I've noticed that even though we've talked a lot about coinbase it does not have its dedicated thread..

There was an incident that happened to a friend for which I'd like an extra opinion on the course of action..

My friend (A) wanted to transfer money from a friend (B) of his as they are partners and needed it.

So, (B) tried to send bitcoins to (A) internally through coinbase using the email address option but did make a typo on the email address..

The FAQ state that if the transaction happens using the email address the receiver needs to claim the funds before they get transferred to him. If he doesn't claim them within 30 days they get returned to the sender. In case of using the BTC address there's no way back but that's not the case here.

My friend (A) did a test to send a small amount to another email of his that is not registered on coinbase just to see if an email gets sent to the receiver and -too bad- they do send an email for this purpose and to his bad luck they even state the amount both in BTC and EUR.

Looking the email up in social media, we get this facebook profile, so it probably belongs to this guy. So, what do you think would be the best course of action here?

The amount we're talking about is a respectable one.. close to a full BTC..  :-/
The email sent by coinbase reaches the recipient not filtered as spam which means he's probably gonna see it..

Contact Coinbase ASAP and see what can be done.

ruicarlov wrote on 8^th Mar, 2018 at 3:40pm:

Contact Coinbase ASAP and see what can be done.

We did contact Coinbase and basically that's what they replied:


Quote:

Thanks for contacting Coinbase support. Unfortunately, digital currency transactions using most blockchains are irreversible, meaning once they are sent there is no way to reclaim funds. If you sent digital currency from your Coinbase account to an email address by accident, your funds will be returned to you in 30 days if the funds remain unclaimed. If the email address has not already been claimed, you could do so to ensure the funds are returned to you.

So, I guess we're in the hands of the recipient.. which is why I'm wondering if I should we should contact him or not..

Seems like an average guy, if you ask me, and not much of the geek type.. so if we're lucky and the email get's buried in the spam.. maybe he won't even notice it after 30 days.. what do you think?

That's a tough spot to be in and if you contact him that could make the problem worse. He might not follow the email closely at this point so it could time out

Well, my friend decided to try this approach as a test.. he sent a generic "hello, we need to talk about something" message, just to see how prone the guy is to unknown senders.. :)

I took a look at the coinbase email and it states something like "X has sent you money - Click here to claim it".

IMO it looks a lot like a typical fishing scam so if he has never heard of coinbase we might get lucky, maybe he thinks of it as a scam.  ;D

I forgot to update the story, so here it goes..:

The guy never replied to my friend, and eventually the request expired so the coins returned to my friend..

So, the guy didn't notice he was actually sent a few thousands of dollars by accident, and my friend got lucky enough to get the full amount back..  ;D

SolidSnake wrote on 22^nd Jun, 2018 at 5:54pm:

I forgot to update the story, so here it goes..: The guy never replied to my friend, and eventually the request expired so the coins returned to my friend.. So, the guy didn't notice he was actually sent a few thousands of dollars by accident, and my friend got lucky enough to get the full amount back..  ;D

That's awesome  :money