Thanks to all IB customers who have taken the time to participate in the newly introduced IB feature poll. We have completed the first review and marked off a few items.
Kiwi: IB runs a business. They made a business decision to provide snapshots of data and limited backfill. The snapshot approach gets us the latest price and does not suffer the way true streaming data does when dealing with high volume, high velocity trading. Backfill hasn't been available very long and they are still working on it. I feel sure their customer base is growing rapidly. Losing a few of us to another broker will not affect them that much. We are essentially getting the data for free. I'm certain that if another broker comes along with the same data cost and commission structure, but with data that satisfies your desires, you will move your trading to that other firm. In the interim, you will stay with IB. If there are enough customers with requirements like yours and such a broker has a decent reputation, IB will see a diminution of their customer base. They may then make a business decision to expend the resources necessary to staunch the customer loss and regain those who have left. Then again, they make not. Perhaps the new poll approach is the result of a business decision to lessen the chance of such a loss of customers. I notice that your poll request for the data is the top vote getter, a fact which I'm certain has nothing to do with the link you put to it here in ET. It is not the top-rated suggestion. Why don't you wait a while and see what ET does with the poll idea - it has only been running for about a week. I see they've already adopted one of your suggestions.
Jack, Yes I agree. I just happened to see two occurrences of "go somewhere else" this morning and thought it would back up my previously unsupported assertion that IB ran a risk by not resolving these two issues with data quality. As you will note I don't believe it should be fixed at the expense of timeliness and some of the posters had good ideas for avoiding that issue. LOL regarding the other suggestion ... it wasn't really meant as a suggestion it was my frustration at trying to phrase my suggestion in under 150 characters that overflowed into a second message that includes the link to the thread on the first suggestion here at ET. I had hoped to delete it but then they were kind enough to take it seriously. At the moment I solve the inaccuracy problem by doing data delete and backfills on my multiminute chart every 5 or 10 minutes and would recommend that as a temporary strategy. I have a great deal of loyalty to IB and the products I use to facilitate my use of their services so I don't plan to move even if they don't fix these issues. Edit: Wow ddunbar, thanks for the heads-up ... IB are working on both issues. Thanks IB. And thanks to everyone here that had suggestions about how they could be implemented and what constraints should apply (like keeping the excellent timeliness of IB data).
There's no new suggestion coming up (probably for a week?). What's up? are all new suggestions get filtered by IB Some suggestion to the new poll: - if IB declines the suggestion, IB should provide explanations as to why. I think this is better to both IB and the proposers/voters.
If we are given an explanation as to why a suggestion has been declined, then this might help us to generate a new suggestion which would solve the original problem, but in a new way which would also be acceptable to IB. So I agree that IB should devote some effort to explaining its reasons for rejecting a suggestion, when it can do so without revealing info which needs to be kept confidential from competitors.
I too posted several suggestions for the poll on the IB poll page... but they have not appeared on the list yet. Is there a 'cycle' that occurs? Like, reviewed each Friday and updated each Monday? Or is it more of a 'when we get around to it' type of process? Just curious... Or, have you been hammered by so many suggestions it is hard to keep up, perhaps!? -Scott
The suggestions shown on the Poll are all dated between 8/21, a Monday, and 8/24, a Thursday. There appear to have been approximately 75 suggestions made during that period. Two have been implemented, three have been declined, two are being implemented, and one is scheduled. So action has been taken on about 10% of the suggestions submitted and the other 90% can still be voted on. Why doesn't someone suggest that IB show a results summary at the top of the poll page? I'd just as soon let an automated process do what I did and not have to suffer when one of you sharp-eyed folks disagrees with my calculations. Jack
As I stated in another thread, the ticket system does not work well, and I do not think this suggestion poll system is feasible either. I'd suggest that IB utilize email for ALL of these things.
I think the poll has worked extremely well to date. Thank you very much IB. I am sure you (and we) will reap the rewards of the projects that you are already working on and future projects coming from the poll. Thanks very much for the effectiveness so far.