This crooked backwards run no good doesn't care one bit about its users ass site directly told me via big ass notification on my account that my wallet was active and I could send BTC as normal. It did NOT tell me I couldnt trade until I contacted support and went through a whole long process. What it said wa s I'd need to verify my phone number and given that it said my wallet was fine and I'd be able to send BTC aka withdraw ifsomething went wrong i went ahead and deposited, which it let me do just fine with zero indication of wallet issues. Well when I tried to verify it said THEN that I couldnt do the thing the note on my account said I needed to do and I had to deal with "3-5 days response time is our best case scenario" support. Ok that's a little annoying and a bit of a waste of time but oh well not the end of the world. I'll just send the BTC back to myself and sell them another way. WRONG. That giant note encouraging me to deposit and assuring me my wallet is perfectly fine and I'll have no issues sending BTC apparently is a flat out lor at best and an intentional mislead to get my/your money locked into their thieving site at worst. Now my BTC is stuck there until I can deal with support (go check the localbitcoin reddit for an idea of how quick painless and productive that is) and I was told by the site specifically that I wouldn't have this problem.
This is something that LocalBitcoins has to seriously look at because this drives at the very center of the platform...and that is the deterioration of its services to its loyal customers. I understand that this can be an isolated incident but if the same problem can also be happening to others, then complaints will certainly piled up and many will be venting their frustration in different social media and that is something that LocalBitcoins must avoid at all cost. I am hoping that this problem can be solved as soon as possible.
I think the bigger problem is the part of customer service, if the customer service are more active and responsive to the varying issues users are encountering in the site it will make things easier, if they want to keep their reputation they better do something about customer service otherwise they could be given wrong impression to users.
I agree. This is a big failure on the customer service system and maybe of people manning this department. I am not actually passing judgement on LocalBitcoins just based on this incident but if this platform will not arrest a problem at its inception then something like this can grow and have a life of its own. I am sure though that people behind LocalBitcoins are not allowing the goodwill and reputation they worked for years to go to waste.