Poor customer service of broker

Hi,

I am currently participating in a trading contest organized by Alpari Russia. I am a trend trader and have obviously overnight position regularly. Few weeks ago I realised that they had a 1 hour gap in their data feed Friday 22PM. Quite surprisingly I also noticed that after the gap my stop losses were hit, BUT FAR AWAY from their original sl price. The worst offset was over 150 PIPS AWAY, so I made a complaint, because I lost more than $5000 because of that gap.

After few emails (they explaining that I have agreed to all their rules) they stopped responding to my emails. I just wanted to ask if gaps are regular in their business and if they intend to return the difference of these particular gap trades.

They did not ever concluded the complaint. I just felt like they do not have a decent procedure to handle these complaints, because it was so poor communication and just an amateur service.

This same offline gap happened also one week later at the EXACT SAME TIME, so I concluded it was their regular server maintenance routine and they did not have fault tolerance in their servers. I sent them again an email asking if that is FAIR for the contestants. They did not respond to that either. I even sent an email to their CEO, but never got responded. I was not surprised any more. I now know that they do not care. After all they have already over 55 000 registered accounts and they do not want any more.

I also have previously used their online chat support, but it was pain in the ass. Quite often they just wrote "just a minute" and did not respond anything for 15-20 minutes!!! If I got one to chat with he/she wrote a sentence and went away again. This went on and on 'til I got frustrated.

Fortunately I was trading a demo account and learned a valuable lesson here
because I am planning to go live in near future and I am about to choose a broker for my trading. I would NEVER EVER consider trading with ALPARI Russia.

One of the Alpari Russia CEO's principles "Making business, based on honesty and openness is the company’s dominating principle" have now another tone in my mind.

Disclaimer: These are just my experiences with the broker and should not be taken as advice to choose or not to choose this broker. I take NO (none, nil, nope, nada, rien...) responsibility of these words how they might be used in future converstations. :->

nchosen

So let me see if I understood correctly, you're bitching about losing 5k on a DEMO account, on a LATE FRIDAY EVENING, when you know that trading is closed in the weekend, therefore it's pretty obvious that you risk a lot by still having open positions that late on a Friday?

Dude, what's wrong with you? You weren't even a customer, so saying they have poor customer service is totally out of line.

They most likely had real customers to attend to, I'm not surprised they didn't bother much with your demo account and especially after you kept nagging them endlessly.

Jesus, I hope people get to read your post in full and realize you were talking about a demo before they start panicking uselessly.

Just a quick respond to your burst: this is demo acc, but the contest has real money prizes, and I was asking (not nagging like you said) if this HUGE GAP (over 150 pips) was fare. I find it very odd if they quite suddenly stop responding emails that is part of their complaint procedure.

One more to think: If a man goes to regular supermarket and glances the products on the shelf, would you consider him/her a customer or not?

I am not panicking here. I just found about them something that made me keep a long distance away them. Like I said FORTUNATELY it was demo and I learned a lot (of Alpari) here.

Would you consider trading with a broker who shuts down the server for an hour? We are not all day traders. Risks of overnight positions are well known, that is why I questioned this situation and asked if they had gaps like this with live servers too.

In my opinion they had very poor customer service and I am their customer as a demo account holder and trading contest participant and as a prospect live trader.

nchosen

Wait a minute, are you actually surprised by the quality and customer service of a broker that has the word "Russia" in its name? If so

Not surprised. I have actually a russian friend who said something about russians and their honesty that I can not say it here in public, because it is too rude and it may hurt some people.

Are you perhaps referring to this quality mark of customer service?

"We are glad to inform you that Company Alpari Ltd. was awarded by a national reward «Financial Russia» as «The Best Company of Russia — 2007 — The Best Business Reputation in the Financial Sphere». "

CEO says :"The fact that we have won in the independent contest «Financial Russia — 2007» and that we were awarded as «The Best Company of Russia — 2007 — The Best Business Reputation in the Financial Sphere» confirms your confidence in us and the services we provide."


nchosen

Are you talking about the gap up 2 weekends ago? That was a legitimate price move and had nothing to do with the brokers.

5th and 12th of September, 10PM (Broker time). Believe me. And there are more of these if you look back the charts.

nchosen

About the picture: Let's suppose you have a sl @1.7690 and the broker uses the next available price @1.7863. How would you feel?

Oh man this is retarted. Those were legitimate moves by the market not your broker.

It's a bloody gap over the weekend, all of us had it, I was stopped out. I can't complanit because it's not the broker's fault!

Point taken. I though Alpari is closing 12 o'clock. They should have explained the cause in the first place.

Nevertheless I got poor service.

nchosen

Taking into consideration the facts above

Yeap nothing wrong with the broker's reaction imho.

LOL funnyest thing I have ever seen. They did not repy to to you cuz they thought you were a idiot and trust me they most likely would never want you as a live accout.

you could be the type of client that would ring non stop about everything!

so bloody funny and u still put the link up like they're wrong. Mate you stuffed up not Alpari......

Buddy please stop trading and start comedy!


Look familure that's the eur/usd.

OMG champagne Comedy

Our company would like to clarify the situation. If nchosen agrees we will provide the correspondence between nchosen and our Contest department here.

Com'on agree to it and let's see some nice storylines

I've been using Alpari US on a live acct for a few months, great customer service.