PRO: Their web sites are very fast and effective (compared to all the others)

CON: On their site, it states that we can register for the Elite platform and switch at anytime, so I did just that during my registration. After a week, I got finally approved to trade, but that happened to be 2 days before the END of the month. So guess what they did? They charged me $70+ for the Elite platform for those 2 days. Can you believe the arrogance?

So realizing that their Elite platform was not all that I expected, I requested to change it back to their web platform on the 2nd business day of the next month. Along the way, I complained to their customer support about the charge. Their customer support said that was a perfectly legit charge AND to expect to be charged another $70+ for the 2 days of the month for which I changed my platform. So in total, they are charging me over $150 for about 4 days use of the Elite platform just because I happened to be approved near the end of the month and switch the month after.

I was P!@#$ off, so I decided to write a letter of complaint to a higher authority. All I got back was an email stating that my complaint was acknowledged and resolved? Nothing more, nothing less, no “hello sir” or “we’re sorry”… nothing!

I’m still debating on whether I will keep the account and make a complaint to the Consumer Protection agency!

That fishy smell just got worse ;)

Stefan: forgot to say ‘thanks’ for your respectful, open minded challenge. Apology accepted.

Laeorn, I can tell by the content and tone of your post that you’re a disrespectful tweaker, and people tend not to give their best service to these ‘types’. It doesn’t matter what business they are in…if you approach a problem with your attitude you’re likely not going to get their a-game, period. One catches more flies with honey than with vinegar. If you wrote ME an email with this same tone I would likely put it in the bit-bucket and move on. After several more increasingly nasty emails (i.e. when you finally tweaked-out completely) I would officially drop you as a client and return any monies owed to you if any. Business is business but nobody needs the attitude, and they’ll do just fine without you.

With respect to your next post, all I can say is ‘duh’ (for lack of a better term). Of course it’s ironic. That’s part of the point. And it’s very, very true. I’ve been a self-employed one-man-show for a long time and know of what I speak when it comes to two things: computer science and dealing with humans.

I will let you figure out the irony in this comment.

This has to be the stupidest post I’ve read in a while on this comment thread. How on Earth is an expectation that applications are processed in a timely manner an indication of a “champagne taste on a beer budget”? If I expect that an institution that I trust with holding my HARD-EARNED MONEY answers my questions timely and truthfully, how is that moaning and whining? Are you freaking kidding me? Canadian Capitalist wrote about his nightmarish experience with Questrade’s customer service, an experience that mirrors many of the comments posted here. Is CC someone you would label as “fishy”?

Un-freaking-believable.

Again, your post sounds like you work for QT :-) apologies in advance if I’m mistaken.

My humble opinion: if you’re not one of these folks with a champagne taste on a beer budget you’ll likely love Questrade. I’ve also used iTrade for almost ten years and can’t stand their website’s user interface, and the sneaky fees they charge. They tried charging me $50 just to close my account. I tricked them out of that, however.

DO NOT make the same mistake I did, DO NOT fiddle with Questrade. They are a small time crooks with bad/almost non-existent support (their chat support is a joke, they guys have absolutely no power and no interest to help you with anything)

I recommend stocks/options to Thinkorswim for their brilliant platform. THe only downside with thinkorswim is that their margin requirement is only 50%.

I’d recommend TDW for 30 + Trades for the quarter(3 months), and you get good margin requirement at 30%. They do not charge rediculous amounts for margin usage and placing market order.

I wonder if some of the apologists in this thread are not Questrade employees. They are basically saying that the complainers should not be trading with Questrade if they don’t have trading experience. A bit of a chicken and egg problem isn’t it? It is hard to reconcile that attitude with those words above from one their supervisors: “As a beginner in the trading world I would strongly encourage you to start trading with Questrade.”

I know the internet is not a ‘reliable’ source of information but as one of the posts above states the weight of negative comments for Questrade vs all other brokers is hard to ignore. I wish I had done my due diligence prior to opening my account. Some of the comments mirror my own experience and are from several years ago which suggests that the company has had time to improve but really it doesn’t care because there is always another sucker to replace the last one.

Until enough people get the word out and stop the inflow of new customers this company will continue to offer sub standard service. It seems they need to take a large hit to the bottom line before they make fundamental changes to the way they do business. This screams to me that either the management are incompetent or just lackadaisical.

I would be interested to see the rate of account turnover compared to the other brokers. I recently read a post by an ex-Questrade employee, apparently the level of staff turnover is very high…..it doesn’t appear to be a such great place to work either.

I think you are doing the best thing for yourself by dumping Questrade as they clearly did not give you the service that you had expected.

Please let us know if you are happier with your new broker.

Good luck.

UK

I would stay away from Questrade if you want to do anything that is remotely outside their standard play book. If you want something done that they don’t perform a million times a day they will mess it up.

I don’t need ‘high-touch’ customer service, I just need my simple requests fulfilled in a polite and timely manner. This appears to be something they could not manage in all my dealings with them. I have reached the limits of my tolerance with them hence my closing my accounts with them. I am even thinking of going to one of the big banks I am so disillusioned with the ‘discount’ experience.

I have not found any difference between the phone, chat or email customer service channels. The same people serve all of them so there is really no difference. I have found the customer service similar to speaking with a talking manual/parrot….endless repetition with no initiative shown. A very frustrating experience at best.

If anyone has any good experiences from other brokers I would be interested to hear abut them.

TSFA – I trade US options (straight calls and puts):
Have a very simple and relatively stable platform

All they need to add is:
1. ability to do spreads and straddles
2. simultaneous stop-loss and limit orders

I also have an RESP account and other than an announced underlying security name change things are going OK.

Stay away from them if you have never traded the markets before

Stay away if you like high-touch customer service

Stay away if you want them to teach you how to trade online

You will be fine if you trade with simple strategies and consider yourself low maintenance customer.

I am satisfied as they do for me what I needed notwithstanding poor customer service when something actually goes wrong.

I found their e-mail support to be ten times more effective than live support.

Happy trading

I am not a Questrade customer, I invest my money with another broker. But I see several comment or forum threads about Questrade, and they are mostly filled with negative opinions. Other brokers like TD Waterhouse are orders of magnitude bigger than Questrade and have a lot more customers. So if Questrade is the “least bad”, where is the comment thread about TD Waterhouse? If TD is, as you imply, worse, and is so much bigger, then would you agree that we should see more people complaining about them online?

I understand that Questrade is a relatively small company in this space, however other brokers like Credential or QTrade are just as small, if not smaller, yet people seem to be quite happy doing business with them, or at least they are not nearly as frustrated as the Questrade detractors. I mean, other brokers have problems, but do they regularly lose your correspondence?

In all this time – this blog entry was posted in 2007 – it doesn’t seem like they have fixed the problems. And I can’t help but feel that they don’t quite have their act together as a business. This is not intellectual dishonesty, it is a very reasonable assumption given the available evidence, and it is exactly the position I would take in any other sector as a potential customer.

IB is by far the best broker in Canada, but that quite of workhouse isn’t required by your long-term investor.

I guess that explains the other embarassingly long blog comment threads filled with negative opinions about the other Canadian discount brokers.

(sarcasm alert)