TL;DR I tried to buy something on Overstock, pay with Bitcoin, but they never sent my my merchandise. When I complained, they took forever to refund me. When they finally did, they didn't send me the whole amount.
Does Overstock Even Take Bitcoin?
Maybe. I don't have any personal firsthand knowledge that they know what to do with Bitcoin, although they claim they do.
Perhaps they think they take Bitcoin. But in reality, they haven't tested it to see if it actually works. Maybe if you use Coinbase it works, but I don't use Coinbase.
See, Coinbase has these tools to help businesses accept Bitcoin. Coinbase apparently also helps with refunds. But if you opt out of Coinbase like I did, you're in for a world of hurt.
Keep in mind, the item I actually ordered on July 3rd was a $49.48 charger that is now out of stock. So I'm just using some other charger in this screen example.
Their payment screen apparently works with Coinbase and regular Bitcoin wallets. Since I don't use Coinbase, I used the regular Bitcoin wallet option.
Payment Sent - Nothing Happened
I sent the amount, it never updated to say it got my funds and the dialog expired. In chat, they told me they'd contact me by e-mail, so I waited for that process to start.
When I got the e-mail, this is what they said on July 10th:
I’m writing today in response to your recent contact about your Bit Coin Order that did not process. If you have a 8 number & digit transaction code provided by Coin Base I maybe able to check further as we do not see any order placed or funds sent to us.
So, I sent them the Bitcoin transaction ID. Their reply:
Unfortunately the number you provided does not pull up in the Coin Base Portal. I apologize for the hassle this is causing but if you have any correspondence from Coin base that you can send to me so I can see if I can find it. You can also contact Coin base at [email protected].
Now, I'm starting to get a bit impatient. So, I reply to them:
What a joke. You guys have no clue what you're doing. You should not accept Bitcoin if you can't handle transactions without Coinbase. I did not use Coinbase. I didn't mention Coinbase. Your UI says that Coinbase is optional on my end.
The transaction is there. You screwed up.
On July 14th, their reply:
I understand you might be using a different Bitcoin Wallet, but in order for me to locate your order I have to look through our Coinbase wallet. I have now located the order and found that the order failed and did not book. When a Bitcoin order fails, Coinbase normally sends our customers an email advising of the failed order which is why I suggested to check for any correspondence from Coinbase. At this time since the order failed, I have issued a refund to you in the amount of $49.48 to the email address [REDACTED].
Please let me know if there is anything else I can do for you with this or any other issue.
So at this point, I got an e-mail from Coinbase asking me to log in and claim my funds. So I replied to Overstock:
Do you have reading/comprehension problems? I never mentioned coinbase. I don't use coinbase. You use it. Great, I don't care, whatever.
The thing that I find frustrating is that now, you've sent my funds to ... COINBASE. I don't use coinbase. I don't want to use coinbase. I'm not going to sign up for coinbase. But where are my funds? On coinbase.
Thanks for nothing.
And on July 17th, they replied:
I'm truly sorry that you did not want your refund to be issued to Coinbase. At this time we use Coinbase to take payment and to issue refunds.
I understand this is an inconvenience for you however the refund has already been issued. Your refund was issued for the full USD value of the order, $49.48, through Coinbase using the email address listed on your Overstock.com account. If you do not have a Coinbase account, you will receive an email outlining how to create an account and claim your refund. If you fail to retrieve your funds within 30 days, the funds will be returned to Overstock.com as unclaimed and will remain in your account as an in-store credit.Please let me know if there is anything else I can do for you with this or any other issue.
So, long story short, a month later I got escalated to phone support and they figured out how to deal with my request. But instead of sending me the original 0.0188961 BTC that I sent them, they sent me 0.011124 BTC. On August 25th, I replied:
Yes, I got the "refund" of 0.011124 BTC even though you owed me 0.0188961 BTC (which is the original amount I sent). You didn't account for the fact that it took you 53 days to refund me, the price of Bitcoin in USD has doubled in that time.
I know you have no intention of trying to swindle me. I know the whole reason this happened is a complete lack of training in your pay "support" department regarding Bitcoin. I know Bitcoin is hard to understand.
But just so you know, I'm very unhappy with Overstock.
Conclusion
Obviously, they have some issues to work out. Their site needs an update to support direct wallet transfers, or remove that broken option. Their support needs training as well.
If someone sends $50 worth of Bitcoin, the refund should not be $50 worth of Bitcoin. Instead, they should return the amount of Bitcoin they received, regardless of what it's worth in USD.
Then it won't matter if USD rises or falls against Bitcoin. Overstock is probably showing us what problems we have to look forward to in the new economy.
Wow thank you for making this post.
The last week or so I have been thinking about buying some boots off overstock with bitcoins.
now I know that is a bad idea.
Sounds like they can just take in bitcoins then wait for market to go up, send back usd value and keep the rest.
I heard a thing right after overstock started taking bitcoins that 90% of the itcoins they take in they are saving for 10 years till they cash them out.
no clue how true it is as the news on tv isn't always 100% honest.
hope u get your bitcoins back.
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The thing is that they are a fiat company - so when they received the bitcoin they changed it into dollars immediately. The price then moved, and they refunded you in what were to them dollars. They would do the same if you paid them in say euros, they'd change it immediately to dollars, and then refund you the dollar amount of euros.
Part of the problem here is that bitIcoin's price is swinging too violently to be useful as a currency. Currencies need to be steady, moving only 1 or 2 percent a day, not wildly swinging by 20% at a time.
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Well, that could be. But that's an unsafe practice if they plan on doing a lot of business with crypto. They should only cash out when they confirm a completed sale, in my opinion.
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Thank you for posting this. I've been thinking of purchasing my wife some items from Overstock. If the process is that awkward I don't think I'm going to do so very soon. Hopefully they will eventually fix their issues.
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Wow, really involved post. Thanks for this. It does seem entirely possible that overstock may have a bit of a "trading group" who work to maximize the value of their short term crypto currency accounts as a way to "hedge" against market volatility. I think it's hard to believe that they just leave the bitcoin sitting in their accounts.
Problem for people who pay in bitcoin (as you've outlined) is that there's is a huge opportunity cost element in having your $50.00 of bitcoin tied up during a refund process. And while I do think an acceptable solution is to return the value paid in bitcoin, the challenge here is, does overstock even have a reserve bitcoin account/pool to carry out these types of refunds? If they accept payment in BTC and sell it immediately to deleverage themselves (which is what I think they do) and you demand a refund in the same BTC amount as the market rises, then overstock loses money. So I really wonder what will happen? The accounting here gets really messy. And as you pointed out, I think how overstock handles BTC transactions/refund will be a really important training ground for mass payment adoption across all platforms.
Let's see what happens!
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I'd be surprised if this was an internal written practice so they could make money on the float. But people will jump to conclusions if this becomes a common story.
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Agreed. But it's probably a one off kind of thing. Just tin foil hatting a bit here, haha.
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To answer a question, are quick, after you buy, comes up several excuses and takes time to solve a problem that are theirs. This is lack of structure and store commitment to customers. I'm even afraid to buy from transactions made with bitcoin may be a bad deal.
The way is to wait for them to hone themselves and actually learn how to do these transactions correctly.
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I think a lot of these companies that are taking crypto are not quite ready for it and don't understand it at all. I don't expect we will have equal performance in respect to returns and general service with crypto for a long time, regardless how many places support it. Most of them aren't even supporting it directly but via proxy which makes it even more alien to them. Going to be a while until this changes.
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Indeed.
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I've not had a problem if I use coinbase as the sending wallet. Using my personal wallet doesn't work....thank goodness I had a coinbase account the first time I ordered my btc was routed to coinbase, which is weird I never entered that wallet. I've ordered hundreds of dollars of stuff using btc...all my orders arrived on time, no problem. you have to pay network fees...
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I'm glad you explained it... it is very strange and unexpected to hear the details of this story. Luckily it was only 0.01 BTC and not much more.
I would give them another 6 months and then email them again BEFORE sending any BTC to see how they answer your possible question about Bitcoin with out using coinbase.
I'm happy overstock is trying to take Bitcoin and is constantly in the news about it. We need these big companies to keep trying to accept it.
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Scripted customer service at its best. Customer service really needs to have the ability to think outside of the box and use their personal judgement instead of canned responses. I get that's when one agent's personal opinion can be misconstrued by the denizens of media consumers, but it would have been much better to receive a response in a scenario like this that read something along the lines of:
The fact that they've refunded you in the FIAT amount is in my opinion fair, as they are not listing their product initially in BTC, but FIAT, and giving the option to purchase in BTC.
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I can see that point of view, especially if they actually shipped the product and I decided I just didn't like it after 90 days or something. But in this situation, it was their own fault I had to wait 30 days.
Anyway, I get what you're saying. And a simple solution, if people don't like that policy, is just to not do business with them.
But I don't think it's a written policy/practice. I think they're just clueless about the nuance of handling multicurrency.
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At the very least, a full disclosure should be posted somewhere on their page indicating that any refunds issued by crypto will be for the original FIAT price, not crypto! Transparency is key :)
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No it's overstock they suck! I ordered a bunch of stuff and paid with bitcoin. I haven't received anything yet and I paid for express shipping. They took my bitcoin though! I was going to make a post about overstock if I don't get my stuff by the end of next week.
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Well then, they need to step up their game. I'm sticking to purse.io.
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What a nightmare...I've had trouble with Overstock with USD returns and ended up with "store credit." Sorry Cuz.
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thanks for the entry !
Upvoted and followed..
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You should be happy you have received a partial refund...
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Name & Shame.
Upvoted & Resteemed
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Wow Nice side bey for BTC,......///////////
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Good post, i like
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thank you for your post , now i will never use the service of this company
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thank you for sharing this experience. This is a new unexpected issue for me. @inertia
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