Seems like the people at IB UK have some sense of humor... Since they advertised great rates for futures, I decided to open an account there. I went through the long opening process, had to send 5 faxes to two different offices, and finally got my funds received today. Not understanding why I could not upgrade to futures (which is the only reason I opened this account), I wrote them. Got a reply stating that some account types were still in a 'beta-test' and unavailable. Thanks IB for allowing me to spend hours of my time to finally get a useless account. OHLC
You want another joke ? I sent them a copy of my ID card and some bills to prove my identity but in 2 different letters... They receive the first and said :' yes we have reveived your ID but need some bills'. I sent the bills, they said : yes we have the bills but we need the ID... I said : but you have the ID... They said :'no.....' Should I had that when you call European helpdesk they just say :'call the US Helpdesk'. When you discuss with US helpdesk, they say : it is a UK issue talk with them...and so on in an infinite loop.......
I use to have all my accounts in US and was reluctant to have one opened in UK ....... Now I know why my feeling was bad...
I can only confirm the bad IB Uk experiences. After alreading having opened an IB account online for stocks I opened one with IB UK for US futures, because I am german. I had to send them my ID several times and got a lot of confusing emails from them which all seemed to be kind of automatic responses.... Well, some day they told me the account is ready for funding...
I'm in the uk but my stock option account is in the US (for US market trading) but I decided to open a futures account to trade the NQ,s. Same thing, I scanned my ID as instructed and e-mailed it to them and got some automated reply saying they couldn't read. Well I can read it fine so re-sent it and have heard anything back yet. Something is working right. Cheers Mike
We should complain to IB management I think. I have no problem with IB US but unfortunately now I need to work with those IB guys that really don't care about the emails and never answer emails... I tried to call IB European support today.....Nobody there for all the afternoon...
Agree, we should let IB managment know that we are concerned. I think there is an IB rep who visits the boards here so maybe he will pick up on it. Failing that, we rent a van and drive to London and fight them in the streets.
this seems to be really difficult...they must be getting thousands of new accounts each dax in the UK office and there is only one guy who has to handle all the trading, IT and account issues, so he just sends you a reply mail if he has no time... just to keep you involved in the proccess... But I have one advise for you: TRY HARDER! Seriously, when I resent them my scanned german ID, but this time really BIG, so that even when he (or they?) forgot to bring their glasses they would be able to read it. And guess what? It worked!