BEWARE OF QUESTRADE’S SHADY ACCOUNTING
PRACTICES

I have had the single worst experience of my entire life with Questrade over the last few days, as I write this MY ACCOUNT IS MISSING $923.45 or 35% of my entire account balance & life savings after 3 CONSECUTIVE DAYS OF ACCOUNT IMBALANCES. I am actively spreading the word of my ordeal through any medium I can until the problem is fixed I have gotten a letter to the editor posted in the Kingston Whig-Standard and am awaiting publication of my letters to the Toronto Star, Toronto Sun and the Globe and Mail. My uncle is one of the webmasters at Craig’s List so I should have a leg up in informing as many people as possible.

I have personally traded stocks, options and funds for 7 years and ETF’s, FOREX and bonds for 5, so I consider myself informed about the online broker business. I am not a wealthy person but I enjoy investing in a ‘hands on’ fashion. I had an account with E*Trade for 6 years with no problems. A few months ago I left them for Questrade because of the cheaper commissions and their favorable consumer ratings.
Up until the morning of March 5, 2009 I had a very good experience with Questrade, I even got my account set up in only 4 business days, which was very impressive!

*Note all figures include commissions and exchange rates at the time of the transaction. Also, I have a TaxFreeSavings account, which means no margin account, no loans, no borrowing, no overdrafts. I can do transactions up to my current cash balance, any more money and it will reject the order because of insufficient funds. I can prove all claims/ figures through screen shots of history and physical account activity forms mailed to me after every day that I traded. With that in mind……

The night of March 4, 2009 at 4:05PM I bought 23 shares of FAZ (an ETF) @ $79.80 USD=$1,840.44 USD (total after trade commission) x 1.27(the exchange rate at the time)=$2337.36 CAD worth of stock in my account + $54.72 CAD in cash left in my account=$2392.08 CAD is my total account balance.

The morning of March 5, 2009 at 9:33AM I sold the same 23 shares of FAZ I carried over from the day before @ $86.86USD=$1992.81 USD (after trade commission) x 1.2785(the rate at the time)=$2547.81 CAD + $54.72 CAD (cash left in account since night before)=$2602.53 CAD total cash in account now. But there was actually $2232.04 CAD showing in my account balance when I checked it after the trade like I always do. That means my account was $370.49 CAD… just like that.

I’m not going to go in to greater detail but the same thing happened the next two days as well taking $165.04 CAD on the morning of March 6,2009 and then again for $396.96 on the morning of March 9, 2009. I suspended my account at that point and stopped trading. They had taken $923.45 CAD by the end of it, or 35% of my life savings (I am still young and busy paying off student loans). I would’ve suspended it after the first day but they assured me it would be fixed and after the second day I was waiting for this manager to call me back, which he failed to do.

Now you would think that in the face of this irrefutable evidence, and the fact that they admit a computer glitch took money through faulty a exchange of currency from a bunch of other people’s Tax Free Savings Accounts over these same days, that they would admit the error. Boy was I wrong, the real fight had just begun as I spent 2 hours and 06 mins. that day (have long distance phone bill to prove it) on the phone to 3 different people at customer service, trading desk, etc. They just tried to explain it away going down a checklist of things; didn’t add in trade commissions (even though the totals I used from webtrader history have them added in), exchange rate (which I took from the forex website), my miscalculations, etc. Each person would say they would “send a report to the back office and someone would follow up with me in the next few days. Guess what, not one of them did, I called again on Friday March 6, 2009 and asked to speak with a manger that didn’t call me back for 4 business days and when he did he brushed me off, even though they admitted “some money was taken from my account and put back”, $181.82 CAD on March 5, 2009. He refused to understand that I sold stock for this price and then my account balance said I had much less then what I sold the stock for, even though this is very simple concept. Robert Chandler is the name of the “manager” I spoke with. He at one point 30 mins. into the conversation said hold on for 5 mins. and pretended to have an audit done on my account, even though another manager told me audits take at least 3-5 business days. Apparently Rob is a superhuman adding computer… either that or a bald faced liar. I called him on the amazingly quick audit he was able to do and he hung up (I have a witness who was also listening to the call), after 45 mins. of denials. I spoke with him a few days later and said he couldn’t bully me into submission, that I wanted a real audit of my account. He told me a real audit is $75 an hour charged to my account. I asked if Questrade was found to be at fault, would the audit be free? He said no the audit would be around $500.00 in total and would not be refunded even if they found that Questrade took money from my account.

I then attempted to go higher then Rob by using a good comment blog post and contacting Emil Vojkollari and Nicholas Roussos, both in middle management, who seem to help people on the blog I saw solve problems with Questrade, and guess what? I have left 2 messages for Emil seeking assistance in the matter and 4 for Nicholas asking him for help as well and both HAVE YET TO RETURN ANY OF MY 6 MESSAGES. That is not client support, that is an abomination and I intend to make it my hobby for the next few months until every cent of my $923.45 CAD is returned to me with an apology of mass proportions. The ironic thing is that after my forensic auditor finishes his assessment I can take them to small claims court where if found guilty of taking money from me they would be on the hook for $1000’s to pay for my legal counsel (my dad, who charges $300/an hour) and $1000’s for their own legal counsel plus have to explain the verdict to the IIROC Canadian securities regulatory body and risk losing their retail broker license.

Sorry it took so long to read, but PLEASE, ANYONE WHO DOESN’T ALREADY HAVE AN ACCOUNT WITH QUESTRADE…DON’T, ANYONE THAT HAS AN ACCOUNT ALREADY…CLOSE IT. THIS AGGRAVATION HAS GIVEN MY WIFE AND I WEEKS OF SLEEPLESS NIGHTS AND UNTOLD STRESS. This recession has been hard enough on everyone let alone being taken for 35% of my families entire savings. Questrade are at best a terrible company with horrendous customer service and complaint response, and at worst criminal with gross misconduct on the part of ROBERT CHANDLER. You don’t hang up on someone or lie and say you are doing an “audit” that was magically finished in 10 mins. instead of the standard 3-5 days. The fact that neither Emil nor Nicholas has bothered to return my calls proves that the upper management is also not taking customer’s complaints seriously. It’s sad what this world is coming to sometimes, I hope between the huge ad on Craig’s list and the letter in the Whig-Standard, the letters hopefully in the Tor. Star, Tor. Sun and Globe & Mail: people will recognize the absolutely vile way they have handled me. I was only trying to get my family ahead using a discount broker to save fees, I didn’t deserve this, my wife didn’t deserve this and my 5 month old daughter certainly didn’t deserve this. Shame on you Questrade.

Zack C.

Questrade's Incompetence

causes

financial loss for investor


Late June 26 2008 I funded a Questrade account after extensively familiarizing myself with the Questrader Pro demo as well as consulting with 'new customer service' when questions arose.
Starting to trade on July 1.08, using the Life Questrade Pro Platform, I executed more than 100 trades as a day trader / swing trader to date.

In absence of a comprehensive Questrade manual showing rules and regulations pertaining to its policies and trading platform, calls to customer service were needed to clarify discrepancies inherent in the life versus the demo platform.

Unfortunately, I received as many contradicting information as there were agents I spoke with; requiring additional calls asking for verification from a supervisor. Andrew has to be mentioned as most professional, helpful, willing, competent and customer service oriented .

Nonetheless, reaching the "life" customer service department involved extensive waiting periods and when finally connected the respective, presumably knowledgeable 'life account holder agent' often needed to consult someone else to get an answer to the question; i.e. clarifying after hours trading to execute an order set off many contradicting instructions by Wes, Wen, Wendy, Ricki and Karan Mahotra whereby the latter fortunately does chose to get help instead of spouting unqualified misinformation which fails when followed.

Some of the issues are the number of decimals allowed to enter, excessively long time lapses to fill market orders despite direct access, limit orders do rarely appear on level 2 queue view, commission amounts charged are shown at 2x the amount incurred, etc.

Aside from these shortcomings, one is hopeful will iron itself out after learning Questrade's intricacies in the most inefficient manner, Questrade's ineptitude and lack of concern for the client does also prompt a heavy monetary loss to the user of Questrade as shown below:

On July 22.08 I closed one of several same symbol long positions which were accumulated over several days. The trading platform however, closed a position other than the one selected by me which had shown a gain when closed out at that time. Instead a significant loss occurred when the system chose a different position of the same symbol acquired at a different price than the one I had selected.

I called Questrade immediately following the incident. After 15 minutes on hold, I was informed by Ilia?, / Elia? that Questrade's policy does not allow for account holder selection of positions to be closed out of multiple same symbol positions, but the system selects automatically the first in first out position if several positions have been accumulated over several days.

Conversely, if all of several same symbol positions are accumulated during the same day , the last position acquired is the first one out upon closing/covering one of the positions held.

I accepted that information as a lesson learned, after confirming that I had not overlooked that crucial information in Questrade's 70 page info/disclaimer material. Instead I was advised by Ilia/Elia? that it was my responsibility to call in for obtaining such information prior to doing the trade because Questrade is a discount broker.

With this information in mind, on July 29, 2008 at 14.08 hours, I covered that day's last acquired position held as one of several same symbol positions acquired during the morning of July 29.08. That particular position showed a gain of $148.73 .

This gain, added to a $557.23 gain closed earlier that morning in other symbols' positions, would result in a total gain of $705.96 before commissions.

Instead, the arbitrary Questrade system selection presented me with a loss of $254.11 because the trading platform system covered a different position which was not the last position opened and thus had a different price and therefore was creating a loss. Consequently, my gain for the day to 14:09:36 hours was reduced from the earlier gained $557.23 to $303.12.

In addition, my unsuccessful attempts to resolve the issue in several phone calls to customer service resulted in repeated disconnections, more than 13 minutes waiting periods on hold and refusal by agent Ilia to connect me to a supervisor.

Instead, rude, rushed and unfriendly, he tried to convince me that only a paper, but no real loss had occurred.

He assured me he had now adjusted the account to eliminate the loss occurred. When I asked him how the result is shown so that I can see it in my trading account, he answered that he is not an IT programmer and thus, does not know how the computer did it.
I was/am unable to detect any changes made, my losses remain the same as prior to my call to Questrade and are reflected at closing of the markets.

Brad, agent at the trade desk, and later agent Karan, assured me the account would be adjusted at end of the trading day because current attempts made by them failed for technical reasons unbeknownst to them.


During my 1 and ¾ hours occupied with the phone ordeal and frustration, my other positions could not be closed out at 14:15 hours which would have resulted in a small gain; instead, an additional loss of $ 1120.57 occurred for a total loss of a minimum of $1374.68 at the end of the trading day.

Furthermore, the unresolved issue prevented me from re-acting to market performance during the remaining 1 ½ hours of trading, disabling the opportunity to re-gain some of the previous weeks' losses.

Questade's agents remarked they are very sorry about what happened. I requested several times to be connected to a manager or supervisor and asked for a call back, I am still waiting to be contacted.


Relevant documentation is available.