LC asked to stay on hold while we worked on the issue. Our response average telephone response times are consistently under 1 minute. I apologize for everyones frustration. It's difficult to anticipate these types of issues with third party software.
Yeah, Wednesday (brain fart). As for sitting on hold, that didn't bother me so much as that the "tech" guy didn't have the least idea what a volume bar was. I assume IB doesn't offer volume bars with their charts. If they do, then they need to have a little in-service. But, yes, I'd investigate further if I were you. LC
Sal, give me a break. 1 minute is not five, much less twenty. I don't much care whose problem this is but I know it's not mine. I'm your client. I expect you to fix it. LC
I was referring to answering the phone, not resolving the issue. We worked as fast as possible to identify and resolve the issue. Again, I sincerely apologize for the lost time. I'm working with Sierri Charts to avoid a repeat.
Well my ensign with IB backfill was not working and now it is. So whatever you did it worked. I have a feeling if this would have been next week. You guys would have been slammed with problems. Should probably notify all the software providers and make sure they understand the change you are making. You might have to tell them 2 or 3 times.
Sierri removed the illogical time stamps, and we have provided them with an IB test account. Hopefully this will limit these types of incidents in the future. Sal
Sierra Chart have released a Version 139 that uses current time and thus works with IB's new server software. The old approach was to request beyond current time in case a customer's PC clock was incorrectly set - providing some robustness - and I'm not sure that refusing these requests improves the overall customer experience. Salvatore, its good to see that you provided them a test account. One of the challenges for IB will be to work well with its ecological suppliers. I have said in the past that I don't see IB chart catching up with Sierra Chart or Ensign nor do I see any need to get rid of Zero Line trader. Your customers are loyal to you but also to the capabilities that their add on products provide. I first had this problem when someone rolled the new release of software onto the HK server and the CS rep, though polite and pleasant was totally unaware that anything in the IB universe had changed. Totally stonewalled. Its great to see IB improving in response to customer needs, and we thank you for that. It would be wonderful if one of IB's new years resolutions was to provide better information about potential issues with changes to both CS reps and ecological partners. A happy new year to IB staff and the IB customer and supplier community.
I sympathize with all parties here, and have a suggestion. Since IB has such a large user base, maybe they should invite a select few to beta test the releases for a week before they get rolled out. Maybe a handful of free trades as payment. Actually users are probably 10x better at finding obscure bugs than the developers, who I'm sure find most of them but not the bizarre ones. The fact that IB is interfacing with so many 3rd party products makes it next to impossible to stress test all the interactions in advance. This seems to have been a server based problem, so I'm not sure how that would have been handled. Test server probably.
A question for IB. One of the reasons that SC put a future time on the backfill request is that they may be issuing multiple requests and there is sometimes a significant delay before the backfill takes place (especially if there were a number of 20+ day requests). The other was to allow for customer's who's clocks were not well synched. In the first situation with the new "no future time" restriction what will happen if a request is made for data now, and the actual backfill doesn't take place for 90 seconds (say). Will the backfill be up to date at time of finishing the backfill or will there be a gap of 90 seconds? If there is going to be a gap then is there an alternative command that says "backfill till current time"? If not, then it would seem to be a bad thing to prevent "future data" requests. Please advise, IB.