I started to pull some money out in December, 2011 for the home loan payment. Then I started to suffer a bad experience. The first story was I wanted to withdraw money from RRSP account. My wife filled in the form and mailed it out at the beginning of December. We received an email said the USD$ must be exchanged into CAD$ before they processed it. So I did it on 13th, December. Nothing happened until I followed up on 22nd December. The custom service was great with their attitude. He checked the file and told us he could not find the form at first and then found it later after we assured it should be in the file. We told him of our concern of the urgency and he promised we should receive the money after New Year. I called on 3rd, January and another custom service said he can’t find our request. Things are back to square one. Since it’s going to take two weeks if they start to process it luckily, I can’t see any light in the tunnel by the end of January before the deadline of the down payment.

Meanwhile, my wife and I sent requests to withdraw fund from FX accounts on 29th, December. The two requests were only 5 minutes apart. We both chose CAD wire transfer because we thought it might be the quickest way. My wife’s request was processed on 30th, December. Although the website says the exchange rate will be the rate on current day if request was sent before 2pm, which we did, we thought its fine. My wife received the money on 2nd, January as the wire transfer claimed, 1-4 days. However it did not happen to me until I called again on 3rd, January. Again, their attitude was great. I was told it was exchanged to USD$ just now. Apparently, I had a loss since CAD$ was up 1 cent. I can’t believe why two requests at the same time had a different result. How do I know they intended to hold the fund or because of their negligence.

I felt very frustrated and going to close all the accounts, same with my wife. And I won’t recommend to my friends either.

I logged in to my platform at 7:55AM and found an open long position 100 shares and open short position of 100 shares sitting together in my account box both at the same price. Since i did not hold any positions in my account from the previous day, i called the trading desk and a trader said that they will take care of the problem and not to worry. I called back at 9:22 AM and spoke to another trader about the situation and asked why nothing had been done yet. He put me on hold. Few minutes after waiting on hold the shares disappered from the account box and a minute later the trader came back on the line and said that it has been solved by the back office, i confirmed that.

Later in the morning, i encountered a system error that cost me $703. Here are the details: On Nov 22, 2011 at 10:26 AM i bought 100 shares of pcln (open long). At 10:43 i tried to get out of my position and sell my pcln shares and the system kept rejecting my order for ” NOT ENOUGH SHARES” even though i owned 100 shares in my account. I tried that eight times but the orders were all rejected on the groung that i dont have enough shares.

I realised that there is a system problem and called the trading desk and explained the problem. I was on hold for over ten minutes while the stock kept going down before the trader came back to tell me : ok sir we solved the problem and now you are able to sell your shares, so i asked what happened(sold the shares while talking with a loss of $703) and he said that the shares were allocated and that he had to contact the back office to solve the issue. I asked him who’s fault this is and he answered that it is an error on their side.

The trader explained that i have to speak to customer service to see if they will take responsibility of the system negligence.Long story short, after begging the unexperienced customer service representative to transfer to a supervisor, i was FINALLY transfered to a supervisor who disappointed me more than the system error. During our long conversation the manager was talking nonsense and was making things worse not better by blaming me for the error and that i have to wait a duration of time after cancelling an order in the account box to place another one (he did not specify but said definitely more than one or two seconds) and came up with a conclusion that this is why the shares went allocated. I asked for a credit of $468 supposing that if things went well and my order was placed, i would have lost $235 and not $703 and to consider the number of trades i have excuted since i joined questrade about a month ago(paid approx.$1400 in commission fees) . He refused and offered me $50 instead.

AN EMAIL HAS BEEN SENT TO SENIOR COMPLIANCE MANAGER ADAM Akretschmann , WHO’S GOT 14 YEARS OF EXPERINCE IN THE FIELD!! I WILL KEEP YOU UPDATED

Anyone got a refer a friend code? You get $100 free of trade and I got $50 free of trade is this correct?

I appreciate your candor in discussing your recent frustration, and I’m sorry to hear that we’re not delivering the level of service that you deserve. I would like to address your concern head on: can you please email me at mrust@questrade.com with your contact information? Our Client Services Manager will contact you directly. While I completely respect your right to discuss Questrade – pros and cons – in a public forum, we need your personal account details in order to investigate the missing GTC order. I sincerely hope that we’re able to present a solution and that Questrade will again be a company you recommend to your friends and colleagues.

Maggie Rust
Questrade

I have been with questrade since 2008, and I have accounts with TD waterhouse, CIBC world markets, IB, and scotia capital. One lesson I have learned dealing with brokerages is you can’t have everything in one basket.

In the past, I traded a great deal on questrade and even became a questrade platinum member. My first year with questrade was great. Services calls were prompt, trading platform is quite reliable, and fees fairly accurate. But for the last two years as questrade expanded and commercials become more prominent on BNN, services and platforms as well as fees have become problematic. During trading hours, calls to trade desk and CSR takes hours. Even if you do get through, the level of service is incompetent. Even platnum dedicated lines takes hours to get through.

Recently, questrade migrated to a new platform, many preferred shares have to be called in for trade. I am currently in a dispute with questrade because I called in a limit GTC order for preferred shares and the trade desk confirmed my order but the orders don’t show in my account. A week later, the limit GTC order conditions were reached and I called in to confirm that my order is filled. To my horror, the CSR told me there is no order and he had to investigate the issues and call me back later. Guess what, he never called. To this date, I can’t understand how an electronic trade order be lost.

Another issues is lack of integration for trading forex and bonds with equity platform. For investors with large basket of investments, you need adequate funds in both forex accounts and equity accounts to trade which severely limits market opportunities. Also any bond trades have to called in to trade desk and are not reflected in equity account balances.

In the past I have recommended questrade to friends, now the only thing I can says is beware…

Both issues were quickly solved, thanks. =)
I’m still concerned I had to go to such length to see the end of this, but now at least I can move on.

Cheers!

André

My name is Matt and I work at Questrade. I’m sorry to hear that your recent experience with us was not positive. Please email me your information so that I can have a member of our solutions team contact you directly. You can send the email to mbasile@questrade.com.

Regards,

Matthew Basile
Questrade, Inc.

I’m with questrade since 3-4 months and I’d like to add a con to the list: communication problems.

When I transferred my account from my previous broker to questrade, things initially went well. However, my history kept showing as pending and I wasn’t receiving the promised refund of transfer fees. After I contacted them several times by chat and phone, I eventually was told that I had to send them the proof I had paid transfer fees. I thought that was something I should have been told right away instead of having to follow up incessantly. I eventually was refund, but my transfer is still showing as pending, 3 months later. I was told a few times they would fix that, but so far they haven’t done a thing. Now I’m hesitant about sending more money to a company that seemingly can’t fix a simple status update issue.

I also wanted to initiate a DRIP on my account and I was told I simply had to upload the form and they would take care of that. I did that the very next day. A month later, again after multiple follow ups, I was told an uploaded form was not acceptable for the first DRIP and I had to send a original signed form. I also would have thought that this would have been something worth telling me up front, if not by the agent on the chat, then perhaps by email when they realized I had uploaded a form and this wasn’t acceptable. Now it’s the second form I have to send them because apparently the first one never got there. Another person than me confirm the address on the envelope was correct, so I doubt this is a wrong address problem. And since I once received an email from questrade containing private information from another of their client, I’m wondering if my form was misfiled somewhere.

From my experience, my concern with questrade is: are low fees worth a mediocre service?