Remember not so long ago I posted the reasons for disliking centralized exchanges? The main conclusion for doing so was the loss of control and the possibility you're abruptly prohibited from logging in or accessing your funds, but as I was writing I experienced a (for me) rather new phenomenon; Not arriving of funds send on the blockchain, even though the transfer had been completed.

It's been over 1 week now since I send XLM to this exchange with the intention of trading it for either Bitcoin or fiat, but the transfer, though displayed as "successful" on StellarExpert was never credited to my balance there. The deposit address, memo etc. were all correct from my part so that can't be the issue. But then, if all that is correct then not arriving is not really the issue then is it, the exchange not crediting it is the real issue here. It's some sort of big secret or something cause every time I ask them for an update or more details they tell me they "are working on it". The only hint they gave me was at the very beginning of all this when after the first 3 hours passed and I asked what the hold up was, they replied by mail saying they were "updating a node" and that it would be credited accordingly after everything was finished. Well, 24 hours later and still no XLM nor update so I contacted them again, and there it was; Something had gone wrong, "please send us proof of deposit with address and memo displayed". They won't inform me what is going on, which is what annoys me the most. Even if I ask them in baby-step questions to try and figure out what's going on, like "Is mine the only one you're having trouble with or did the deposits before and after mine experience the same"? It's always the same pointless non-answer like "we are working on it and will inform you when....". Oh, the value loss btw went from -8% on the first day to -25% by now🤦‍♂️ I even tried contacting the exchange I send the XLM from asking if they could maybe revert it or inform me if anything unusual happened and they pretty much confirmed what I already found, that everything was sent successfully and the receiving exchange should have it in their possession.

I don't think they're lying and purposely withholding it from me, it's not a whale-level transfer or anything but still a considerable amount of XLM (almost 6000) the exchange's wallet address currently holds over 600.000 XLM. I think they just messed up somehow with perhaps forgetting to disable the withdrawal/deposit options while they were doing some maintenance. I remember when they informed me about the node update I quickly went to check if people could still deposit XLM to the exchange and saw that XLM transfers were "temporary disabled". The next day I checked again and deposit address was visible again and hadn't changed, neither did the memo number for me so perhaps their first hint about a node update is the reason they now lost the XLM, but that shouldn't be my problem should it? What if their reply eventually is "yeah, no, it's gone"? Does this fall under my own risk and responsibility even though I did everything correct from my end? And shouldn't they have some sort of pot to reimburse their clients when they lose their funds on their platform due to the exchange's own fault? I mean making me wait over a week and just take the L is a bit unreasonable isn't it, go sort your stuff out and make the XLM accessible to me since it was your screw up from the get-go right?🤷‍♂️