Questrade causes investor's losses

humpelpumpel

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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.
 
I also wish I had seen all these comments before joining questrade, I am an amateur to trading but there are certain things common logic can judge. I have contacted questrader about the problem I have, all I was looking for is an explanation but it seems when I brought up the info they chose to ignore me so I am going to post on every website to search for the answer. I contacted them concerning a change of name from PNHL holdings to GTLA. After they gave me GTLA shares at an average of 0.20 when the high was 0.17 on the day of trade. This is the exact email and reply sent.



Hello,

As per our conversation, your account has been reviewed and we can confirm that your account has been properly updated. The terms of the corporate action that saw PNHL simply change symbols and name to GTLA (GT Legend Automotive), was that each share of PNHL was exchanged for 0.0005 shares of GTLA. At the time your account was holding 4,929718 shares of PNHL which were converted to 2465 shares of GTLA. The average price for the GTLA shares has been set to $0.20 based on an average price of $0.0001 for your PNHL shares. The prices are not official and are for display. It is your responsibility to know what price you have paid for your PNHL shares and what price your GTLA shares should be valued at. Please contact us if you have any further inquiries.

Thank you,

Nicholas Roussos
Client Services Specialist
Web: Questrade Canadian Discount Broker | Online Stock Trading | Education
Phone: (416) 227-9876
Toll Free: 1-888-783-7866 ext.421
Fax: (416) 227-0078





hello, I thought the trade was supposed to be 1 pnhl for 0.005 shares of GTLA since even if it was just an exchange, the GTLA on that day was 0.02 , can you check that for me please Wednesday nov 26 which was the day of the "change in name" , this is the chart from historical prices Google finance, as you can see it opened at 0.02 that day and wouldn’t change to 0.17 until after the name change is effective, that is a dramatic jump that can only be influenced by such an occasion, also if the high of the day was 0.17 why was my average purchase price even above that. If I am to calculate from the 0.02 opening price, since the name change should take place at the opening of the market to begin trading immediately I should have had 24648 shares... that is $0.0001 per pnhl divided by $0.02 per GTLA, giving 1 pnhl for every 0.005 GTLA therefore dividing 4929718 by 0.005 giving 24648, I think the error in you calculations came in the placement of the decimal place, the price of GTLA was 0.02 not 0.20


I will really appreciate it, if the experienced traders will let me know where I stand in this situation, now even if I was wrong I would never in my life recommend this excuse of a trading website to anyone, not even an enemy. My experiences with them begun with a VTSO placed for a penny stock worth 0.82, I knew it was a risky trade and asked the limit to be 0.80, the stock dropped to 0.20 in about 2 days, I am not actively managing my account, I return and find out I lost about $300 so I contacted customer service, what I was told was that they do not advice the use of VTSO with penny stocks because sometimes their system fails to execute the trade, something along those lines, I was basically 1 month into trading at that time so thinking it was my own stupidity not finding out how well vtso works with penny stocks before placing it I left the matter, now a few months later speaking to the same Nicholas above about some other matter I asked about the vtso since it popped into my mind, just to find out if the answer I received previously was the common held notion, His excuse or reply I should call it was, I told the system to execute the trade if the price dropped 0.80 instead of 0.02, now I recall distinctly that the other representative went over the trade and confirmed that I did everything right...I then told him to check the chat between myself and the other representative to confirm it, his reply was since the trade was done 6 months ago the chat was deleted from record and their risk department cannot do anything about it now given the period of time, then he just closed the chat window without even awaiting my reply.
I learnt my lesson, so from now on any conversation I have with them I save, and I have hard copies of their rudeness and ineptness.
 
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