- Coinbase announced a new customer support phone line to help users facing issues with the cryptocurrency platform.
- The company promised to expand customer service operations as early as June, but has faced an onslaught of unhappy customers in recent months as the userbase overpowered the support staff.
-However, one call we placed to the support line never made it through to a human customer support agent. The call ended after 15 minutes and 30 seconds, most of which was spent on hold. A second call reached a human after 14 minutes.
If you need me, call me.
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That's the latest message coming out of Coinbase, the $1.6 billion cryptocurrency trading platform, which addressed months of customer complaints on Wednesday with the opening of a customer support phone line.
The San Francisco-based company will now offer phone support during business hours, though the support agents can only handle issues related to verification and locked accounts. Customers that need specific account help will still have to reach out by email, or consult Ada, the Coinbase support bot.
While Coinbase said the phone lines were live on Wednesday, a call placed by this reporter at 12:40 pm PST went directly to hold. After being on the line for 15 minutes and 30 seconds, the automated voice said that the lines were backed up, and that the caller should hang up and try again, or submit a complaint online.
A second call, placed at 1:04 pm PST, reached a human after 14 minutes.
As the price of bitcoin hovers just below $4,000, more and more people are realizing the potential to make considerable sums of money by trading cryptocurrencies.
It's been a mixed blessing for Coinbase, the leading cryptocurrency trading platform, which confirmed its unicorn status in August with the announcement of a $1.6 billion valuation. As its userbase grew — double what it was in September 2016, by the company's account — so did the number of complaints, ranging from locked accounts to thousands of dollars in unaccounted for funds.
One Coinbase user, Michael Sion, said he saw
Among the 89 negative reviews on the Better Business Bureau website, many of them focused on that same point of contention: the user complained via email, but didn't hear back from Coinbase for days or weeks, if at all. In multiple cases, thousands of dollars were on the line, and the users feared that money would be gone forever.
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Coinbase has long been aware that its customer support is an issue. In June, CEO Brian Armstrong wrote that the company had re-evaluated its growth plan in order to improve customer service.
But the issue was again thrust into the national spotlight in August, when the platform faced a mass exodus over its initial decision not to support a new currency called bitcoin cash. Many users faced a
Coinbase support capacity w... @ Brian Armstrong