Hey Bob,
Been down a similiar road with IB. While they are correct it brought me over to the futures side full time. There are a few that compete price wise with IB these days, but they all have similiar customer service, ie not much. My experience was quite awhile ago and involved a reporting of a trade. It wasn't worth the cost of a lawyer, but it was enough for me to leave IB and go full time in futures. It took awhile to find a firm on this side also, but overall the futures retail side has been better to me than the retail equity side. This was ther reason I have been looking to go back to the equity side with a series 7 firm instead of retail. If you can do school and think about law school you could do the series 7 no problem. Mostly just memorizing.
IB has alot of good, but the bad for me was horrible. It took way to long to talk to someone who knew what they were talking about. Getting Def on ET is nice, but they should have his kind available on the phone for advanced problems, and my experience was it took threats to get to that level. As advanced as they maybe I believe they make most of their money off the crowd trying to figure out the business than they do long term people.
My problem was a long time ago, and maybe they are better, but they lost my business for good.
Sorry for the negativity, and hope all is well.
Take it easy,
Bob