I've been back and fourth on going public with this, sense I'm a vendor on Alphabay and have been for 6ish months. I was going to wait til my escrow clears and post this from my vendor account because I know how it looks hearing about x market place from new accounts/throwaways, but decided to just go ahead and hope to prevent this from happening to others.
I decided to do an order some days ago, so I made a fresh account and transferred a few coins over to an account that wouldn't be linked to me, due to it being a physical package. I messaged the vendor about the possible order, but then I had my own orders come in. I switched back over, got the orders out while the coin was coming, and by the time I went to go back in to do the order Alphabay pulled my funds back out and changed the password to my new buyer account.
I was not phished, nor do I open any links. I did get the standard message from Alpha support or whatever, and left it unread because I already know its sent to all new members and it contains a phishing link - idk why they still allow that account. The account name was never re-used/recycled on any other forum/market place. I was straight jacked by them, and confirmed my funds were moved out within hours of coming in via the blockchain
They are scamming all new users. Anyone can test this. Add funds into a new account, let it sit for a few hours, and once they see it they will withdraw it and change your password. The best "support" you get from there is that you were hacked or opened up the wrong link. They don't care about keeping new users, because they are just going cash out soon.
I can verify to any mod that I am a vendor, and they can see my post history has always been positive to this marketplace. They refunded me my bond, let me continue to vend for free, never had any issues with withdrawls/disputes, but they clearly just robbed me thinking I was some new user. I can also show the coin going in, the coin going out, and where its sitting now.
The forums are over loaded with posts like this everyday, and I guess I didn't want to believe that it was really happening. I assumed with all the phishing/malware on the site it was just people who were new to the markets learning things the hard way.
For anyone who is trying to find a new home, just don't. While you have a few hour window before they withdraw it, its just not worth the risk. My other buyer account has done 10+btc no issues sense july, but I always spend it the second it comes in.
This is an outrageous claim. And I don't mean it is a lie, I mean if there is so much as a shred of truth to this then all Hell needs to break out. Just exactly WTF is going on? How could they possibly get away with this without the community noticing in a more coherent form than these odd posts here and there?