I disagree. There's still a big lack of transparency on their website - you really have to search for information before you find it. Moreover, not responding to support requests (as well as the numerous other ways of reaching out to them).. there's no excuse for that. I understand it happens, but the only logical course of action is that they take the fall for their mistakes, rather than leaving the problem with people who have no control over the situation at all (e.g. everyone who holds GRC at Poloniex). I have simply suggested they would return the BTC that I paid for the GRC coins, and they refuse that too. In other words: while they (now) admit they screwed up, they are not doing anything to let it be their problem rather than making their problem my problem.


It certainly does everybody some good, because before I started doing that, they were completely ignoring everything. I've given them plenty of chances to rectify the mess before I took anything public (I waited a whole week after opening tickets, sending messages on IRC, Twitter, etc - which all went ignored). It has already accomplished that they at least confirmed that they messed this up. But I simply will not stop there, because I'm not going to accept that I'm ending up taking the fall for their mistakes.

If you go to a restaurant (let's say you paid upfront for whatever reason) and they serve you uncooked food, you complain about it, and they respond "sorry, one of our suppliers has a problem and because of that we don't have any gas to cook on", then that would be kinda weird to begin with. You'd expect them to put a note at the entrance or that they inform you when you enter. If they neglect to do so and you complain about getting uncooked food, and they simply ignore you, then that gets even weirder. But if they then finally address your complaint, but still refuse to give you your money back, then the restaurant owner really is way out of line. It would make no sense whatsoever that the restaurant owner would make his problem a problem of his clients.

This situation with Poloniex is no different. They neglected to address my complaints before I took it public. Subsequently they admit they messed up, but refuse to return funds and just let me wait endlessly (which results in a loss for me even if I eventually get access to my GRC coins, since the value has dropped considerably during the time when my funds were inaccessible). In other words: they are making their problem, my problem. And I'm not going to sit here quietly until they fix it.

Additionally, another reason I'm not going to shut up about it, is because I consider it a responsibility to warn others about these practices. In my opinion no exchange should have the illusion that they can just hold funds just because they have a technical problem. There is no way anyone can even verify why a market is frozen (let alone for almost 2 weeks.. a lifetime in crypto), and what this situation essentially comes down to is that they can lock anyone out of their funds for an unspecified period of time for any reason at all. This situation, should be considered a risk of the exchange (considering they are in control), rather than a risk of a customer of the exchange. In my view it is completely unacceptable when ANY business defers an operational risk (like this current situation) to their clients, rather than taking the responsibility of carrying this risk themselves. I have also discussed this matter with several other large altcoin exchanges, and they completely agreed with my point of view (in terms of.. if they would end up in this situation, they would return the BTC that was paid for the coins (if that's what the user wants) rather than letting the user wait until they fixed their problem).

Therefore, unless and until Poloniex changes this policy of letting customers take the fall for the exchange's problems, I will simply be warning others about these practices, as I consider it a malicious way of conducting their business. When you send coins to Poloniex, you literally risk getting locked out of your funds if THEY mess up. Now, if they would be having issues with insolvency as a result of getting hacked or something like that, then it would be much more understandable that they can't take immediate action to help me solve the problems of their users. But in this situation, when they can but won't make it their own problem, that's unacceptable. In my opinion nobody should trust their funds with any party that won't take the fall for their mistakes.