I will keep you posted.

Now this is enough. This is not acceptable.

I will have no other choice but to bring them in court. This company is obviously of bad faith. I am so pissed of this is unbelievable. The dividends I received in the past year have been wiped off in 1 day!

Had to call them 4 times 2 hours each time to get them to remove the inactivity fee that was charged in June while it was only suppose to be effective starting July. Different excuses each times and finally spoke to a supervisor the 4th time. They said there was an error on the letter and it was suppose to start in June… Anyways they finally reimbursed me.

I received an email from them yesterday saying Trade Freedom will be merging to Scotia iTrade late spring 2010. I guess I will be closing my account then. iTrade is way too expensive ($19.95 per transaction).

I am probably going to move to QuestTrade.

If you are going to sign up with TF then ask them for their policy on response time to questions. Ask them how do they measure their response time. Ask them under what conditions are you allowed to speak to a manager if you cannot get resolution from the support desk.

On the plus side, the tool TradeFreedom Edge is good.

You know you have no customer service when….

With a vague message below printed in the back of my statement, they expect me to chase down information on their web site.

“Please note we are changing our platform fee effective September 1st, 2009. With recent market performance, this may be a good time for you to review which of our trading platforms are best aligned with your investment objectives. To obtain more information on our trading tools and to view our entire commission and fee schedule, visit http://www.tradefreedom.com or send an email to supportgroup@tradefreedom.com for more information”

TF’s upper management is counting on people not canceling it properly.

To recently learn that the desktop platform now costs $30 a month … even if you don’t use it in the first place… Really? Is that how you treat your customers? Charged for something I’ve never bothered using because it is a horrible piece of software… I have to go out of my way to tell them I don’t want to use it?

I used to have an unprecedented unique advantage with TF, at least that is what they claimed when they partnered with QuoteTracker many years ago. That was removed this past summer.

All these new fees, and restrictions are good for business… or is it? They are going to lose 3 different customers including myself over the mismanagement of this company.

1. Poor Customer Service
2. New Fees popping up all the time.
3. Restricted to horrible software and pathetic website

Those are 3 things every TF client needs to keep in mind.

Firstly, their customer service SUCKS! There is a minimum wait time of 10-20 mins before you can speak to anyone. This was the case 1 year ago and still the same.

1. Trading fees for $9.95 only applies if its a limit price buy/sell. If you sell/Buy at Market price you get charged ECN and they charge a lot!

2. you cant trade OTC stocks and have to call their customer service to palce the order.

3. they charge you $45.00 for broker-assisted trades.

3. Recently they started charging a monthly fees of $32/month for the Desktop software. It was free to users initially and then decided to charge $32/month from Sept 2009.

So unless you saw this charge and called them up to cancel it, they will continue to charge you the fees.

5. They initially claimed that there were no Inactivity fees. But now they Do:
Low Activity Account Admin Fee (per account) $25.00* per quarter

The list goes on…

Anyway, I used to be with CIBC investoredge and then went with scotia mcleod direct. The commissions I paid with the banks were ridiculous and would chew into my profits. As a scalper, my profits are razor thin and fees become a major variable. I switched to TF and I pay just $6.99 per trader (no matter how big the size). My average sizes are usually 5k-10k. It is with TF that I really started making serious money.

TF is not for everyone. I will admit it that the customer service is appalling. Sometimes they do not even respond to my emails though I am a platinum client. Thankfully my emails are not trade related but usually some administrative issues. I had already gained some trading experience with my bank accounts and as a result do not need any help from TF. If you are an amateur I would recommend Scotia McLeod since they have a very intuitive web interface and you do not have to wait more than 5 minutes for customer service. However, they charge $30/trade. Once you are experienced then move to a no frills gig like TF. When I went there I did not harbour any service expectations. All I wanted was a rock bottom commission structure (where else could I buy 10k shares and only pay $6.95). With companies like IB the commissions increase as the number of shares purchased increases. As my portfolio grows bigger, the TF commissions become more and more insignificant.

Just my 2cents

Closing my account did go quickly however.

The reason I said “allegedly” in my previous post, is because although they have written off the inactivity fee and although I have confirmed by phone that the account is closed, I can still log into it through their website. I guess I’ll just have to keep an eye on it and if in 3/6/9 months no inactivity fee is charged (which happens automatically by the system), then I’ll consider it officially closed. That, or if I receive that “final statement” they originally spoke about, which reflects the same.

Good luck with yours.

I am reading that a lot of you are emailing TF. Please phone them instead. They reply to emails very slowly, if at all. Just phone them and document the date, time and the name of the person you’re talking to.

I have requested to close the account, and they are always ignoring the requests.. I expect them to tell me that they will charge me some crazy $100+ fee to close the account. Considering they are changing the rules as they go, I don’t see how this could be legal for them to charge you for getting out of something that is completely different of what you started up with.

Anyhow, I will check with my local Scotia branch manager who I know well, and see if she can help.

TF is a joke..

Shouldn’t contractual changes be sent by some guaranteed method of delivery like Registered mail or something. eMail is far from being any guaranteed method of communication. I got thier email giving my my final notice for the platform fees, but I never got the first email they claim to have send in June sometime.. I checked all my archived.. CROOKS…

Effective September 1st, 2009, there will be a monthly subscription fee of $29.95 for EDGE platform users who execute 0-29 trades per quarter. This fee will be assessed based on trade activity of the previous calendar quarter (April 1 – June 30, July 1 – September 30, October 1 – December 31, January 1 – March 31). If you do not meet the minimum trade activity, then you will be charged $29.95 for each of the following three (3) months.