"Customer service is not existent. My fees were close to 10%, which I was fine with, provided I get the funds I sent myself. Sadly the later didnt happen, and they took over 900$.
If I get the money I sent, the review will change to 4/5
DO NOT USE BITINSTANT EVER!!!. YOU WILL BE SORRY!"

"Terrible. Made a transaction Tuesday... it's Friday and still no coin. WTF.
EDIT: I see a lot of reviews with problems similar to mine and am frustrated that there aren't any updates indicating whether or not they ever received their BitCoins. I'll periodically edit this to let others know how this pans out.

UPDATE: 4/21/2013. Still no coin, no response. DON'T USE THIS COMPANY. Not sure how else to reliably get BitCoins so, my experimentation with it is over."

"Bitinstant seems to be great. This was the first time I used them, but I'm in the US and transferred using Moneygram through a local CVS branch, and by the time I got home, I had an email from Bitinstant noting that the finds had been transferred. I wish they could add the option to link a US bank account, but they're definitely the best service out there. Very happy. Thanks Bitinstant!"

"It is my second purchase of bitcoins at BitInstant. They are the only trader of bitcoin in Brazil that I know. Due to recent market instability, they took three days to transfer my bitcoins and they were slow to respond to my attempts to contact this period. But I think it was a special situation. I am satisfied."

"There is a problem with payments from Brazil. Our banking system is somewhat slow to inform ZipZap that the payment was made. It's my belief that this is leading to quote expiration problems with BitInstant.

BitInstant needs to adapt their systems to allow for delayed payments. This situations are being resolved quite quickly in a thread in the bitcointalk forum. This is ok, but BitInstant needs to answers their e-mails also.

I believe the company is acting in good faith and trying to solve the problems. I can only hope that this was the consequence of not being prepared to handle the increasing number of users."

"Smooth transaction. The Bitcoins arrived in my wallet LITERALLY one minute after I sent payment... I probably wasn't even out of the CVS store before they were there. Excellent service! Keep up the good work."

"I transferred money to buy Bitcoins and got funded in 2 days.
2 days I was wondering where is my money and left 4 messages on voice mail. Nobody called me back. I saw my money after 48 hours magically appear in my account.
Very poor customer service!"

"MY MONEY WAS NOT TRANSFERRED INTO MY ACCOUNT. IT HAS ALMOST BEEN 24 HOURS! I HAVE EMAILED THEM THREE TIMES AND CALLED THEM ONCE!"

"Well I stopped using bitinstant when the last 2 orders took 3 days unlike the 1 hour advertisement on their home page. Thought I'd give them another try today and this time the coins were never sent yet I got a confirmation email. This is beyond not right, judging from threads on the forum many have lost dollars thru these guys. "

"Site appears to be a scam. I sent money to them and, after four days, received no email, no bitcoins, and no response after contacting them twice (once by email, once by web form).
"

"I tried to transfer money to Mt. Gox. They took my money and there was an error when transferring it. It is 12 hours later and I have no money and no bitcoins. They shouldn't be taking people's money if their scripts aren't running correctly."

"Let's just say that the last person that reviewed bitinstant had EXACTLY the same problem that I am having. The customer service with this place SUCKS.

"I am extremely unhappy with this transaction. My past transactions have gone smoothly. However, with this transaction, instead of being able to easily transfer my money from BitInstant to my Mt. Gox account, I was sent an e-mail that told me there was a GoxCoupon code below and that I should enter that into my Mt. Gox account.

Except, in the GoxCoupon field, it said {u'error': u'Must be logged in'}

Not surprisingly, this "code" didn't work.

At the bottom of the e-mail, it said "If you have any questions, feedback or need some help, please do not hesitate to contact us!
****@****
Telephone: 1.***-***-****""

"I am extremely unhappy with this transaction. My past transactions have gone smoothly. However, with this transaction, instead of being able to easily transfer my money from BitInstant to my Mt. Gox account, I was sent an e-mail that told me there was a GoxCoupon code below and that I should enter that into my Mt. Gox account.

Except, in the GoxCoupon field, it said {u'error': u'Must be logged in'}

Not surprisingly, this "code" didn't work.

At the bottom of the e-mail, it said "If you have any questions, feedback or need some help, please do not hesitate to contact us!
****@****
Telephone: 1.***-***-****"

However, when I call that number, it says to please use the online chat option, because telephone lines are for "emergencies only." Then why did you give me the number???

When I finally located the online chat button (hidden rather inconspicuously at the bottom of one of the pages - and NOT labeled "Online Chat" or anything else that would make a person think it was the online chat button - instead of getting an online chat agent, I was told that my question would be answered by e-mail.

Worst customer service ever. I will be finding another funding option."

"This is my second time using BitInstant, I think this company Rocks! easy to use and no passwords to remember! Transfer money to where you need quickly. I would recommend them to anyone."

"This is the fifth ~$500 order I've placed with bitinstant. Out of five, this is the third order to get "lost" where they've taken the money that was supposed to be transferred but failed to credit the account it was supposed to be transferred to.
Fortunately I was able to get the first two 'lost' transactions manually processed by their support staff. But that took two days and because of that I lost out on a potentially substantial gain.
I was hoping after those failed transactions they had fixed whatever problems were causing it, but unfortunately that doesn't seem to be the case. And I now again stand to lose a fair amount of profit due to errors on their part.
Support has not yet contacted me regarding the last failed transaction, though I've attempted contacting them twice.
I doubt I'll be making use of their services again unless they make some major changes, and as it stands right now, I wouldn't recommend their services. A 40% success rate isn't a very good sign, especially for the type of service Bitinstant is supposed to provide."