I have moved on, but they did enough to piss me off that I'm going to continue to call them out on their idiocy as a public service to anyone considering them. It takes a lot to motivate me to do that, they're really the only company I feel that strongly about in a negative manner.
Every problem I've had, IB has eventually fixed. And most of the time I have to explain it to a customer rep and then it gets forwarded to the programmers. I think your characterization here is slightly exaggerated. IB is not ultra-responsive for sure, but they've never blown me off when I present problems. From my experiences, the more confrontational you are with IB, the less likely your problems will be solved in a timely manner.
FYI here are just a few answers from IB staff that were posted on ET. we've identified a networking problem on one of the gateway machines recently put in service; this problem will be corrected after the exchange close today. please let us know if you see the same problem after today. thanks! Interactive Brokers Follow Interactive Brokers on Facebook #104 Jun 9, 2012 Repor I would like to gather all information/complaints related to book trader/market depth to make sure we have addressed every single one of them. Please send PM to me or to DAV with short summary of the issue. I will also follow up on each issue reported in this thread so far (no need to resend). Thank you in advance for your assistance, - Dennis, IB dev Interactive Brokers Follow Interactive Brokers on Facebook #50 Aug 15, 2009 Repor FYI, the fix for this is being rolled out. Hoi, thanks for info and detailed email. Interactive Brokers Follow Interactive Brokers on Facebook #54 Aug 18, 2009 Repor To keep you in the loop - it takes us longer that I originally thought to roll out the fix, sorry for inconvinience, we are working on addressing it as quickly as we can. Interactive Brokers Follow Interactive Brokers on Facebook #69 Aug 21, 2009 Repor The freezing problem that occurrs during shutdown with multiple charts is fixed in TWS 909.6. If you still experience it PM me. Thanks DAV Interactive Brokers Follow Interactive Brokers on Facebook #19 Oct 6, 2010 Repor
Once they admitted in chat that it was a software bug and suggested i put in a request for compensation, it was only few hundred dollars so i didnt bother. There was another time, about 10 years ago, when they admitted the latest server side software wasn't on the server i was connected to. For a hard to reproduce bug i once sent them a video capture so they could actually see it happening. They thanked me for taking the time. There have been an equal number if not more of cases where my report wasn't a bug but something wrong on my side.
Dude - the problem is not with TWS, but it's with the MANNER in which they handle bugs. I've been on the IB API forum for years....and not seeing a whole lot of progress. However, I must admit, when you look at all of the MODULES in TWS....options, baskets, volatility analysis, portfolio, etc, etc. This piece of software is simply HUGELY MONOLITHIC. It's gotta be over 5 million lines of Java source code. Me, personally, as a developer of a sophisticated Portfolio Management System....which encompasses over 10k lines of code.....I struggle daily to manage it, maintain it, and enhance it. I cannot imagine the complexity that IB is dealing with here. That being said, their HUGE PROBLEM is LISTENING to the bug reports and then getting them fixed. That requires superb technical management which is in HUGE short supply in the USA....for many reasons....one of them being the H-1B situation....which resulted in many talented developers leaving the business. Just one example: my UPS Store manager is a former software engineer.....and after talking with him, I know he is excellent in software dev.....but now he's "out of business"....thanks to cheap foreign labor.
Found an issue. Took a few messages back and forth for them to understand the issue. They confirmed it was an issue and they could reproduce it. Haven't heard back on a fix after a few months. Found my own workaround fortunately. Otherwise customer support has always been great for me, never had a problem. Have only found minor issues in TWS, not enough to fret about. But I probably use it in a very different way from most people here (I don't do futures or technical analysis). One thing I do wish they would fix is how long it takes to pull up an options chain in the UI, even with only a dozen or so strikes/expiration dates.
Exactly so. IB has many attractions and advantages, but I think many of us, here (as elsewhere), will agree that "prompt responsiveness to customer observations and difficulties" certainly isn't one of them.
Omigosh...it takes IB so long to produce the finalized statements for the current day. Here it is...9:15 pm on 9/9, and my online statements are "as-of" 9/8. Wow, does that ever suck !! That's what happens when you hire cheap, overseas technical talent. IB continues to behave like the "McDonald's" of brokerages....LOL... Why can't they step up the quality of service a bit ?
Here it is 3 am on Saturday....9/10. Still cannot get my balances for the week ending 9/9. ...this is horrible service.
I can't tell if you are being sarcastic or if you really have no idea how hard it is. The absolutely, hands down, most impressive things about IB are: 1) you get statements 2) they are generally correct For comparison, my FCM is much larger than IB. I connect to only 6 exchanges and I have a person who spends about 4 hours every day reconciling the statements with the actual trades. There are errors every week. My FCM employs 200 people just to generate customer statements and they have far fewer (but much larger) customers than IB. What IB has been able to accomplish with their backend is nothing short of miraculous. Way more impressive than anything in TWS.