I'll dissent a bit Xela. If people are still trading, the broker needs to maintain their level of service. What if issues arise? No broker is perfect and I'm sure lots of folks are leaving for the holidays but IB has the funds to maintain staffing. It's not a one man shop like Deep Discount Trading.I know they can sometimes be unacceptably long, and that universally prompt customer service isn't exactly IB's forte, but to be fair it is the week between Christmas and New Year ... " just saying" ...
IB wait times suck
- Thread starter SoesWasBetter
- Start date
Never call Interactive Brokers
Use their support chat, it's very fast and efficient.
Use their support chat, it's very fast and efficient.
This dude is why I trade with IB. He is a pleb like me.
I know they can sometimes be unacceptably long, and that universally prompt customer service isn't exactly IB's forte, but to be fair it is the week between Christmas and New Year ... " just saying" ...
There's no question that IB has customer service issues and I'm not going to defend that. Not that it proves anything (finite sample) but I would guess that it might be a holiday issue because for the 8-10 times that I called this year, the wait was at worst, a few minutes.
I think that in nearly 20 years, I've only experienced a couple of times that IB was down. The bigger problem was my ISP going down. For that reason, I have a small account elsewhere as well as two ISPs so that either one going down doesn't shut me out. For hurricane power outages, it was find the local wifi
the original business model of IB was to be highly computerized.have experienced traders, low costs and little hand holding. over time as online trading became extremely popular and the rest of the industry was slow to adjust there was a flood of inexperienced investors who opened accounts, the demand for customer service skyrocketed. as usual the ones to complain are inexperienced and generate little commission. more than one idiot on ET was grumbling about a $10/month minimum commission requirement and talking as if they doing IB a favor by having their account there.
by the way till this day there are retail firms that that don't allow most of their of clients to trade between 9:20 and 9:30 am est just prior to the regular trading session.
+1
The grass is always greener. Service for nickel & dime customers is hit-or-miss at most/all brokerages. IB has no monopoly on "please continue to hold."
FWIW, the primary reason for my needing IB's customer service multiple times this year was upgrade issues. Given that I do what I do on the platform and I rarely utilize all of the new fangled new stuff, I rarely upgraded an existing version until the ultimatum comes that my version will no longer be supported.
That happened earlier this year and much to my chagrin, I ended up with a version that auto upgraded. Almost every time that occurred, it blew out my configuration. As a small example, one time I had to shift from font size of 16 up to 25 to see the letters and numbers. With the next "up"grade, I had to shift back to 16. That was one of the easy ones.
The reps were competent and patient with me. But it sucked up time. Fortunately, they have a version that does not auto upgrade and now I'm back to living with what I need and works consistently and I've kicked the customer service phone habit. I hope that I'm cured!
+1
I totally agree.
I contacted IB a few times, and everytime through chat, and service was fast and accurate.
Last time was 1 week ago.
Phone calls are so 80'
.