IB Downtime Update - WIDE SCALE SERVICE DISRUPTION

[huh]

Quote from huh:

I opened a ticket with IB because it appears their system didn't totally recover after that failure! Anybody else notice the NDX 1975/1950 Jan put spread had a BID/ASK of 2.01/1.90??? Of course I stupidly thought maybe it was a quick move in the NDX so I sold 6 1975/1950 spreads for 2.01 which was the BID price and then several hours later I checked and the stupid ASK price for that spread was 1.90 and when I tried to close out my postion it never filled!! I even tried to take a loss and close it for 2.40 at the end of the day and instead TWS was now showing a b/a of 2.40/1.90....apparantly that ASK was stuck on 1.90 ALL DAY so no not everything was "fixed."

Now I'm stuck short 6 1975/1950 spreads in a falling market and sweating bullets. Hopefully IB will help me out we'll see!

So here is the ugly disasterous update to this. So after I entered this trade not knowing that my wonderful TWS was jacked up and displaying incorrect ask prices and submitting a ticket to IB with screenshots of what my TWS was doing. So far I have received absolutely no response!! Today I took the hit and wound up with a $5000 loss and of course nobody is going to take responsibility for the fact that the software dumps out bogus quotes so I guess IB's stance is it's my fault for believing their quoted prices.

I'm pretty disappointed in IB now. The least they could do is refund me back the commissions on the trade and like $600 since thats what it would have cost to close the position the first day I opened it. I'll take responsibility for letting the position slip as far as it did but at least give me back what it would have cost to close the darn thing on the day it occurred.

Even more annoying is that fact that I've already paid IB OVER $2000 in commissions in the last 3 days of trading but apparantly my $600/day commission is small peanuts for IB to help me out when their stuff gets jacked up!

I don't know what to do, sorry about the rant but I'm pretty pissed and the fact that IB has provided no answers or updates on my ticket is just more salt being added to the wounds specially seeing as how much in commissions I pay them!

 

[sprstpd]

Quote from huh:

So far I have received absolutely no response!! Today I took the hit and wound up with a $5000 loss and of course nobody is going to take responsibility for the fact that the software dumps out bogus quotes so I guess IB's stance is it's my fault for believing their quoted prices.

To be honest, I am not sure you have much of a case here. Sometimes IB's quotes are wrong because of IB, sometimes they are wrong because of the exchange source. Erroneous quotes, although extremely annoying, are not grounds for arbitration or getting any money back.

 

[musicman]

Quote from steve46:

Another reply from a professional asshole.

You must have very little to be proud of in your own life.

Looks like you like to take personal attacks on people.
So if someone does not agree with you that makes them an asshole ??
Ok I guess that makes me a professional asshole also.
Who else wants to join Steve’s Pro Ass Club !! ??

 

[huh]

Quote from sprstpd:

To be honest, I am not sure you have much of a case here. Sometimes IB's quotes are wrong because of IB, sometimes they are wrong because of the exchange source. Erroneous quotes, although extremely annoying, are not grounds for arbitration or getting any money back.

I know, I"m not really one of those people looking for a hand out. I was more or else looking for a small refund as a "symbol of loyalty." The $600 they give me isn't really going to lessen the $5000 loss, I've been with them for a couple years and have never really tried to get money from them when quirkly little things happen. I've never run into this problem with IB before It's just that I'm generating quite a decent amount of commissions for them in exchange for a solid trading platform.....but when that platform isn't working right and they still take $600/day in commissions from me for the day seems kinda wrong.

On top of that if i'm paying them that much then they could at least respond to my ticket or give me some sort of explanation of what's happened. Instead we get a big post on this board proclaiming that there was an outage and now everything is fixed when it really wasn't!

So I know nothing is going to come from this, the money is gone and I'll have to try to make it back and next time I need to get another place like scottrade or someone to give me quotes as well.....heck anybody have experience with another options broker they can recommend?

I have a small account with scottrade I use for stock trading but I've been thinking about ThinkorSwim or OptionsXpress anybody have an opinion on them?

 

[sprstpd]

Quote from huh:

On top of that if i'm paying them that much then they could at least respond to my ticket or give me some sort of explanation of what's happened.

IB has never been good at responding to trouble tickets in a timely manner. If you need something handled quickly, you have to call or chat. IB definitely needs to do better in this area.

 

[huh]

Quote from sprstpd:

IB has never been good at responding to trouble tickets in a timely manner. If you need something handled quickly, you have to call or chat. IB definitely needs to do better in this area.

That's the kicker to the whole thing was when I realized that the ask price was not being updated at all I called them on the phone. I talked to the guy in the afternoon and told him hey your system is showing an ask of 1.90 and I'm putting a bid for 2.30 to take a loss and nothing is happening. The guy took a look came back and said "Yeah the ASK price is not getting updated correctly." His answer was that I need to manage the position and if I feel I deserve to be compensated then I should open a ticket and send them all my TWS screenshots. Which I did and now my ticket is opened and no updates....I guess at this point it doesn't really matter......cost of doing business with a discount broker.

 

[sprstpd]

Quote from huh:

The guy took a look came back and said "Yeah the ASK price is not getting updated correctly." His answer was that I need to manage the position and if I feel I deserve to be compensated then I should open a ticket and send them all my TWS screenshots. Which I did and now my ticket is opened and no updates....I guess at this point it doesn't really matter......cost of doing business with a discount broker.

Yes, that blows. I've had trouble tickets that go a few weeks to one month before getting a reply, but I never use the trouble ticket system for priority communication. Next time an IB employee suggests you use the trouble ticket system for something like this, ask for a different way of communicating. Might not work, but who knows.

This is the kind of issue that IB is terrible about. Something that is complicated and doesn't fit into the all-electronic system they have set up. My experience is that it just takes a lot of time and patience before an issue like this gets resolved.