I ve been using them for over a year now and their customer service is VERY VERY poor, their customer agents dont know much about trading
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I thought this is the best broker? I heard that their trading service is very excellent.
Would you care to expand?
I’m sure you didn’t join BP just to say their service is very very poor
As i mentioned i ve been using it for over a year now and got used to it, spreads r very good, TWS too, but unfortunately their customer service agent dont seem familiar with TWS (i ve been told that they r not able to trade, so it might be why), so each time you ask them a trade related question they really struggle to answer and if they say that someone will get back to u shortly u can forget about it 
Also i have over ÂŁ70K on it now so cant be bothered to move and hunt for a new brooker atm.
They are brokers not advisors 
but if you have had operational issues with them or problems making a withdrawal etc. please let us know
I am not surprised, to be honest. The company recently got fined with GBP 1,049,412 by the British regulator FCA.
The reason the regulator gave was failings in the UK branch of the broker’s post-trade systems and controls for identifying and reporting suspicious transactions in the period February 2014 to February 2015. They don’t seem to be running a very tight ship.
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… by some of their clients, not by IB themselves. There was no suggestion of impropriety on their part regarding their own dealings with their customers, of course.
This isn’t something that should put any retail trader off using them.
They have an ultra-reliable service and the lowest commissions you can get. Period.
It’s true that sometimes their customer service isn’t outstanding, and it can be slow calling them for assistance.
They expect as customers mostly “experienced” traders who aren’t going to need a lot of technical help. But it’s really difficult to see how anyone in that group of traders can do better than using IB. Which is why every ex-institutional, now-independent trader I know is happily using them with no plans to switch. To someone steadily profitable who can use them to trade spot forex (that description excludes US-residents, of course) it’s a kind of automatic, reflex, no-brainer decision to use IB.
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Perhaps not, but any body operating under the auspices of the FSA/FCA has to abide by its rules, including identifying and monitoring transactions.
Had IB felt they were treated unfairly, I’m pretty sure they would be appealing against the ruling
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I’m sure that’s right, Eddie.
Certainly they were at fault. These anti-money-laundering regulations change all the time, and brokers have a legal responsibility to report certain transactions to governmental authorities, and IB weren’t on the ball about it as they should have been.
My information (though perhaps I should say “trade gossip”, not “information”!) is that IB feel they were treated “very harshly”, but not “unfairly” or “incorrectly”, and they know they went wrong re regulatory compliance.
In view of this forum being full of spot forex traders, I just wanted to make the point that (in huge contrast to all the regulators’ rulings against FXCM, for example, which have arisen over dishonesty and deception to their own customers) this was a technical, strict-liability offence NOT relevant to any retail trader thinking of using IB.
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Agree with you Lukas.
Maybe this is a sign that the FSA/FCA are taking a tougher stance than before
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I haven’t used IB but damn…I didn’t know about that fine. And it’s quite big I must say. Lately many brokers have been charged penalties actually, probably it’s a sign that regulators are tightening the grip.