}

Note: This was originally published on Medium.

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And to think, a week ago I had been about to trust this guy with the $12,000 worth of Ethereum that I’d slaved away in a grocery store to earn.

But first lets take a step back and put Tim’s angry message into context. I’d paid for two Ethereum 2.0 nodes, but after a week they hadn’t been delivered. During that week, I’d requested a refund and corresponded at length with a helpful but powerless Staked.US customer service agent named Jonathan. Nine days after my initial order, on December 10th, I sent Jonathan one last message:

Hello Jonathan,
Could you please see the attached screenshots regarding my case, and then forward this final message to your appropriate superiors in the company.
I know you’ve tried to help me and I appreciate that, but after ten days with no product or refund, I am left to believe that the people you work for are simply not honorable.
And so to whom it may concern: As a user of Coinbase Commerce myself, I know how ridiculously easy it is to process a refund. So at the end of business hours this Friday(tomorrow) I will write this $120 off as a loss and share the story widely across all relevant social media as a warning to others. I will also use every connection I have to see that your company’s relationship with Coinbase Commerce is permanently severed, because I can see that I am only one of many who have fallen down your hole.
This will be my last communication so no need to bother with any type of reply other than than immediate refunds to myself and the others. A promise won’t do because your word is no longer good.
Thanks, Jonathan, for your prompt replies.
No thanks to Staked.

Apparently poor Jonathan took my message to heart, sending it straight to his angry boss, CEO Tim Ogilvie. It took mere minutes from Tim to respond with this short blunt lie:

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Assuming Tim knew exactly what was up, I didn’t bother reminding him of my last message from Jonathan in customer service a week earlier:

…..we haven’t made it through our list of refunds yet. You should receive your refund by early next week.

What I did do was reply to Tim with the BTC address he requested. A refund quickly followed, but only $60 of the $120. I firmly but professionally reminded Tim once more of my Friday deadline for a FULL refund. And that’s when Tim told me so elegantly to “lighten the fuck up over $120”.

So Tim, how do you feel when you have every reason to believe that somebody has stolen from you, or even worse, that they just can’t be bothered to pay you back. Do you lighten the fuck up? That final insult to injury prompted me to write this even though you have in fact now given me a full refund.

From the very beginning, my experience with STAKED.US was disappointing. On December 1st, after my nodes had not appeared in their dashboard after several hours, I also asked them via Twitter if their developers were aware of the problems. Instead of showing any concern, or even any curiosity, they had simply made a joke out of it. I can only assume it was also Tim who wrote this:

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And so let this serve as a warning to anyone considering staking with Tim Ogilvie on Staked.US. Will you trust him to competently run your $6000 Ethereum 2.0 nodes if you can’t even trust him to keep his calm over a well-deserved $120 refund?

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