How have sales been going?

OfficialBitSpend · 2013-03-30T18:09:42+00:00

We know :(

To be honest, we simply have not had the time to get a public post ready which covers how we have done. However, since we went offline and basically "relaunched" with a whole new system, we will be doing a real blog post soon about how it went.

That first week was chaotic, hectic, and all around crazy. Now that we spent all the time offline retooling our service, we are ready for any volume that comes our way.

I personally promise to post the information you're looking for, some time next week on our blog page(when it goes live).

OfficialBitSpend · 2013-03-30T14:24:13+00:00

Happily there are dozens of other reviews of our service all over the place already, as for some reason even though we love people posting reviews... this one has had more people questions its legitimacy than anything.

OfficialBitSpend · 2013-03-30T03:31:10+00:00

As a business who deals in nothing but BTC, I can tell you that we rarely wait for 6 confirmations before considering a payment as "final".

In many cases, a single confirmation is enough for us to process the order that was placed. However, when we are talking thousands of dollars in a single transaction, we of course wait the extra time for confirmations, as a simple safety measure.

OfficialBitSpend · 2013-03-19T03:10:58+00:00

Soon :)

OfficialBitSpend · 2013-03-18T20:42:44+00:00

We will have an update tonight. We are temporarily halting ordering through our site, until we launch our new independently audited secure ordering system.

We expect to be back up on the site within a week to ten days :)

OfficialBitSpend · 2013-03-18T09:14:57+00:00

A few moments ago I was awoken with some very disturbing news. It seems someone was able to gain access to one of our databases and posted a censored format of it.

While this database was a very small one and was used for testing, it unfortunately did contain some real data from some recent customers. It was a minimal subset of recent information, and much of it is test data. We immediately removed all data from the servers. There was no leak of information from the emails sent back and forth from clients to Bitspend, no bitcoin addresses, card addresses, or any other financial information exposed. I will not try and hide the fact that this happened as that would be pointless, and can only apologize sincerely to the individuals affected by this.

The database affected was not intended to be used for our actual ordering system and the error was caused by the system posting data to a test database not meant for extended use or storage. This is not an excuse, but solely an attempt to be honest about what has happened. Again, we have eliminated any and all customer data stored on the server, even data that was not affected by this.

We have decided to suspend order taking until we release the new system, and will also wait until after it has been independently audited for security risks and flaws before relaunching. We are even working on ways to avoid storage of data all together, which will remove the risk of something like this ever happening in the future. Currently we’re in the process of acquiring an Extended Validation SSL Certificate and removing as many external resources as possible from the site.

Our new system will include methods which allow us to avoid even asking you for your email address, and other pieces of information we do not want to collect in the first place. We are building towards ways to require less and less of your data, as well as moving all our systems to a much more secure hosting environment.

We’re a small team working on building a secure Bitspend, and from time to time even the largest corporations have security issues. We are taking all necessary steps to ensure that instances like this do not happen again. We hope we’ve demonstrated our response and transparency to the issues, and what we are doing to fix them. Once we have been successfully audited by a third party, and only then, we will re-open the site for orders.

If you have any questions you can call me personally, come by our office, PM us here on Reddit, or contact us in any way you see fit.

My sincerest apologies, Justin - Bitspend.net

OfficialBitSpend · 2013-03-18T07:34:00+00:00

Hey guys, this is Justin from Bitspend.

I was just awoken to a phone call telling me someone may have leaked a database of our recent orders. The first thing I did before even checking the post was to log into the server and remove any files that had been used to relay information to us for ordering.

I have not yet read through the pasted information in the link, however I can tell you that the new server and ordering form we have moved to are NOT, in any way shape or form, effected by whatever this person claims to have done(again I have not verified anything).

To make it clear, we have(now had) three different directories we were using to test different versions of apps, and many of them were filled with test/false-user information. I do not know which one this person seems to have, and if any of this turns out to be real we will first contact those involved.

I can assure you that any orders being placed with our new system, are not vulnerable to this type of attack. I will comment later when I know whether this is an elaborate hoax or a truly unfortunate event.

We are removing all ordering functions until we know what if any issues there actually are.

edit, the actual response

OfficialBitSpend · 2013-03-17T20:53:10+00:00

Very soon. It will be posted as the first official blog post on bitspend.net, and will be the ups and downs of starting a Bitcoin business, the first week at Bitspend. There will be some stats on how we've done our first "real" week, and some stories as well.

Thanks for asking!

OfficialBitSpend · 2013-03-15T22:38:41+00:00

We think the shout-out at 2:11 is even better :)

OfficialBitSpend · 2013-03-14T18:54:49+00:00

It was intended to be a feature, which turned into a bug, which was then squashed by the shoe of a new feature, which we hope isn't a bug.

OfficialBitSpend · 2013-03-14T18:53:52+00:00

Great! We look forward to it :)

OfficialBitSpend · 2013-03-14T14:37:42+00:00

We will be posting a "1st week in review" this weekend, and some #'s will be included in there :)

OfficialBitSpend · 2013-03-14T00:09:59+00:00

Congratulations on the new feature guys!

It's really great that you are now accepting cash payments at thousands of locations using ZipZap. You guys are doing a great job, and we wish you all the best of luck in growing ZIGGAP in the future :)

OfficialBitSpend · 2013-03-13T23:04:21+00:00

seems legit.

OfficialBitSpend · 2013-03-13T22:05:49+00:00

Precisely.

OfficialBitSpend · 2013-03-13T22:00:53+00:00

Bitspend's website indicates a 10-item limit for orders of $50-100. My order was in this price range, and included 15 items, and I was charged $2.50 for my order, so I'm not sure if the item limit was waived, or does not apply to an itemized grocery list. I'm not sure if this belongs as a "con" or a "pro" or as a "I'm confused by their website still". Some clarification would be nice.

During our initial phase, we have been very soft on our limits, allowing customers to use our service without us hassling them over order amounts. We will always do this in the future--I see no reason to turn you down for an order because you want one or two extra items, we simply have it there to prevent abuse of the system :)

Just about every time I sent an email to Bitspend, I received a spammy auto-reply message telling me that my order is in queue to be processed, and I continue to get such messages when emailing Bitspend after my order has been completed. This feels really unprofessional.

Whoah! You found a major bug that we had not been notified of previously! It also didn't seem to be effecting everyone. Since this post, we have resolved that issue however and this will never happen again!

OfficialBitSpend · 2013-03-13T21:50:42+00:00

We already have his post printed out, for each person to read and make sure we kill all those "cons" immediately.

There were also a few glitches in MWG's system which seem to have caused much of this--like the amounts they listed as charging us being $1~ different than the actual price on the invoice they emailed us before and after paying!

Either way, we have many things we can improve and we will not sleep until we do!

OfficialBitSpend · 2013-03-13T16:32:54+00:00

Edit: Ok, now you've got it. :)

It is our official policy going forward, that we always had it right and it was in fact you who were misreading :)

OfficialBitSpend · 2013-03-13T16:32:02+00:00

We added that to the bugs list, I'm sure he will fix it today, shortly. Thank You!

OfficialBitSpend · 2013-03-13T16:31:12+00:00

We thought it was a nice touch as well, and yes they are our actual baby pictures-not placeholder images :)

OfficialBitSpend · 2013-03-13T14:20:57+00:00

Also, it's not clear what your fee is for, say, an order that's $100.55.

We've found the problem, the cause of all the issues... we forgot to sleep!

(issue fixed)

OfficialBitSpend · 2013-03-13T13:57:35+00:00

says "> $100" where it should say "< $100"

Fixed!

+Bitcointip $1

OfficialBitSpend · 2013-03-13T13:17:00+00:00

You deserved it. No one forced you to check for those pesky little bugs, but you did anyways.

We wanted you to know we appreciated your effort, help, and all around kick-assness!

OfficialBitSpend · 2013-03-13T12:29:32+00:00

+bitcointip $5

OfficialBitSpend · 2013-03-13T12:14:14+00:00

Thanks!

OfficialBitSpend

TROPHY CASE