My $.02 on River

Per some recommendations read on Reddit I gave River a try for purchasing Bitcoin. On the July 4th I made an initial deposit of $500US. I caught bitcoin during the dip and so far, so good. After it cleared my bank I went to move the BTC out of River.....ID verification request. Ok, I thought. No problem. I have more than a few accounts, tradfi and crypto. I submitted the requested ID photos, along with the headshot. I received and email stating that I would receive a response in 1-2 days. Granted the 4th was a holiday. Well, I think it was Tuesday(9th) that I finally called customer service to find out what taking so long. On the plus side customer service was US based, and she stated that she would expedite the verification processing, which she did. Also stated that assets were available to be moved 7-10 days after the initial deposit, and to check the app for funds availability as I would not be notified in any fashion. Later that afternoon I received a response back that my verification was declined, no reason given, and that I could try to resubmit on some such date in August. Well, I had $500 of 54K BTC in there that I had to dump for USD. I wasn't going to play games with River. Tried to pull my USD back out, $0.00 available. This continued for days, and I think it was Friday that I finally got an email response stating that funds are available 10-14 calendar days(different answer) after the initial deposit. I was quite aggravated at this point. My funds were finally released on the 16th and I was able to get them out. BTC, of course, was somewhere back in the 60's.

TL;DR If you mess with River, do the verification first before you give them ANYTHING. I don't know what their process is, but I didn't pass and I've read of others on here that had the same problem. They also seem to hold funds "to prevent fraud" for up to 14 calendar days. I missed some of the dip, tied my money up for almost 2 weeks, and lost about $14 in transaction fees. I will not be doing business with them.