Pending report

Scammer's profile link: PartyPeteShop

Explanation of the trade: I sold them 400m 07 gold. I do not have the livechat logs but here is the worker vouching for it, note the time/day. https://www.sythe.org/posts/28595568/ I'm sure they have access to the logs anyway.

How they scammed: So they paid in bitcoin. I was supposed to receive $312 for the payment. Bitcoin Transaction 87444ae8dcf55705e01c74c874251325238f665fa1cc3fa580eb3d329587fcd5 . There is the transaction. Note the time/day. Basically it has been OVER A MONTH and I have still not received my payment. Whether it is because they used a super low fee or not is not really the point but I know they are responsible to make sure the customer gets their payment in a timely manner. It is their fault if they do not know the ins and outs of bitcoin yet using it to send payments. It is not my problem on how I get the money. My job was to deliver the gold. The rest is on them. I should not have to be forced to wait over a month for MY money. I give them the gold and I should be paid within a few hours using bitcoin, or even a day or two is debateable. It being over a whole month now is complete bs. Talking to the owner they were basically using the excuse "stuck in limbo." They wouldn't take responsibility or any blame for the fact I was waiting over a month which is a ridiculous amount of time. As a solution they basically told me to just " be more patient." Apparently ONE MONTH is not patient enough. Also it does not even account for the money I have lost just by being forced to wait.

https://puu.sh/z5eUP/7a7793fef3.jpg

https://puu.sh/z5eW5/57942289bb.png

https://puu.sh/z5eWJ/d9c060756f.png

https://puu.sh/z5eXi/4795a1be5a.png

https://puu.sh/z5eXN/59ac7efecb.png

https://puu.sh/z5eYm/c5cbbb5a0b.png

 

Hey @WantaCookie, we use Blockchain to send payments and sometimes the fee that Blockchain shows upon sending a payment aren't exactly the fastest confirmation times. Most likely when you sold the gold there was a big fluxuation on the Bitcoin price causing the fee to go up alot. 50 sat/b is low but at the time it was sent it should (according to the Blockchain fee at the time) still have confirmed in a timely manner. I will discuss this with Pete and cause it's already been a month we could possibly send a fresh payment and have you refund the previous one if it does go through. I'll let you know tonight, sorry for the inconvenience.

 

I'm away for the weekend, but there is no scam here. A transaction that had been stuck in limbo for a while due to a recent spike in BTC fees over the past month. Other transactions that were sent with similar fees around the same time frame had all confirmed a while back, not sure why the network took so long to confirm this one or stop broadcasting it all together. The said transaction has been confirmed as fees are back to normal.

Proof: Bitcoin Transaction 87444ae8dcf55705e01c74c874251325238f665fa1cc3fa580eb3d329587fcd5
From worker's blockchain wallet: https://i.imgur.com/6DEhoCi.png (Sent + doesn't show up as pending)

 

@WantaCookie Could you please confirm or deny this has been resolved?

 

No I want the rest of my money

 

The transaction has been confirmed and you know it... We don't controll the Blockchain network and at the time we sent we NEVER send a fee that will not confirm at all. You wouldn't be complaining if the Bitcoin price doubled by now so please don't say "I want the rest of my money".

 

I agree and am therefore closing this report. I'm sorry @WantaCookie though shit happens sometimes. It's not the end of the world after losing $15. Thank you for the help all.

 

This is incorrect and briefly looking over the report it seems like at least $100 was lost in waiting.

@PartyPeteShop Likewise, you're responsible for ensuring your customers are paid in a timely manner depending on the payment method of choosing. I think you'll agree over a month is unreasonable. I don't see any reason to refund the payment you already sent and then send another one. Just confirm the value at the time of confirmation and send the difference for what was lost in waiting. You can try the age-old argument, "What if Bitcoin went up?" The simple response to that is if gold shops didn't try sending with the lowest fee possible all the time, these issues wouldn't happen. It's not a responsibility of the customer as it's something completely out of their control. What I mean is gold shops don't offer or try to negotiate blockchain fees for sending even if advertising they "cover all fees". Covering fees for PayPal and those for blockchain transactions are very different, as well as wait times for confirmation.

 

oh it is unlocked

Yeah i have zero clue where @Wortel got $15 from. clearly he paid attention to the details....

I am fine with being paid the difference. It is sad they can make a customer wait over a month and not care at all but whatever.

 

The fees that were sent were sufficient. Other transactions that were sent by us with similar fees on the same date were confirmed weeks ago. The blame for why this one in specific wasn't confirmed lies on the miners who control the speed of the network and choose which transactions get confirmed. I believe everyone that uses bitcoin can agree last month's spike in fees was absurd, at one point getting as high as $50+. This has NEVER been seen before in bitcoin's history. This caused a huge back log of transactions and payments that were sent previously with appropriate yet lower sat/b's. They were left waiting as miners preferred the newer transactions put onto the network with higher fees, and unfortunately when this happens there is no way for us to safely increase fees on previously sent transactions, a major flaw in the system.

Overall, we as a business did our due diligence & at the same time of sending the fees were appropriate. We could not have foreseen or predicted the sudden spike in fees soon after. The counter argument of us initially sending a higher sat/b (priority fees w/ expedited confs) which carry much greater fees, customers are more than welcome to request and cover the added costs which was not done so in this scenario. At the end of the day we are a business, we don't deliberately cut extreme corners to save money as we care for our customers well-being and want them to receive confirmations in a timely manner so they can keep coming back to us. Recently confirmation times & fees for bitcoin have become increasingly higher, something one should be aware of whether it be sending or receiving BTC as a form of payment. What happened here was unfortunate & out of the ordinary. But to say we are to blame for the delayed confirmations time is completely unsatisfactory and leaves open a trail of future cases with unhappy customers who become discontent when bitcoin falls in price.

Examples of transactions sent with similar sat/b by us on the same day & following day that were confirmed weeks ago to show that the fees were in fact sufficient:
Bitcoin Transaction 635921220ed18e37babf71d478983921a30720d3e74fc718ad3632c58e041026 - Dec 17th
Bitcoin Transaction 0a393af0180208c63316e90ee60d9d8a3a21b2280b18dc17a82ef18c7c3ea1b2 - Dec 17th
Bitcoin Transaction 39df652172253014de3f5e137b694ff6b3f47a0f6552dd5092bcc8d45a99d537 - Dec 18th
Bitcoin Transaction 7f628d1bb624b7c8804c5ebf8a8bab9bbcbe807d1ba23e7c05585e9a10b34a97 - Dec 18th

 

Okay so how did you determine the fee?

First two transactions are from the same block.
Second two transactions are from the same block.

There were other transactions you sent around the same day and time included in the block which took over a month to confirm too, but I feel like that's missing the point.
Bitcoin Transaction f8c9c89c91b173c5c04e4dc713aea64b0867c553b8eca84d8681b324b6da79ba - 2017-12-17 18:44:26
Bitcoin Transaction bae676589d0bbbb873aad61fd68c9f4b96549ca0754e1c00cd6eaf81d8d59caf - 2017-12-17 18:50:25
Bitcoin Transaction 87444ae8dcf55705e01c74c874251325238f665fa1cc3fa580eb3d329587fcd5 - 2017-12-17 19:09:43 (disputed tx)

It looks like for the transactions that confirmed in the first block from above, people were using a fee of ~100 sat/b (on Dec 17th), although there are many transactions in the 400-700 sat/b range too. The higher fees are priority I'd assume, or those sent via Coinbase or exchanges. Your transactions were listed at the very end of the first block too, so I feel like it may have been lucky for them to be included (as opposed to being picked up in the second block which confirmed 6 days after the payments were sent). In any event, it appears like the fee used was lower than what's recommended and isn't solely due to Bitcoin's fluctuation in price during that time. @Shexy sent a PM to me as well which contradicted the claim sufficient fees were used based on a website they linked, saying "50 sat/b is low" and @PartyPeteShop stating the "transaction has been confirmed as fees are back to normal" in this thread, while the website suggests a fee which is 5-6x greater than what you used.

 

@Shin the website I linked updates the fees daily, keep in mind this transaction is a month old. At the time sent the fee that was sent was going to confirm in a timely manner according to the site. Just cause I stated "50 sat/b is low" doesn't mean it will not confirm in a timely manner. I didn't send the payment and I'm not sure if the worker that did send it uses the same fees page as I do but sometimes I check up on transactions to see if they confirmed yet and at that time I do remember that the fee was sent on this transaction at the time should have confirmed in a timely manner. I simply replied to this report cause Pete was away for the weekend and I wanted to try get it solved before he came back.

 

P.S. the fee that you PM'ed me is the PRIORITY fee, it says fastest confirmation time. No-one ever sends priority fee unless some sort of agreement was made with the seller. Still that is right now, the fee was different a month ago.

 

The payment was delayed because you (un)knowingly re-used bitcoin from a source that was still pending with a low fee just to send it again (with a low fee). This adds up wait time and makes it worse for every payment after the current unconfirmed payment. If you look at the chain of source you'll notice theres a dozen of payments from that source that had to wait 10 - 300 hours.
Just here to clear that up, have a wonderful day

 

The point here is we sent sufficient fees which was the lowest recommended by blockchain.info, but when we sent we didn't know which block it would end up on, hence why examples given were confirmed much sooner and this particular transaction wasn't. Keep in mind we send hundreds to thousands of transactions a month with little to no problems. To imply the logic of 'luck' could also be used in any scenario with anything below priority fees. Majority of transactions we sent were confirmed promptly (despite the sudden spike of fees which delayed some payments), that is the statistic you should be more focused on. Since we can't predict the future and foresee that the fees were going to spike and prolong for over a month i'll use your logic here and state that it was in fact 'unlucky' that his transaction wasn't confirmed. To act as if this is somehow our fault and we purposefully & knowingly caused this is completely and utterly ridiculous. Individuals & gold sites do not normally send priority fees, nor should they be required too. If a customer is worried about prolonged conf. times then they are more than welcome to request a higher sat/b and cover the multiplied cost associated.

 

As for Panda's point, I send BTC to my workers wallet
And then they send BTC to customers
So it's quite possible the initial transaction hadn't confirmed yet
Although when I send BTC to my workers I send a bulk amount and typically w/ a much larger fee because I'm aware it could delaying further payments
Bitcoin Transaction 2773fb290e30536049beed88341fba50400ce2339b86e1100ac06fca2d82766e
that was the last payment I sent to his wallet 2 days prior
as you can see here I sent it with 276 sat/b

 

Yeah was just trying to correct some mistakes I saw in posts above me. I changed the thread title for now until @Shin responds

 

With this being the case, I would need evidence that 50 sat/b was lower than the recommended fee by blockchain.info. I've tried looking into this myself, but I was unsuccessful in locating any data (no chart for low/medium/priority fees).

If it cannot be determined the fee used was unreasonable (i.e. lower than the recommended fee), both @WantaCookie and @PartyPeteShop will share the responsibility for using cryptocurrency as a form of payment. This is because in the absence of a fee negotiation, both parties implicitly agreed to use @PartyPeteShop's preferred fee. The claim is @PartyPeteShop used too low of a fee which resulted in the delay (negligence), but @PartyPeteShop has provided evidence to show how the transaction was sent, how the fees were determined, and why he feels the fees were appropriate (due diligence).

 

I still do sympathize with @WantaCookie to a certain extent and feel for his loss although I know whole heatedly we sent the payment justly and in good faith. Regardless the outcome I am willing to compensate him half the difference of the lost amount, valuing BTC at the time it was confirmed (Jan 20th 2018 6:38 UTC)

 

Sure, I thank you for understanding my view of the situation finally and offering assistance. I pmed you @PartyPeteShop