InteractiveBrokers screwing up again

Posted on December 18, 2007
Tags: Day Trading |

I put in an option order yesterday. The order was rejected, despite my account being approved for it - or so I thought. After they confirmed I wasn’t actually approved for the trade, this (lightly edited) correspondence followed. Judge for yourself:

My follow-up question to IB:

Thanks for the reply. Please address the following:

1. Why wasn’t this done before despite me submitting the request very long time [months] ago?

2. Why is the trading permissions section in the Acc Management showing I’m approved for it when I wasn’t?

3. This trade that I put in and was rejected is in profit now, how are you going to compensate me for this?

4. I’ve heard many times about horror stories about IB in places like EliteTrader.com and where an IB rep had to come and explain and try to clean up the mess, I hope this isn’t going follow the same pattern.

Thanks
E.

IB’s response:

1) Compliance had an issue where certain accounts who requested a trading permission upgrade did not come into their queue (Inbox). Yours was one of the affected accounts.

2) This is an unusual programming feature. I do not know why the screen is programmed to show you permissions that have not been approved. This will need to be reviewed by programmers for a firm-wide modification.

3) There will be no compensation for a speculative profit. Interactive Brokers does not guarantee approval of trading permissions and and certainly does not compensate customers on speculative and hypothetical “missed opportunities”

4) We are very aware of comments on Elitetrader.com and as you stated they are addressed accordingly.

And in plain English: InteractiveBrokers systems screwed up, malfunctioned, didn’t work, showed incorrect information and mislead the customer - and the customer will pay for it.

Comments

3 Responses to “InteractiveBrokers screwing up again”

  1. Gav on December 18th, 2007 3:44 pm

    And the best thing is,from the reply, they do not sound like admitting this is their mistake at all. LOL…. big corporation, big crap.

  2. John-Daniel Trask on December 18th, 2007 4:46 pm

    “This is an unusual programming feature.”

    That has to be one of the most BS ways of saying “it’s a bug” that I’ve heard of in a while! Almost “it’s a feature, not a bug”.

    - JD

  3. eyal on December 19th, 2007 8:26 pm

    Gav - yeah, they make us sign those contracts that basically mean there is no situation in the world in which they’ll be liable for any losses or missed profits. Part of the game. The individual trade itself is immaterial really. But I did get pissed off with their attitude.

    JD - LOL yeah I think this may be a legally approved phrase out of their CRM / ticketing system for this sort of cases. Make sure you never use this sort of stuff at Mindscape ;-)

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