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Comment by venus | Hacker News Reader

I am having difficulty picturing this situation.

The form you filled out when you sent the money had carbon copies, which are retained. If data from the form was mis-typed later, they should be able to check their copy, or you might be able to retrieve a copy from the outlet or receiver or something.

I assure you that no-one in WU is trying to steal $50 from you. Mistakes happen, but there is a paper trail, so if you really care, escalate. They operate under the supervision of your country's financial regulator, whom they are deathly afraid of, and are hardly going to risk their banking license pilfering fifty bucks.

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The $50 was not worth spending literally hours on the phone with them trying to get the issue resolved. The point is that bitcoin has real value as a painless money transfer mechanism.

>Speaking from experience: Western Union is awful. Absolutely horrible. They basically stole $50 from me > Avoid them at all costs.

The point is that you wrote a very damning indictment of a company, accusing them of theft, and I pointed out they could probably fix your issue if you actually cared, even without the receipt. You then admitted you couldn't be bothered going through the process.

So what you wrote was basically a load of crap. But hey, bitcoin!

I was so goddamn pissed off that the phone rep, who could barely speak English, had typo'd my number, which I had been very, very careful to say slowly, and to repeat back to him twice, and then be asked to prove myself by faxing a physical piece of paper in order to get my money back, after a total time investment of > 3 hours, after taking into account driving to the store, waiting on hold, etc, that my mindset was very much "fuck this shit." So whatever you say, man. I didn't accuse them of theft. I accused them of being so excruciatingly awful that recovering the $50 was not worth spending more hours of my life dealing with phone reps who could not understand what I was saying.

Fair enough. That does sound pretty annoying, I'd probably be pissed off myself! Anyway, your later comments put your original comment into better perspective, so thanks for replying.

Ah, sorry I wasn't very clear. =)

I probably missed something obvious here. But what happens if you mistype a bitcoin address (or worse : someone intercepts your mail and gives a different address).

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