Coin Credit Card, "Only Coin" Beta Backer Program Bait and Switch

Coin announced the following today, “Today the Claim your Coin email has started to Roll out. We are writing this email to explain more.”

What Coin failed to explain in their email, or on their website is the truth – Coin missed their deadline and wants their pre-order customers to become, what I call, backvestors. A backvestor is a backer and an investor who doesn’t even realize he or she is in such a role; Coin wants all who pre-ordered to become extended beta testers, who then pay more money for the real product the backers ALREADY PAID FOR. This announcement and lack of integrity from Coin has caused an uproar on Coin’s own Twitter page and has their “backers” aka backvestors demanding refunds; it has also sparked this blog post and my cancel request below.

“To Whom It May Concern,

I’m sure several other customers have expressed their equal frustration and dissatisfaction over the recent Coin announcement today. I was so excited to read my Coin email I missed your “update” turning the pre-order for a full product into a beta backer program. That’s flat out false advertising. All your “backers,” myself included, pre-ordered on the contingency that we would get the full product if we waited nearly a year for the “Gold Standard,” as you now call it, to be complete.

Now, you have the beta ready, a beta program that has already been available to the 1000 testers in the SF Bay Area for months, but you have failed to meet your deadline for the final product. Coin even sent an update only weeks ago assuring all of us “backers” of your “on time” position for meeting the promised deadline for having a FULL PRODUCT completed by Summer of 2014, a promise which has now been blatantly broken. With all this in mind, why should any of your “backers” trust you to meet yet another deadline of Spring of 2015 when you failed in meeting the first deadline of Summer of 2014 and tried to cover it up it a “opt in” program?

Furthermore, the final product won’t even be available, now, until Spring of 2015, if Coin actually meets the deadline, which means the card will only be useful for less than 6 months considering the new Chip and Pin requirement.

With all this in mind, I would like to withdraw my support for the Coin program and ask for a full refund. I want to make it clear, I am only canceling because of the way Coin handled missing the explicit deadline and not for actually missing the deadline. It’s one thing to fall behind, it’s an entirely separate issue to lie to your supporters in a deceitful way.

My pre-order (or beta backer, as Coin now likes to refer to it) is: [hidden.]

It would be only fair to also provide interest on the monies your backers loaned to you since there was no return for their investment and an explicit deadline was missed, but I doubt Coin will see things from their investor’s perspectives. The least Coin could have done, the very least, was be honest about missing a deadline, extending the beta program to all and offer a FREE upgrade to the Gold Standard card in 2015.

Best of luck to you in the future,

Jessica”