your bitcoin account, and unfortunately, cannot solve this issue. blah blah!!!and:
Prices of Bitcoin depend on our partner's policy(i.e. Bitstamp).I'm never buying there again.
BTC price is not the same, it has been 48hrs now from my purchase, I bought btc monday evening and the price now is much higher, but what would happen if it wasn't? I could not have been in a position to trade my own btc today and yesterday!!! This is not okay in any way, they are holding my bitcoin. What if price went down 20% and I could not have sell it? Whose fault would it be? not mine, for sure. Bitshitamp is now faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar low on my shitlist!
Congratulations @exitos! You have received a personal award!
Click on the badge to view your Board of Honor.
Do not miss the last post from @steemitboard:
SteemitBoard and the Veterans on Steemit - The First Community Badge.
Congratulations @exitos! You received a personal award!
You can view your badges on your Steem Board and compare to others on the Steem Ranking
Vote for @Steemitboard as a witness to get one more award and increased upvotes!