I have never experienced that kind of wait with them in 10 years, even at times of high volatility. Weird--what is going on? Did everyone make a New Years resolution to trade? (that would be great for us, huh?)
IB long wait time to get help They have a live web chat which has always been nearly real-time support the few times I used it.
To be fair, that's not a normal hold time . Was told they had some kind of party going on, ahem, and thus short handed.
I've called IB about a half dozen times for support. Average hold time for me is around 10 minutes. Not great. Especially if it's an emergency.
Is 10 minutes on average acceptable to you? After you do get them on the phone, do they address your issue or have to get back to you? If they have to get back to you, does it take a few hours or days? It is hard to define what the right waiting time is or call back time is. The more annoyed we are the faster we want service. At LS, the sales people try to fill that gap when we can.
did you ever consider the benefits of learning more about the platform? maybe you would downgrade your issue from emergency to nuisance and then to asking yourself why do I even have a need for calling. calling should be rarely used. there are other methods of communication..
https://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/index.php?f=1560&ns=T Menu Options 1 Existing Accounts 1/1 Trade Related Issues 1/1/1 Phone Orders 1/1/2 Trade Issues Whenever I've had to call up IB with regard to trading issues, they've always been extremely prompt in getting back to me. The longest time they had to investigate an issue was a couple months back when the CBOE started offering Wednesday Weeklies for options on SPY. I had existing position in some Friday weeklies, but somehow in TWS when the Wednesdays went live, some of my existing short positions (for the Friday Weeklies) were incorrectly showing some Wednesday expirys. Took them about 5 minutes to get back to me to acknowledge there was an issue, and about 20 more mins for their system to be updated to correct the problem. In the meantime, they advised me to CXL any working orders and not enter new ones on those contracts until the issue was resolved. Minor inconvenience, but I was satisfied with how it was handled in the end.