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Beware of ICO Bench!by@filip.poutintsev
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Beware of ICO Bench!

by Filip PoutintsevMay 29th, 2018
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ICO Bench, one of the biggest ICO listing site has been caught with multiple abuses. Let’s start from smallest one.

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ICO Bench, one of the biggest ICO listing site has been caught with multiple abuses. Let’s start from smallest one.

I don’t recommend anyone having any business with the ICO Bench.

1. Overpriced useless promotional packages

Most expensive promotion package on ICO Bench is “Premium Hit” that costs 35 BTC and last 45 days. If you count highest price per day, “Premium Deluxe” last only 7 days and costs 10 BTC.

So what do you get for such high price? Not much. I’ve heard from several ICOs that the money they paid to ICO Bench were practically wasted. Yes you get some traffic, but compared to the amount it’s the most expensive traffic in crypto world and the quality is just average.

2. “Free” ICO listing

While ICO Bench claim to offer ICO listing, that’s a total lie. Well technically they do offer free listing, but you’ll have to wait for months to get listed and by that time your ICO sale will be probably already over.

3. Terrible customer support

In best cases you get a reply after 1–2 weeks, but if ICO Bench don’t find your message to be interested they will not reply at all. Writing on their social media also get no response. It seems even though they make huge amount of money only 1 person is handling customer support.

For example things like KYC procedure of ICO founders take huge amount of time, even if you paid for “premium listing”.

4. No one is checking ICO Expert application

Like with the customer support no one bothers to check Expert applications. People have been waiting for months with no results. I have been checking the list of Expert and in past few months and there hasn’t been any new faces on the list. It seems that no one is approving new Expert applications.

5. False ratings by ICO Bench

ICO Bench’s own ICO rating bot “Benchy” will give rating according to which promotional package you bought. The more you paid the better rating you will have and if you only paid cheapest fee for listing, you’re rating will be low no matter how good your ICO is.

6. False ratings by ICO Experts

While accepting payment for rating is forbidden according to the terms, almost every expert does that and ICOs are happy to pay for it.

7. No company, no contact information

There is no legal information about ICO Bench. No company info, no physical address and no names of people behind the project.

If you search ICO Bench on Linkedin, you may discover few employees who all work from Russia, therefore it seems that ICO Bench is a Russian set up, though where it is legally registered (or if has been registered at all) is unknown.

It sure seems that ICO Bench does everything to hide the information of it’s founders, probably because of the reasons mentioned above.

Do you know any other dirty secrets of ICO Bench? Please share them in comment section!