their website says 500k, are you sure it's 250k? do you have pm at oh, and if so what are your thoughts?
If I remember, it is per leg, so trading spreads is a very different story. IB is the way to go for commission pricing.
Minor error in my previous post... it's actually $9.95 per leg (not $9.99). So, a Butterfly would be $29.95 ($9.95 x 3), Iron Condor $39.80 ($9.95 x 3), etc. Remember that's just to open the position. So it's twice those amounts for a round trip. I opened my account in February of this year and they offered 50 free trades. The only catch was that it had to be done with 2 months of funding. Not sure if they still offer that but it's worth asking about.
I used the link below to contact Peter Lawler. He informed me that their clearing house (Goldman) set's their PM requirements and it's currently at $250k. This was back in February though. I asked if it would be lowered in the near future. He responded saying that they are working on it but did not give an ETA. I do not have PM with OH. http://www.optionshouse.com/home/services/margining.jsp
Somehow, the part with "they had his funds open within 3 weeks" is rather unimpressive. Not so much sounding like spam. Now if he had said "they opened my account 3 seconds after I finished the online app", then...
I also have an account with them and have been overall unimpressed with the platform. However, their commission structure is excellent for an SPX trader like me because of the flat rate pricing. Given the exchange fees of .44 per contract on the SPX, broker fees, clearing fees, etc... they must be losing money, particularly on index traders. A 100 lot SPX order costs them roughly $50 and they're collecting $10. That's the one fear I have about the firm: they have an unsustainable business model. They clear Penson, who also clears for TOS, so I'm not sure why they would have another firm for PM.
I tried a demo account of their platform and was completely underwhelmed. It's been a while since I tried OH, so things could be different now. Back when i test-drove OH, simple things like calculations for the greeks were not offered. Also, quotes for spreads were not offerd back then. Combine these shortfalls with very high commission rates and low credit interest, and I found OH to be a complete dud.