1 Week to open US account and another 1 Week for the converting my US account to Universal Account (IB UK). Still i can't trade. My TD Ameritrade account has been approved in 4 Business days. Never seen such slow broker at all.
Are you serious? I opened my account with IBKR more than 5 weeks ago. Position transfer was initiated immediately. By this day I am still waiting for them to get moving and settle things with my old broker. It has been nothing short of a nightmare... But 1 week?! I'd wish that were my problems...
Your 1st broker was a schlock broker. Brokerage business is a tough business nowadays. They don't want to lose any customer.
Without any question, I wasn't expecting any better of them, but it's IBKR I'm mad about. Customer Service isn't helpful and somehow implied at numerous occasions it's up ti me to make this fly. I gave my old broker each and any information they required to properly initiate the position transfer - what more am I supposed to do?
IBKR is a hurdle to get into -- yep. Maybe Robinhood is more your speed? But for so many brokers, getting your capital *out* is a royal pain. Withdrawing money from IBKR is -- with proper prep -- two or three clicks away. Consider the difference before you whine too much.
IBKR is the right broker for me, I'm just frustrated by the unnecessary hurdles and the gigantic loss of time. It was market access, quality of execution, fees and some other factors together why I decided to go for IBKR. But what you're saying is interesting: I had my doubts about the whole withdrawing money topic. What "proper prep" is it exactly, you're talking about. I'm sincere here and I would be grateful if I could get into this now when I have the time.
Customer Service ise really awful. They are friendly and trying to help, no doubt. But fact is, they are not that competent. What can they do is changing the ticket status to "Urgent", which doesn't help. If they can't solve the problem today, i am gonna withdraw my money and gonna use TD Ameritrade. Because of slowness of IB i am losing too much oppurtinites but anyways...
@rts232 My IB US account is opened already. But to trade CFD , they need to convert my account to an IB UK (IB Universal Account). IB 's Europa office is so slow like a turtle... I am really not satisfied with that...
I'm with IBKR uk, too. It's slow, yes, but now I'm more alarmed about that withdrawing money thing tommcginnis was referring to...