This is what happened. All money is in USD, although I am in Canada and this involves one of the largest Canadian direct access brokers, which I will refer to as X here. ok My X broker fees lost me 60% ($12,000) of my money. You have phrased this interestly. You were not aware of you brokerage fee's when placing your trades? or were you? The responsibilty lies with you. I was peed off, and wanted to leave X right away. Were you peed off at yourself or at Broker X for fullfilling their part the deal? I had about $1000 left to trade with, aside from about $2000 I designated for long term holds. I was outraged that I was still being charged at least $9.95 per trade. Did you expect them to call you? you state they were large and you probably represented a very small part of their retail business. What make you special as just another retail trader? Your not even profitable! Don't blame your mis-calculations, which should of included your commissions, on Broker X I contact X and make a big fuss about its commission fees. I give them the works, making fun of their name and everything. Patrick, from X, in turn tries to convince me that X is sympathetic to people like myself, and provides some trades as âlow as $1 per trade (100 shares).â I tell him to stick it! Because I thought he didnât respond within the time I stipulated. The works? have you done this before at other firms? I would have told you to take your business elsewhere Unfortunately, my application with Interactive Brokers (IB), which charges a minimum of 0.70 per trade, did not go through because of an incomplete application. Another novice mistake. IB if your reading this, stay away from this guy. I was getting antsy and decided to take Patrick up on his offer while I send the necessary documents to IB. So I call Patrick, and tell him I will take what he was willing to give me. It took a little prodding, but he finally agreed to give me it. you were getting antsy....why? you do not have to trade. This would have been a great time for training. what motivated Patrick to help you...did you tell them that you were leaving? Patrick looked up and down my account at my holdings, and I got the impression he was not impressed. He thinks awhile, and gives me his offer: In any particular day, I will get charged the base commission fee of $9.95 the first time I buy or sell a stock; for all other trades within the same stock and in the same day, I will get charged on a per-share basis, or 1¢ per share. I say to him, âIâll take it, you were not in a negotiating position. Patrick did you a favor. I assume there was no adjustment made to your past trades, this was for your future business... right? until I can move to a more accommodating broker.â I mean being charged $9.95 three or more times every day on $1000 does not sound like a good deal. He goes out back, mumbles a bit with somebody, and then comes back and says Iâm good to go. Did you thank him? Immediately after my phone conversation with Patrick, I make a trade just to see what the heck the arrangement was, because it is pretty difficult to understand. Seems clear to me. $9.95 then for your scaling in and out trades 0.01 per share. I only get charged 1¢ per share. I make two or three more trades the same day, and I only get charged 1¢ per share; no base commission fee charges. I supposed that the base commission fee charges are deferred to the end of the day. However, they were not, and I get suspicious the second day when I was still being charged only 1¢ per share. When you became suspicious, where was your phone call? your gettin' something now, you greedy SOB... On the third day, an account administrator emails me requesting a signed letter stating I do not wish to receive any statements or confirms. With all those dinky trades, I don't blame them My suspicion went away on the third day, because it seemed like the account administrator looked into my account, and saw nothing wrong. Thus, I inferred Patrick wanted to keep a customer, and decided to waive the base commission fees, because they were too much for me. It made sense to me: I get to happily trade at will, and X keeps a money maker indefinitely. seemed....inferred....this is ALL YOU...where was your phone call??? Two weeks since being setup with the 1¢ per share commission fees, the fees begin to look too good to give up, and I scrap my plan to transfer to IB. Since it has been two weeks, and countless trades, there was no question in my mind that X was aware of charging me 1¢ per share commission fees. Therefore, I saw no reason why I shouldnât continue with X, and that is what I did. Key words...it was all in YOUR MIND For 44 days I was charged 1¢ per share commission fees. During that time, I had made 1900 trades, the average trade having a value of $90 and for 3 shares. No, I did not make any money even with the very low commission fees. I traded with about $450 per day. Furthermore, I made about two or three contacts with X that required X to look into my account. Everything seemed okay. Did you speak with Patrick? did you address your concerns specifically or did you just ask your loaded question...is EVERYTHING alright with customer service. what a scamster/maroon you are...Brokers stay away from this guy! Forty-four day on with the 1¢ per share charges, the day I was going to give up on this stupidity, I get contacted by Patrick. He says heâs embarrassed to tell me I was being charged incorrectly due to a system error. I tell him itâs okay (that my commission fees will become higher,) because I wasnât making any money anyway. I ask him to confirm I will not be charged again for the trades, and he says the issue will be resolved in four days. Now I get worried; sh.t I didnât trade under the assumption I was going to be charged $9.95 fees: I was being charged 1¢ per share! there was no reason to assume anything Four days go by, and I am good. Relief sets in. Not for long though. Two days later, fifty days after the fee change, Patrick gives me the disturbing news that I have been charged $6,250 for 1900 trades according to the offer he provided me before I made the trades. Naturally, I go berserk: I have rights as a consumer; why am I being penalized for somebody elseâs mistake; you are being unfair; you are not being good corporate citizens; blah; blah; blah. âSorryâ¦,â he says. âI donât enjoy telling you this thing,â he says. He didnât sound sorry, but instead sounded like he was enjoying it: enjoying the power he had over the person who had said very mean things about his company. The more I made a ruckus, the more options he withdrew from the table it seemed. You are one twisted fuck The $6,250 charge is extravagant anyway you look at it. First, it represents a charge of $1.10 per share as opposed to the 1¢ per share I was initially given. Second it is a charge of 570% of the money I was using during the 44 days. How dear they forget to charge me that much? And then have the gull to reclaim the charges that were not charged due to their own mistake? There was no reservation of charges, or indications that charges would be deferred. X says I was aware that I wasnât being charged the base commission fees, and thus, I have to pay them. It also says the charges were made correctly, although the base commission fees were charged after the transaction dates. What kind of conniving, deceptive, and misleading business practices is this company up to? Furthermore, the charges were reclaimed in a timely manner, according to X. How can charging me 11,000% of the initial charges weeks after the transaction dates ever be timely? How can forgetting to charge me 570% of my money be considered timely? Heck Interactive Brokers would have only charged me $0.70 for each of the 1900 trades. IB STAY AWAY FROM THIS MAROON...TRUST ME I want your opinion. What do you guys think I should do? And what do you guys think of X? oK, I have re-read your post and spent far too much time with this. My opinion stands. you expect far too much for your business and your high maintenence. You are a poor corporate consumer...is that the way they say it in Canada?
No, I didn't expect to pay the $9.95 because I was actually being charged 1¢ per share. I can argue the same thing the other way around: they knew I was being charged only 1¢ per share, and they figured to take advantage of me. After all, I had about 10 email contacts with them during that time. Furthermore, how do you excuse mischarging 1900 trades? As a consumer, is this acceptable behaviour from them? I laugh at those who think I took advantage of them. With what did I take advantage of them? With $1,100! Taking advantage of people is not my game.
Then you are simply naive....Get as far away from trading and traders that you can and for gawds sakes, please stay in Canada...
Dude mention the brokers name. They hate bad press. Atleast you can let other traders know, so that they can avoid them.
TraderManiac, you had noticed there was a problem, right? So you took advantage of it quaetly. What did you expect? Why you didn't call? So if your bank deposits $1,000,000 into your checking account by mistake will you go on a shopping spree when you know the money don't belong to you?
ElectricSavant you are one funny and rude guy. LOL Some here obviously give little importance to integrity and professionalism. I do not expect and will not accept this crap happening by companies in a first world country.