It's certainly disheartening to witness LocalBitcoin's fall from greatness. Back in 2013, it's unlikely I would have got seriously involved in Bitcoin if they had operated then the way they do now. I'm also a little surprised about the lack of contenders looking to fill this gap in the market. I would have thought it would be fairly lucrative to launch a service similar to how LocalBitcoins used to be, without all the KYC. Is it likely that such services are having issues with the fiat transfer side of things where banks start blocking transfers to and from the escrow accounts if there's no KYC in place?
honestly I think its just a matter of them not being competitive in the market and the niche they used to fill back in 2012/2013/14 era of facilitating face to face transactions is just not really needed so much these days as it has become so much easier than back then to purchase and sell bitcoins. You can sell them directly to cash app or on plenty of exchanges you cash deposit them into poker sites and withdraw cash you can use them in way more ways and for way more things now so actually converting to fiat isn't as necessary even at the basic level. Paxful seems to be a better service in the same vein as far as a dedicated site for facilitating online payment for bitcoins person 2 person so even in this one role they've fallen behind in my opinion.
This is all my opinion having been around and watched things come and go in the bitcoin world/community. It used to be the wild west and even acquiring bitcoin used to be a challenge for people outside of the community but that is just no longer the case. If they didnt have my coins there is zero percent chance I would even consider going through these verification processes to use their service because it's just not necessary enough and doesn't provide enough unique value to warrant that kind of time and effort. Like I've said a few times here and elsewhere in my other threads I believe they know this and that's why they're using shady tactics to get clients to make the time investment to comply with their verification processes in hopes that peoole will then sunk cost fallacy themselves into using the service/sit simply to make the effort and time they invested complying in order to get their coins back feel more worth it. This isn't logical but it's and commonly exploited psychological tic in how humans think and while I don't see anything wrong with companies using psychology to their advantage I do see something wrong with how LBC is going about it.
I just want them to return my coins to my wallet that I sent them from and then they can delete my account for all I care. I am doing and will continue to do whatever I can to avoid having to go through this tiered prcoeds just to get my coins back because honestly after this experience there is zero chance I ever login to LBC again after this is resolved.