pls go back to ameritrade and leave ib to traders thnks http://www.tdameritrade.com/offer/independence.html
You know what's sad? I totally agree with the OP but like someone said, Elite trader is full of IB cultists. Someone complains about IB then everyone jumps them. IB is the untouchable around here. Bright Trading gets the exact opposite treatment on Elite trader. LOL. Quite honestly, I like IBs platform and their fees so I continue to trade with them but they're quite unreliable now that I've been with them for about a year. I expect a TWS malfunction almost every week. And as of late, they've gone down on me more than 10x already this year. I've called their helpdesk and all they do is acknowledge it and will try to fix it. Some assurance there. But, I continue to trade with them because, like I said, their commissions for retail and ability to use 3rd party program is hard to beat. I wish they'd do away with the crappy and buggy Java platform and just make one for each platform, Linux, Windows, Apple, etc.
IB is running out of edge (low commish / future price reduction). Options at 75 cents , how much lower it can go ? At some point , when competition will come close on commish , its all going to be about customer serves. I'm looking to automate some trades and I asked some traders who already did it. Got few negative responses that with some new version's upgrades , the program is not running. Why can't IB have two version where one is without any new implementations ? I personally don't use ANY of the new staff which they introduced in the last six years.
Everytime I call IB Customer Service... I get routed to Dell Support in India... And they tell me to re-install Windows.
It should be obvious that it is much more cost effective to maintain/develop a single cross platform application than trying to develop 3+ versions. The result is also likely to be considerably less buggy. The idea of trying to maintain a single code base for Windows/Unix GTK/Apple Coco GUI application of the size of TWS is rather horrific. I doubt that I'd want to be the end user, never mind a developer.
1) How about you calm down and keep the language and tone at a more appropriate level. If you look around E-T, or ask other E-T members, you will find that IB management and reps will assist E-T members as long as the dialogue is reasonable and appropriate. There are both ranters and inquirers on this forum; nobody wants to deal with screamers so you can guess where we put our efforts to assist and/or inform. 2) you can PM me your acct number and dates of inquiry (don't need the exact dates just approximate) and I will look into it. 3) which location did you call into?
Where do you send your inquiries? I suggest you don't use email as this is very hard to route properly. If the inquiries are only about the API, you can go direct to an API support person at api@interactivebrokers.com. But give him time: there is only one of him and many issues have to go back to the original developers for resolution. In general API questions can take a few days to a week, unless they are simple. Also, if you use the web ticket channel (inside account management) you should get better results. Lastly, you can PM me directly if you continue to have API service problems (please don't forget your acct num or some other means I can find you in our systems). We reorganized this area a few months ago and, if there are ongoing service problems, I need to know in order to fix them.
One of the funniest posts (IF not the funniest) on ET and IBj you said" don't send e-mail...may not route properly"? if ppl can't e-mail today do they HAVE to pick up the phone:eek:
LOL ... yes very funny ... but more seriously re your question. I once managed a business unit that included a support desk for business customers who were spending a bit over $100M a year with us. The biggest issue we faced was managing the support interface so that customers saw a uniformly good result. Including the process of escallating from relatively unskilled front end people to highly skilled (but customer unfriendly) engineers. What IB probably means by "emails are hard to route" is that they are hard to route (and keep track of, and put systems in place to ensure alarms if queries aren't dealt with fast enough etc etc) compared with if you file a trouble ticket. IB has a web based trouble ticket system so you can skip the phone diversion to dell and hopefully get much better results than their email handling system. I believe IB has an effective trouble ticket system and I suspect it has a set of automatic escallations that may even reach as high as the managing director --- in which case it will be much better than email