Quote from chrismontez:
"It's like complaining that Verizon(phone company) installed phone wiring to your house but you didn't plug a phone into the phone jack, yet complain and conclude that Verizon service sucks. Expect to get a ribbing by people. "
Maybe it's more like not having your digital phone work because you didn't notice the 4th paragraph on page 34 of the 62 page manual regarding the specific sequence of numbers needing to be entered to do a certain function. I design websites and I still have trouble navigating to the right section of information on their website for questions I have. And are you telling me that if you heard a fellow Verizon customer complain about something in the service they were paying for you would feel the need to respond to them and defend Verizon?
That's a valid analogy.
But lets' not confuse pointing something out and placing responsibility where responsibility is due with defending a vendor or service provider.
In the above example, I would point out that section of the manual. That in and of itself would let the poster know they should have read it and failure to read would be their fault and not Verizons.
Would you operate a complex product without reading the manual? Or at least the sections which deal with how you intend to use the product?
Plus you keep bringing everything back to your own experience with the resident IB defenders and are failing to see WHY they react the way they do to every other anti-IB post.
Now I agree that their website is at times difficult to navigate. And also that some features in TWS could use more text to explain. Good thing they have a simulator so you can test out the features that don't have enough descriptive text to see what they do. What's more, sometimes new features have no text at all. These are legitimate gripes.
But that's not what most of the complaints look like. I remember reading a post years ago that had an inflammatory thread title. In the end, the poster had to admit that the issue was his fault and did the right thing and apologized to IB. But that's a rare thing.
Then you have honest posters who simply ask questions on the forum about a IB TWS feature or IB protocol. And they tend to get many good answers.
It's all in the approach. The anti-IB posts that will get the most reaction are those which demonstrate that the poster hasn't read, doesn't understand basic trading mechanics, fails to take personal responsibility for their losses, etc, or that start a thread with an inflammatory title for an issue that's not nearly as inflammatory as the title suggested. That's what I have observed reading many of the posts here. Other forums don't seem to have this issue to this degree - on either side of the fence.
) Actually he might not be awake yet so it would be unfair to expect an instant reply.