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I first posted this article yesterday on read.cash here, https://read.cash/@Sarjaria/my-experience-with-binance-75cf0306. READ.CASH is another great platform which encourages blogging on various topics and earn Bitcoin cash!
I joined BINANCE on 07th May 2021. I had been reading about cryptos for some time before that and wanted to start dabbling into the world of crypto currencies. To start trading, I needed to open an account with one of the many available crypto exchanges, and after some research, I zeroed in on Binance.
Binance is supposed to be arguably the best exchange in the world in terms of security, fees, performance, and customer service. It's the exchange which supposedly has the biggest collection of coins and tokens available for trading. Creating an account is also hassle free. SO, I went ahead and opened my account with Binance on 07 May 2021. For the first month or so there were no issues and the things were running smoothly.
However, things changed from June onwards. I had some USDT lying idle in Binance and thought why not use their flexible saving option in 'Binance Earn'. In that option you can redeem 'your' money anytime without loosing any interest (which you do in locked staking). My plan was to redeem my USDT when an opportunity arises. That day came on the weekend of 22 June 2021, when Bitcoin (BTC) touched $29000. Licking my lips, I logged into my Binance account and went to 'Binance Earn' to redeem my USDT. I wouldn't have become rich or something, but this was a very good opportunity to buy BTC and other alt coins which were trading at very very low levels of their all time high prices. But when I tried redeeming my money using 'fast redemption' it showed that I had no USDT available, while the USDT was showing as available under 'Standard Redemption' option. People unaware of 'standard redemption' should know that after redeeming your money will arrive the next day. But that was out of question as no on knows where the market would be the next day.
I was still calm as I knew that famed customer service team of Binance would take care of this in no time. I raised a support ticket and that's when my nightmare started. The expected wait time of an 'agent' joining me to help was stated as 5 minutes, but no one joined for more than 30 odd minutes. Aghast, I left the chat window and kept on looking at it for some response. After more than 4 hours, at 1.15 AM. to, I got a reply from an agent. I explained him the situation, and he asked me to try redeeming my USDT on PC. So, pissed, I got up from my bed and logged into my Binance account. But the issue persisted. The agent informed me that 'Fast redemption' is facing issue and that 'standard redemption' is indeed working, and I can redeem my money.
It was a face palm moment!
The agent had not even properly read and understood my issue with fast redemption and asked me to get up from my bed and login at 1.15 AM, just to tell me that 'standard redemption' is working, which I already knew and that was not even the issue raised! I was super angry both at the incompetence and the fact that I would not be able to buy the cryptos at such low prices even though I had money available. All because of Binance, these things should not happen with one of the biggest exchanges in the world, but they happen too often.
The 2nd issue is an ongoing issue. After learning that Binance is providing a more than decent APY of 3.4% on staking of your VeChain, I decided to use it and staked my VeChains on 30 June 2021. However, I noticed that even after passing of 3-4 days neither any interest was getting accrued nor VThor was being airdropped. I went ahead and raised a ticket with customer support of Binance on 03 July 2021. After initial chat with their 'agent', I was informed that my issue has been transferred to a 'specialist' of another team.
This was more than 24 hours ago, since then there has been no communication on my issue. I tried reaching the Binance Support team on twitter as well and sent them a DM with relevant information, no reply. I tried tweeting both Binance and 'Changpeng Zhao', head of Binance, again no reply.
However, in a short while after posting my article on read.cash, I received the reply from the escalation team. They shared a document which showed that for VeChain there are no daily accruals in locked staking unlike in flexible staking. On asking, why it took so much time for such a simple resolution, the specialist had no proper answer.
This has been an utterly frustrating encounter with Binance, however, in the 2nd instance I was relieved that my money was safe. I have read about such scenarios and much more on various forums and platforms as well. Situation such as when the market is low and users cannot login into their Binance account as their SMS verification won't arrive.
I, therefore, urge everyone to be aware of what kind of situations Binance can put you in. One can lose a great opportunity to invest even though the money was available. In addition, there's a lot of anger, sadness, and pulling your hairs that comes along with it. This might feel like a rant, but I just wanted to share what I had gone through to make you guys aware of Binance working in certain situations.
Be careful with your money!
Please share if you also have faced similar or other issues with Binance and did you guys get the resolution and in how much time.
