Kymer: Trivial? You sound like a rep for TS. Hope they paying you well. All experiences and opinions are worth something.
Dudes just opened the account and over $100 is raising holy hell and sticking pins in Tradestation dolls. Something not right here. And I'm no company man.
A mistake could be only $100 or could be $10,000. If TS is not trustworthy with crediting me $100, how can I trust them on $10K? TS will have more reasons to hold onto $10K than crediting it back to me. I guess I should just sit back and take the crap right? As for the attempt to discredit me as being confused or naive, let's just say I probably have traded with more brokers than anyone around here. TradeStation is a good data/research platform, but it's certainly not a good trading system/brokerage. I use Brown & Co, CyberCorp, and E*Trade to trade depending on the situation.
TraderC, You mentioned that you have gone through 20 brokers in 8 years. On average, that means you've moved to a new firm every 4.8 months for the past 8 years, which seems like an extremely high turnover rate. Are you having a hard time finding the right firm or what?
Fleance: I can't stand the fact I'll have to either type in the transaction amounts, or scan/OCR them in from monthly statements. I specifically called their tech support on this. They say just read them on the monthly statements. For daytraders, that means nightmare at tax time. Also, I have no way of knowing where my money goes on a daily basis. No online records on anything except for stock orders. That's just too murky for me.
I still have accounts with 12 of the brokers for a variety of purposes (trading, ipos, free data). Two years ago I did have a hard time finding a reliable broker to trade. Things were very crazy back then. Today, I am using Brown & Co and CyberCorp for trading. Having many accounts means that I must trust each broker, and each broker must be honest with me. TS is the first broker that has failed in this respect.
What is the whole story about ? TRAD changed price structure in April 2002 (base data fee 99.95 $) and your account was opened in April 2002.
I disagree with those that argue "it's only $100 - get a life". The absolute dollar value of the problem is really irrelevant - it's the way it's being dealt with. At what point does it become significant? That's relative to each person's account size, profitability, tolerance for loss, etc. The fact that they didn't just give it to him*** at some point along the way, instead of continuing to endure his public and private attacks, with much higher costs, shows me that they have procedural problems with handling credits. I'm reminded of a broker that I previously traded with, who went out of their way to make up for problems with money, realizing that if customers had to endure their growing pains, they should be compensated. It works. A broker that I currently trade with has owed me less than $40 for around 6 months now. I tickle them about it once a month, and am ignored. No explanation, just ignored. It pisses me off that I have to spend the time to hassle them about it once a month, and that they don't respond at all. I'd feel like a sucker if I just "walked away", even for such a small amount. It's still enough to buy a nice lunch Like TraderC, I wonder if, when they can't handle crediting an insignificant amount of money, what will happen when they owe me $10K, and they have a reason to think twice about giving it to me. With regard to not being able to balance my account every day because of charges that only appear on a monthly paper statement: With my volume (500-800 trades/month), that would drive me insane. A broker that I previously traded with had all sorts of problems with balancing trade confirms against clearing statements - sometimes for significant amounts of money. I spent untold hours on it, and I was doing only 200 trades per month. I'd like to see TS's response to this issue. If I have to spend a lot of extra time on accounting, on top of their commissions already being higher than what I'm paying now, I'll have to reconsider funding my account. ***ObAnecdote: I'm playing winning blackjack for black chips at a well-known LV strip casino. I'm distracted by the cocktail waitress and hit my hard 18 (hand-dealt game - dealer couldn't see my cards), busting. When I realized my mistake, I asked for a "do-over" The floorman came over, took the card back, and made it the dealer's next card, busting her hand, instead. Now that's customer service