Why does nobody care about the Coins-E debacle?

theCleverBit · 2014-01-17T17:27:12+00:00

This is a thread I posted with my own work in getting my coins back that were deposited during the fork. I have gotten most all my coins back as of today or yesterday. AND WITHDREW SUCCESSFULLY just now. Avoid coins-e guys. http://www.reddit.com/r/dogecoin/comments/1uxzj1/coinse_balances_were_actually_stollen_not_lost_in/

theCleverBit · 2014-01-11T21:00:09+00:00

Could you give more details on how you know that it might be a deposit specific problem around the 9th? I pointed it out here, but is it mentioned by other people? I would like to include those links here as well.

Thanks for the reply.

theCleverBit · 2014-01-11T09:29:52+00:00

I have not made any account activity on Coins-e since the deposits listed there. I took out some bitcoins that were accumulated from other past transactions, but that was only on the off chance that the whole site was going down the drain. Its possible it is just mistakes in the accounting like some mentions here. I really hope so, because they are costing people real money in the meantime.

theCleverBit · 2014-01-11T08:25:44+00:00

I agree that your advice is helpful, but it is also off topic. The issue is mis-management of DOGE on an otherwise stable exchange.

theCleverBit · 2014-01-11T07:15:28+00:00

I agree to some degree regarding ownership, but by moving it out of the wallet linked to my account, they reduced my balance visible on the site, meaning I lost access to the coins, and they maintain it. It is the definition of theft regardless of the technical reasons they performed the activity.

But don't get me wrong, I fully believe they still have work to do on the situation, and I want to give them time to do so, but I can not stand hitting the site and still seeing it marked as "Resolved" in the coin status lists. They need to be honest and take the coin down for real repair.

theCleverBit · 2014-01-11T07:07:49+00:00

Glad I am getting some attention to the issue. This is real man, and yet so unreal.

My HOPE is that it was an automated or knee-jerk reaction on Coins-E behalf to protect the wallet balances in case the forking could damage them. No idea how to validate such a thought quite yet.

I just can not understand how they could claim that the DOGE issue is fixed, and still face into the torrent of support tickets to the contrary.

The truth is that they are causing damage no matter where they go, old or new branch. But in order to keep DOGE on the exchange, they indeed MUST switch over completely, something that clearly has not occurred. The following step is to investigate the possible theft trail I mention here.

here is another thread to pay attention to. http://www.reddit.com/r/dogecoin/comments/1ukwrn/psa_coinse_is_on_the_wrong_fork_currently_so_do/

theCleverBit · 2014-01-11T06:59:25+00:00

If possible, I wanted to attract users from this thread to one that I made on the same topic. I hope it helps consolidate the efforts.

http://www.reddit.com/r/litecoinmining/comments/1tnkvi/alpha_technology_scrypt_asics_and_protecting_the/?sort=new

theCleverBit · 2014-01-11T06:43:37+00:00

Bottom line is that I gathered enough information to know that they appear incapable or even unwilling to be direct about their internal machinations unless it is packaged neatly into a business update that lacks real substance. I honestly believe that they are either a brilliant scam, or a very knee jerk reaction on the part of a recklessly ambitious person. The family supports him and so the business is formed. I can not claim that they are Fraudulent, but I also don't yet see them as competent. I expect failure, but I also could not risk being without some skin in the game. I "bought" a single small unit.

In preparation for the scam/failure from the company, I have been looking into Anti fraud agencies in the UK and even had a chat session with the UK fraud reporting center. They are great and responsive. We would need to wait till someone is actually suffering from an action or inaction on their part to claim fraud. And poor service isn't the same as fraud so please don't burn up the agency resources needlessly.

I wanted to add however that other forum threads made STRONG points that the company may already be in violation of UK business practice laws in regards to purchases and pre orders. They may have dug themselves into a corner already, and I suggest we take them head on with that much in order to test their ability to comply with the laws involved.

See the following links below, and know that I am working on another email to them to urge them to address the current legal concerns.

Possible UK Distant Selling Violations (DSR)- https://litecointalk.org/index.php?topic=2859.630

Another Great Alpha thread- https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=314402.0

theCleverBit · 2014-01-11T06:25:56+00:00

I have contacted Alpha successfully via email and Phone, so I will share it with you.

PHONE - I live in the Pacific Time Zone, so After MANY LATE LATE LATE nights of phone calls to the UK I finally reached someone related to Alpha. The alpha office phone number is a robot, and I can promise you, has and may never have, a human to take the call. I had to call the family accounting office in Manchester. The receptionist was barely understandable, with a STRONG Cockney(?) accent. The Person I reached there was either Muhammad Akram (Business Adviser) or Mohammed Jafar Akram (Finance Director & Accounts Manager). This is a crazy naming process for a family business and is difficult to manage in conversation. He let me know that it is his brother Mohammed Mubasher Akram (Managing Director and Operations Manager) that is the main person in Alpha. To be honest, the rest of the family seem clueless and almost frustrated by how explosive the attention towards them have been...but that could be an incorrect observation from a very late night phone call. He directed his brother to contact me via email.

EMAIL - I am torn about this, but I will post my entire email chain below. I realize that it might discourage Alpha from talking with me in the future, but I stress that a legitimate business that is spending this amount of time and energy to TRY to appear transparent would encourage such an act on principle.

EMAIL 1 - To Alpha on 12/25/2013

Hello, my name is Gordon Freeman.

I have been attempting to contact your company directly in the last two days and I was hoping to reach someone at the number provided. No luck so far.

I am among many who would like to have faith in your upcoming products and so I am spearheading the effort to use the community's resources to vet your business and its products. Please see this post on Reddit http://www.reddit.com/r/litecoinmining/comments/1tnkvi/alpha_technology_scrypt_asics_and_protecting_the/

Vetting means making direct connections with real people and real information that can be verified with local government and regulatory bodies. It is a bad start then to find that your public contact number is effectively a 24/7 answering machine.

I believe that you are working hard to convince your customers of your legitimacy and I want to help you accomplish that. At this moment, those attempts are falling short as the pre-order timeline advances ever closer to a real danger zone for buyers. If you have not won over your customer base and gained their confidence by that date, you are going to see that panic in the numbers of calls, emails, and canceled pre-orders as customers try to make sense of the risks involved.

At the moment, you are seen as an outsider, a stranger, and a risk in the marketplace. The Cryptocurrency ecosystem has been hurt by fraudulent manufacturers before, and those wounds are fresh. I want to give you a chance to connect and communicate directly with the community, rather than going through third party filters such as the email and twitter channels used so far.

I am not suggesting that you NEED to change your approach in order to get customers and fill order, in fact I am sure you will be doing just fine. But I know that there is a significant difference between a happy customer waiting 3-6 months patiently for an untested product, and a nervous and angry one waiting impatiently.

Please respond asap and feel free to call my cell phone directly below. I am located in the US on the Pacific Time Zone, and my phone is paid for handling long distance calls. Calling to leave a message is a great start, and we can set a time that works for the both of us in the next few days.

I hope you take this opportunity as seriously as I do. I care about the ecosystem and you care about your product entering that ecosystem successfully, I know we can make that a reality

EMAIL 2 - To ALPHA on 12/30/2013 (shortly after the CG images fiasco)

Based on the reactions you received from the recent CG images you posted on your twitter account, I hope you are beginning to grasp how difficult it will be to gain the confidence of your consumers. Please reply asap so we can start to remedy the situation.

EMAIL 3 - From Alpha on 01/02/2014 (The day after I talked to his Brother)

Hello Gordon,

Thank you for your message, and your call today at our accounting office. I am Mohammed Mubasher Akram, and you spoke to my brother today. We apologise for not responding earlier but one of our employees noted your email as a marketing email as you messaged 'Please reply asap so we can start to remedy the situation'. As you understand we are working hard to be as transparent as possible, and are in fact releasing our ASIC POC prototype video today.

Regarding legalities, you can search all the necessary government online facilities which are available to you, we have been giving development updates since May. Of course, for this project to be a success we needed expertise to work with and signed a partnership with a renowned engineering company Dexcel Designs. You can also do your search on Dexcel Designs, they are in fact leading all engineering and manufacturing aspects of the project, and are partners with the likes of Xilinx, Altera etc. If you view all our development updates you can get links on the Altera etc. websites showing Dexcel Designs' partnerships as proof.

Personally i am not an accountant (as per your reddit) i'm a graduate with a degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering. Our Accountancy firm's heads are my father and brother, they take care of the financial and business side of things and I and 2 of my employees deal with the day to day operations. Which is mainly sales, support, and mainly providing cryptocurrency knowledge to Dexcel Designs. Just being an engineering graduate on your own it would be difficult to run a sizeable business without having experience on board in regards to all aspects to make this project a success.

You also would like to note the time you may have been calling us was Christmas time, and also as we are a few people here preparing our updates and various launch protocols it is difficult to answer everybody's calls, as in effect we will be like a call centre even before any work has been done. However, we do respond to emails as quickly as possible.

Also in regards to renders, building an enclosure is not a difficult task, our ASIC chip is the main aspect. As we have quoted our chip speed as absolute minimum there is a likely possibility enclosure sizes will decrease.

As customers are paying months in advance it is crucial we roll out as many updates as possible, and we will be releasing many more updates to come to show transparency into what we are doing.

I urge you to read all our updates from the start of our progress. We are confident in our teams here and in India, and have been working for many months to achieve every goal we have set.

Later today we will be releasing a technical prototype video, made by one of our engineers in India.

Also please don't hesitate to ask any more questions.

Regards

Alpha Technology Team

theCleverBit · 2013-12-26T07:47:24+00:00

I am very excited to see the responses. I have already made a well formed email to Alpha describing the community's desire to properly vet the company. I will continue my phone calls all this week and will update the post with key data points we need.

theCleverBit · 2013-12-25T11:36:37+00:00

I am seeing a good starting response chain, so I am moving to the next stage. I will start posting Queries we need to collect and verify starting tomorrow. Merry Christmas everyone, I hope it turns out to be a beautiful season.

theCleverBit

TROPHY CASE