Back in November, I signed up for Yet Another Cashback App (they’re popping up left and right these days). This one was called Coinseed. It was particularly exciting because they were running cashback promotions for Amazon without regard to item category, as most other portals were doing. They’re usually around 2%, but I’ve seen up to 4%. It was also interesting because you could take your earnings as cryptocurrency instead, as they are also a cryptocurrency investing platform.

Anyways, I’m not here to promote them. On the contrary, you should stay as far away from them as possible. I’m glad I never gave them any real money, because I’d probably never see it back. I now regret referring so many friends to this platform, and this post will explain why.

I’m sorry there are no screenshots, because they deleted my account already, along with ~$200 of unpaid earnings. Lesson learned: TAKE SCREENSHOTS OFTEN.

The honeymoon period

I’ve made a lot of purchases on Amazon.com over the years. I joined Coinseed in November, and I tried to use it whenever I remembered to (it’s app-only, so you have to place purchases from your phone), and was pleased that it tracked my purchases within hours of each purchase (you can’t use gift card since they verify purchases against the credit card you put in the app). If an item was $99, you’d earn 198 points. 100 points = $1 (or some equivalent amount of various cryptocurrencies).

The app design is pretty confusing, but after you have collected at least 2000 points, you can Redeem it to the equivalent cash or crypto. However, it doesn’t end there. After you redeem it, you need to then WITHDRAW it (I didn’t realize this until a friend mentioned it). I believe you have to attach a bank account or debit card in order to withdraw the cash.

The bait-and-switch

The withdrawal is exactly where the problem begins. My first withdrawal of around $70 seems to have been fine and had the status “Processed” (though I need to go confirm whether I ever received it…). My next three withdrawals stated “Pending” for weeks…and weeks.

A bunch of my friends noticed the same thing. There was also a little tiny message on my home screen saying something like “There is a problem with your account. Please email support@coinseed.co.” So all of us go and email them to ask what’s up. The individual who wrote back to all of us, Sukhbat lkhagvadorj, is actually a co-founder and CFO of the company according to Crunchbase. Here is their SEC filing.

Here was his first email (which is similar to what others have received):

3/2: Your account has been flagged as potential risk. Thus, we need more information for further verification. Can you please send us the details of your purchases that you made through your Coinseed app?

support@coinseed.co

Omg. I’ve literally had hundreds of purchases, and I didn’t use Coinseed for all of them. This was a daunting task, so I emailed back asking for mercy, and he came back and asked for the last 5 purchases instead. Relieved, I screenshotted my last 5 purchases from my Amazon account for him. He also asked everybody else for the last 5 purchases.

His response:

3/5: We were unable to verify these transactions with Amazon. You might have completed your purchase on a different app or website than your Coinseed app.

3/6: Your account is flagged as potential fraud unless we can verify your purchases.

support@coinseed.co

Hmm, strange. I don’t know how they’re doing this verification. I emailed back asking if he could let me know which 5 transactions he wanted me to match up. No response (apparently, he also closed my ticket at this time, since my next email got assigned a new ticket number). I let it go for a weekend since I was traveling. When I got back, I put some time into it and this time provided the Coinseed points tracking, the Amazon order ID, and the exact dollar amount (along with screenshots from Amazon) proving that the Coinseed points I earned matched up exactly as 2x the dollar amount I had spent:

2000 points 5 days ago = 3/8/19 ORDER # 113-5644631-redacted for $99.98
2000 points 5 days ago = 3/8/19 ORDER # 113-6367318-redacted for $109.95
599.8 points 13 days ago = 2/27/19 ORDER # 113-8901708-redacted for $299.99
1979.94 points 13 days ago = 2/27/19 ORDER # 114-7155906-redacted for $989.97
199.96 points 15 days ago = 2/25/19 ORDER # 114-6764342-redacted $99.98

My “second try” email on 3/13

Did they actually “verify”?

A couple interesting observations:

When I saw that he had closed my ticket, I felt this showed he didn’t care about his customers and was just trying to ignore me, hoping I would go away. Not to mention he earlier accused my account of being a risk and potential fraud. Not sure how he would come to that conclusion.

I also have an email tracker that tells you when an email is opened and read. This “second try” email I sent, I could see when he opened the email, and also saw that he responded shortly thereafter with:

Unfortunately, we weren’t able to verify none of the purchases with Amazon.

support@coinseed.co on 3/13, minutes after opening my email with the proof

Given that he responded within minutes, I suspect he didn’t even attempt to “verify” with Amazon. I was pretty livid given that I spent 30 min verifying my purchases and he didn’t even try. Well, I’m pretty stubborn and wasn’t about to give up on this company yet, figuring it’s probably just some miscommunication. Also, while most of my friends were experiencing a similar email chain, ONE of my friends got his account unlocked and his pending withdrawals were processed. So I figured there was still hope. I asked Sukhbat what else I could do. He responded within minutes:

We regret to inform you that we can no longer provide you with access to our service and have to close your account.

support@coinseed.co

BOOM. And just like that, my app was logged out and with that, $200 of earnings disappeared.

I had sent them one last email saying I was happy to spend more time getting my transactions matched up with them so they can at least release the pending payments, but…don’t think they’re going to respond to that one.

Coinseed is mostly a scam

Since I started writing this post, another friend has had his account shut down too. They “verified” a few of his purchases, but not all, and for that reason, they deleted his account immediately as well. I’m currently surveying the many friends I’ve referred to Coinseed in the past to see if anyone else has been shut down yet.

So far, very few people have actually withdrawn their earnings successfully. If you are one of those people, you can be smug and proud of yourself. I don’t know how you did it. And congratulations, you can keep using the app.

For the rest of us…I think it’s safe to say that Coinseed has bait-and-switched us and the hassle and frustration involved in trying to get our earnings out was not worth it in the end. We’ve been scammed. I hope to prevent others from getting into this mess as well.

You can try Coinseed at your own risk…but remember, take lots of screenshots.

P.S. How is it even my responsibility to verify that their app properly tracks my Amazon purchases? 🤦‍♀️I just recalled that portals like Topcashback, Ebates, etc have never asked me to do anything like this before.