Our first conflict on LocalBitcoins successfully resolved

7/08/2014 03:30:00 pm Unknown 0 Comments

Hi guys, It's been a while since my last blog, well over a month, an loads has happened in the crypto-currency space. I've been looking into SWARM, and it's well worth investigating when you've finished reading about me and LBC of course.  I will actually blog about it next week infact, because it shouldn't go unreported,it's kinda a big deal :)

So, on with my tale of woe and joy. For this story In will not use the name of the seller on LBC because I don't want to ruin his business, despite the fact that me and this person had a dispute over a sale which lasted the best part of a week, It's important to note that I had conducted loads of trades with this person in the past.



What is LocalBitcoins.com? Basically it's a marketplace for Bitcoin only, think of it as an ebay where all you sell is Bitcoin(Btc) and you have various ways to buy or sell the scarce currency. I sell via Bank deposit and cash in my CryptoS.I HQ and I usually buy via the bank transfer option. I realise that some people want anonymity and this is not possible with bank transfer for obvious reasons. I don't want such anonymity. Different strokes.

On a wednesday evening I sent money to buy Bitcoin, I transferred online using my bank account and faster payments (UK ONLY), so the seller would of got the money within moments (2hrs maximum), Usually at this point the seller would release the bitcoins from 'ESCROW', and I would have them in my btc account on lbc. However on this occasion the seller did not reply. The following morning I chased the seller asking when he would release the Bitcoin and he replied that he had not recieved the payment. I messaged him a few mor time during the day asking him to re-check his account to be sure he hadn't overlooked the payment. I also verified the sort code and account number just in case I had sent it to the wrong place or he had given me incorrect details. Finally that night he replied to say he hadn't recieved the money.

At this point, the money had definately left my account so I was wondering where it had gone, however I was not worried at all about losing it because I have quite a lot of faith in LBC and more importantly in the people who use it and swear by it. The next day the seller opened a dispute, I had tried to open one incorrectly through the support page on the website. I attached screenshots from my online banking and he done the same. It's important to note that screenshots from your account contain a decent amount of information which could be used for identity theft, for this reason it's always good to use a seperate account for all your btc activity.......However I don't bother doing this :)

After looking through his screenshots I saw the payment showing clearly my payment being recieved into his account, by this point 3 days had passed since my initial payment, pretty standard for cheques I guess. We both had the chance to give dialogue and reasons that we felt we should win the dispute. and so the situation remained for a further 2 days, when LBC weighed in saying that the seller had 24hrs to respond else the dispute will be resolved in my favour. There was no reply from the seller and I was credited with the bitcoin the next day, 6 days after the opening of the dispute.

Now there are 2 ways to look at this, 1 way is that it shouldn't take 6 days to recieve Bitcoin, The other is that if this was a dispute using fiat currency and going through the courts it would likely take 6 months and cost a lot of money, this dispute process is free, and out of the hundreds of trades i've done on LBC this is the first one ever to go to dispute so I'm very pleased.

I thought I would blog so people have an idea of the dispute process and how it's actually worked out for me. Personally I've got plenty of faith in LBC, of course I don't leave loads of Btc on there as that's not advisable with any website regardless of how good they are!

Thanks for reading.

Hi guys, It's been a while since my last blog, well over a month, an loads has happened in the crypto-currency space. I've been look...

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