I have been on hold for 20 minutes, if they do not pick up the phone in 10 minutes, I am closing the account.
Eric, TS does not disclose the number, but in their usual "customer friendly manner" they do publish a difficult to use list. AriP, who posts very usefull information over at Tradestaion forums, puts out a daily list and count in an easy to use format (strange that TS won't provide its users this service) and his most recent count is 5540 symbols. Before the improvement this ran about 3200 symbols. Also, AriP and Codetalker have provided code that you can use in studies to check to see if a symbol is on the list and therefore tradeable. Again, a nice service TS saw fit not to provide. DS
I agree, I do most of my trades at IB. How about IB buys TS, putting together good software with a great broker. DS
So, does this mean never do biz with someone who had troubles in the past? Have they fixed the problems? My experience with IB has been very good, but they are not a good broker if you need handholding (not meaning you, but anyone else reading this). TS continues to have troubles. EG, yesterday I placed an order and it disappeared so I did not know if the order got through, or if it got filled. To TS's credit, I did get an answer from the tradedesk that all was OK. I read of customers being on hold for 20+ minutes and not getting answers, something I've not experienced with IB. Do you trade with TS, because they had a problem this year when their trade server failed because the back up power supply did not work, and we don't know if they fixed that problem. And that seems to fit your implication that one should not do business with an imperfect company. DS
IB has had and ocassionally still does have many of the troubles you complain that TS has. Lets face it every broker has troubles no matter how long they have been in business. Is IB imperfect? Yes. Is TS imperfect? Yes. Someone always gonna be complaining about every broker. Cant make everyone happy. On the broker side of the business IB had its own growing pains when getting going. Many of the same problems you complain TS has. Since IB brokerage business has been operational for quite a few years longer than TS(only 2 years?), wouldnt one think they are going through the same growing pians IB went through? Any business goes this route not just limited to brokers. My hold time on phone 2 days ago was 10 minutes. Lets see I guess thats too long considering many in that area still without power, food, water etc. btw they just started getting mail delivery yesterday. 10 days with no mail. Luckily, there hq wasnt in katrinas path. They now have added a third server farm for backup. Can they be better? Yes. Can IB? Yes. I see a few threads about IB complaints this week. Ooops.
Trader in a chat room I frequent having stability issues with Road Runner for cable modem service. 20-30 min hold time on phone. Customer service is lacking abundantly in this country.
Dear Ebo, We are sorry that you experienced such long hold times last week and that your E-mail was not answered on a timely basis. We did experience some very high hold times on Monday, and longer than normal wait times for the remainder of last week, as a result of the impact that Hurricane Wilma had on our Florida staff. We are also experiencing some delays in E-mail support and are working to resolve those issues as fast as we can.
This is a crock. I left TS after a brief try because the one or two times I needed to talk to support, the wait times well exceeded 30 min's. I'm an IB customer, and NEVER had to wait anything approaching that. The people were friendly, and with the new lower software rates, I'd be tempted to add TS to my broker list, but not until significant changes occurr in support delivery.