Fed up with the recent and significant problems with BitPay, one (former) customer took to LinkedIn to post a ‘breakup letter’ to the company.

I don’t know about you, but when I use a product or service for a long time, I sometimes start to form this weird kind of relationship with the company. I depend on it to be there when I need them and deliver the kind of quality I’ve learned to expect from them.

But when things start to go south – when that company does me wrong after years of loyal patronage, it makes me feel angry – and maybe even a little betrayed. And when you feel betrayed in a relationship, sometimes the only thing you can do is to end it.

Dear John…er…BitPay

Chris Butler, Co-Founder and fellow member of the Alliance of Blockchain Professionals, found himself in a similar situation recently and decided to express his disappointment and frustration in a humorous ‘breakup letter’ to Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash payment services provider BitPay:

BitPay… This is my second blockchain related breakup letter. You have earned this, second only to Xapo. You were great…. at first. We were great together.

I don’t know why you had to go and ruin a good thing. We were so happy. You probably don’t deserve this but I feel I should tell you the truth… It’s not me, it is definitely you.

I can no longer go on pretending that you haven’t changed for the worse. I allowed myself to live in denial grasping onto the memories of our past experiences.

All these external, physical changes have left you vulnerable and weak on the inside. That reflects onto my own security and in turn, my sanity suffers.

I’m breaking up with you today. In fact, when you return to our shared wallet interface, you will find that I have already moved all my things and I am gone.

*one tear, sad face emoji*

#crypto #bitcoin #blockchain #wallet #DisappearingFeatures #business

P.S. Xapo actually went out of their way to fix their flaws and because of my community supported letter to them, policies were changed. We ended our relationship on good terms. (Last thing I want is a Clinton as an enemy… We all know how that ends.)

What Led to the Breakup?

After getting Butler’s permission to re-post his eloquent ‘Dear John’ letter, I asked him about the events that led to his parting of ways with BitPay. He mentioned that there were many little “annoyances and bugs” during his time with BitPay, but there were two incidents that signaled the death knell for their relationship.

The first started with an e-mail he received from BitPay on February 27, 2019 that informed its customers that a “system conversion” was scheduled to begin on March 8th. During the conversion period, ATM withdrawals, POS cash back, and OTC cash advances would be unavailable.

Apparently, BitPay is still in the midst of its “conversion” period as these services are still down three months later and even BitPay itself doesn’t know when they will come back online:

Hello, sadly, we still do not have more details at this time for when the ATM service will be restored. As soon as we receive this information, we will inform our cardholders via email. We apologize for the inconvenience. — BitPay Support (@BitPaySupport) June 6, 2019

As inconvenient as this issue is, it is minor compared to what Butler experienced on Thursday:

The second happened yesterday when they almost gave me a heart attack. I was using a BTM machine because I could no longer pull cash out of ATMs. My BitPay app was acting buggy as usual so I decided it would be best to send the amount I wanted to sell to the BTM to my wife. She was there with me. It should be as easy as scanning a QR code and done. Nope. Not Bitpay. I scanned her phone, completed the transaction, was shown the green checkmark screen signaling success but the BTC didn’t show in her account and the transaction was not appearing on my dashboard. What was on my dashboard was a balance in my wallet that was $15k less than it should’ve been. I scanned my wallet for addresses with funds and even checked all transactions. The only transaction it showed was one incoming transaction for 0.009BTC. Not at all matching an amount I’d used recently. I knew the truth was on the blockchain but I was an hour from home and an hour away from finding out if I was hacked or if Bitpay sent my BTC to the wrong address and the wrong amount.

Fortunately, the culprit turned out to be just [another] bug – quite possibly the same one that took down Bitpay’s wallet service temporarily and caused issues with outgoing transactions. But can you imagine what must have been going through his head during that hour?

And I thought the heart palpitations I get sending BTC from my wallet to an exchange was bad. Holy crap!

Images courtesy of Chris Butler, Pixabay