I just finished a trade where I sent a SEPA transfer to buy BTC. The other trader opened a dispute because my name did match – for a valid reason described below. The arbitrator (3b7cft5k4ae6a236.onion:9999 – Alex I believe) awarded the other trader $10 because I “did not follow the rules.”
As I mentioned in the dispute, I use a service called Transferwise and do not own the bank account. The instructions for Transferwise clearly state that I am to list “Transferwise” as the recipient of any transactions:
If an incoming transfer were to list my own name on the account, it would be rejected. Also since I do not receive transfers from this account, I was not aware they use my name as the sender’s name in the SEPA transfer, and it was not my intention for them to be mismatched. I simply followed instructions! I did provide my name in the arbitration process!
This is clearly an edge case, but I should not be punished when I am using the software to the letter as far as I am aware. This should be a situation where the incorrect information is confirmed and a warning is given. I watched Bisq’s video tutorial and searched for some time for “the rules” Alex mentioned in his response to me, without finding any.
This is clearly a mistake on Alex’s part, and I would like him to return the $10 in bitcoins that has been stolen from me. I would like to know how to proceed to get my money back.
3b7… onion address is arbitrator @keo .
Alex does his best on the support, but Alex is not an arbitrator.
So please first discuss with your arbitrator.
Yeah, I was never an arbitrator but it’s an honest mistake
I understand the confusion here with the payee name and reference, but it’s a generally good decision by arbitrators to award the other trader for his troubles when the protocol is broken.
Bisq trading protocol requires the use of your own name during payment for some specific anti-scam precautions, but maybe that should be explained better in the app. I suggest creating an issue on GitHub if you think there that more popups with clearer instructions are needed in Bisq for these scenarios.
We can wait for keo to respond here, but please understand that this is not his mistake. He has been following his instructions to maintain the trading protocol and award the other peer for his troubles and lost time when he is not at fault.
Perhaps some discussion is needed about the trading protocol and how this specific case with TransferWise should be handled in the future.
My apologies for calling you out Alex, and thank you for the thoughtful response. However regardless of who is at fault, $10 fine on a $200 trade is way too much for a minor issue that was resolved. That makes the trade essentially 10% more expensive ($210 for $190 of bitcoin) and the only person it inconveniences is the arbitrator. It incentives people to arbitrate for no reason. What should happen is the missing info is confirmed by the arbitrator and both parties go on their way. You’ve got to know that Bisq has low volume, and this made me want to quit. I imagine other people are just walking away in these instances. The communication is terrible… I didn’t even know I was talking to the arbitrator when he first messaged me. He didn’t introduce himself and he wasn’t nice. I thought it was the other trader judging by his tone (there is no text saying he is the arbitrator). Just a bad experience.
I still want my money back. I had no recourse and was cheated.
Yeah, Bisq still has plenty of ways to improve.
We are a young project, we need all the feedback we can get.
All of these things need to be smooth out, so your feedback is very appreciated. Hopefully, some dev or arbitrator will look into this and see what could be done in future.
Arbitrator could contact the other trader to return those $10, since Bisq traders are usually honest and fair. However, there is no guarantee of course.
Who do I contact? @keo hasn’t responded. I’ve had someone reach into my account and take what they want after doing nothing wrong and inconveniencing no one. There were 4 days left on the transaction time when this happened – it did not inconvenience the other trader, he was just abusing the system for free money. Will Bisq stand for that?
The trader wasn’t abusing the system, that is for sure. He also followed the trading protocol.
I am not sure if there are appropriate popups that explain this rule of the protocol in the app, but this is definitely a rule that was discussed on this forum long time ago, as well as GitHub of course.
The other trader lost his time on a trade that failed, that is not his fault. We really can’t blame neither the other trader nor the arbitrator, since the definitely followed the rules. The only question is if users are well informed about this rule so that they don’t break it, but it has definitely been broken when you didn’t put the right payee name and if you didn’t put the right reference when sending the payment.
The trade didn’t fail! It went through successfully! The trader lost no time! The trader had my $200 in his account and had the option of clicking the approve button if they wanted to. If they were concerned about some scam, he still lost no time because the trade was way ahead of schedule.
And yes, there is NO information about this. The Docs currently have “Coming soon” for all of the arbitration rules and this “rule” is mentioned no where else on the internet from the best of my searching. https://docs.bisq.network/trading-rules.html
I should have NOT been punished for this. I should have had a warning at the most because I did nothing wrong. You have to see I had zero ways of knowing I was going to lose money. This is not a “oops” situation! This is REAL money that was TAKEN from me. I followed all available recourse to perform the trade and did it in best faith. Someone is responsible and owes me my money!
Are you sure that Bisq doesn’t inform that you need to set trade ID as reference and send from an account with the name placed in the account?
I know the discussion here is that you sent with a wrong payee name, but in the screenshot above it seems that your bank requires you to send transactions with their reference as well.
If you sent the payment with the reference that isn’t Bisq trade ID, I am pretty sure that there is a popup about that when you are trading.
but it’s an honest mistake 