Customer service problems with oanda.com

Dear friends,


Today I want to warn you about "Bucket Shops"
Those are brokers that trade against their customers,
assuming their customer will always lose in the long run.
This is true statistics, 99% of forex traders will lose their
account sooner or later.


The hole in this plan, are thos customers who do make profits.
every dollar they make, is a dollar the broker loses.
If you are making money, at some point they will start
hussling you, until you leave.


Well, I was trading with OANDA, who consider to be one of the best
forex brokers. I am using their service for about 5 years, with very good results.
In fact, I was under the impression, that they were honest broker. You know it,
cause I advised you all to use them.


However, I probably was wrong. I must have got into the size where they could
not have me any more .... This last 6 months I started to get technical problems
I never had before.
At first, I thought it was communication problems, internet speed issues ...
While technical problems grew bigger and bigger, Customer Service Reps
became less and less capable and knowledge able.


I could not really believe it. I believed in them so much. I even had a some discussions with one of their supreme managers.
However, since last Friday, They gave me the ultimate technical problem:
Whenever I try to place a trade, The trading system sends me a pop-up message saying:
"Session Disconnected Exception" - and from there on, the platform freezes.


I started a conversation with their CSR, which you can read below...
Oanda do not let you call a trading desk, the customer service can't do a thing.
When I call them, they let me stay on the line while they investigate ..."
I remind you that I have opened positions, and they simply don't give me any
option to trade


My bottom line call, is that OANDA is a fraud, just like a lot
of other FOREX brokers.
If I ever recommended them - I no longer recommend them, and I ask you to forward this message to any of your trading contacts.
All the best and happy trading,
Haggai


Have a quick read of the discussion I had with their CSR today (and please excuse the language I used at times..)
General Info
Chat start time Sep 26, 2011 1:57:21 AM EST Chat end time Sep 26, 2011 2:27:30 AM EST Duration (actual chatting time) 00:30:08 Operator OANDA Chat Transcript
info: Please wait for an agent to respond.
info: Thanks for your patience. All agents are currently assisting other customers. An agent will be with you shortly.
info: Thanks for your patience. All agents are currently assisting other customers. An agent will be with you shortly.
info: Thanks for your patience. All agents are currently assisting other customers. An agent will be with you shortly.
info: You are now chatting with 'OANDA'
OANDA: Thank you for choosing OANDA. How may I help you?
haggai: I have problems with the trading platform.
haggai: since Friday I cant trade, get exceptions
haggai: What number can I call to trade? I have opened trades !!!
OANDA: could you please describe the problems please?
OANDA: otherwise I cant help you
haggai: everything is as usual, but when I try to trade, I get a pop up message stating "API DISCONNECTION EXCEPTION" and after that the system freez and Nothing can be done no more !!!!!!
haggai: Can you get me a deeling desk that I can call !!!!!!!!!!!!!
haggai: This problem is since Friday
OANDA: can I have your user name please?
haggai: #######
OANDA: I will write an email to our API team
OANDA: on your behalf
haggai: I am not using your f*****g API
haggai: This happens on the standatd platform !!!
haggai: can you get me a phone nu. to call - I need to trade. I can't wait another day !!!!!!!
OANDA: +6227 3808
haggai: This is serius money I am managing
OANDA: +65 6227 3808
haggai: is this the trading desk ???
haggai: hello ???
OANDA: one moment please
OANDA: our API team is not in the office now
OANDA: they are base in toronto
haggai: I don't need them !!!!!
haggai: I need the trading desk !
OANDA: I could not disclose our trading desk's information to you
haggai: make them call me ! I am a customer!!!
OANDA: I'm afraid I could not help you
haggai: DO YOU UNDERSTAND I HAVE OPEN POSITIONS ???????????????????
OANDA: yes, I understand, I am just a customer service staff, and I do not have the clearance to give you that information
haggai: Then get me your supervisor!!!!
OANDA: but my supervisor is not at the office now
haggai: Then call him/her
OANDA: I will ask her to call you when she gets back
haggai: not good enough !!! make it happend now!
OANDA: once again, I could not make that happen
OANDA: unless she comes back

At the top there is a link to the list of brokers ... I did not place this link, this is an automatic link from the FF system. I did not mean to suggest they are bucket shops ...
Haggai

I agree that Oanda does trade against its clients and uses lots of tricks to keep the odds in their favour, Random spread widening and connectivity issues to name a few.
The question is, where do you go now?

When I asked them do they trade against their clients they responded that in no way do they trade against their clients. They however do have a dealing desk where they hedge to make up for risk. I think they assume every trader is in a fog and will not notice that they said hedge against risk, that means the same thing to me.

there still be some traders kissing there ass

I have account(s) with OANDA, and ask myself the same question just about every day.

I have been with a number of brokers, all worse than OANDA.

Khalid

I was about to consider this broker,but it is sad to know all this stuff from a experience trader,when these brokers already makes good money out of spread why do they need to do this silly frauds?

OP did u finally manage to close ur position? did the supervisor gave u call back?

or did u lose money?

Thanks for your care ....
I did not lose money, as those are long term positions, with very low leverage.
However, I couldn't maintain the position, and the prime CSR never called ...
You can have a look at my system in this link The Cake
Haggai

which broker are u considering now?

What about MF Global UK, I was told not bad.

Any comment about them ?

i'm actually looking into IB. However i'm scared as hell when reading the reviews on their lack of customer service. I'm a bit slow so i need some hand holding when it comes to new platform (oanda had the best customer service when i started out)

nowdays, i haven't seen foul play from oanda, but when i do, i won't even bother asking for explanation, i'll just leave.

thanks for the review OP

PS. if you don't mind, what's the size you were trading at that prompted this whole trading error. I just want to know if i'm approaching that. thanks. pm me if you like

if you don't mind as well, what's the size you were trading at that prompted this whole trading error. Id also like to know if I am approaching that. pm me if you like

what brokers are you guys looking into?

this thread is a fraud. oanda is great everybody knows it.. it's the broker with most % of winners.. google it

look up at the figures of oanda vs the rest:

http://forexmagnates.com/forex-broke...profitability/

stop blaming oanda for your mistakes

lol.......is not only u who got these problems.......i told u guys to stay away from them already...........they are not an honest brokers..........small traders will not know about what oanda do cause they are trading pennies...........only those trading millions per order will know what these oanda people are up to.........so to post it here is pointless as majority are small traders.........haha

unfortunately that most % winners just couldn't adjust whether OANDA is an honest broker or not. The profitable traders still under 50%, which make OANDA could getting the profits from the trader's loss. so all of the other brokers.

Ha ha, you are a real laugh. What are you talking about mate, you are trading tiny amounts. What would you know???

@eu_trader and @alvseek.... you guys have no clue what you're talking about. eu_trader you're clearly lacking experience, as a costumer of Oanda for some time I can confirm all these rights hold true with Oanda: http://fxtrade.oanda.com/analysis/in...bill-of-rights . I'd think that the thing that most people would bitch more about Oanda are the hiking spreads during news times, but aren't you a professional? I understand why the high spreads during the news and I trade it wisely. The java platform can crash once or another but overall I consider it very stable and MT4 never crashed since their implementation and I have been trading every single day... Better, they open earlier than anyone else so you can already see where the price is at around 17h of Sunday.

Even Oanda warns about some storm in the markets where it was noted that traders lost more money. They admit they earn on spreads, and they note that costumers that stay on the long-run give them more profits, which only makes sense: http://blogs.wsj.com/marketbeat/2011...rency-markets/

Here's their infographic that they sent to the costumers:
http://fxtrade.oanda.com/analysis/in...ex-storm-watch

@alvseek if you look at your sentence you'll notice that the word "could" implies you also have no experience with them and that your opinion is merely speculative.

Yeah yeah I am praising Oanda so much it would seem I work for them, but no, we work together, me as a trader and them as a broker and I couldn't be more happy with the success I'm recording with Oanda. Previous to them I had many bad experiences with other brokers that I won't go on about and it was really the day I switched to them that I started growing with a remarkable success. All I can say in the end is that in MY experience of trading with both Oanda and Dukascopy for a long time, I've never ever recorded any problems from them and when in doubt, I asked their costumer support which was always very helpful and clarifying as you've just seen in my previous post.

I have seen this "statistics" before and it does not make sense to me.

Why should Oanda traders be more profitable than with other brokers? The traders who trade with oanda are often not the professional ones, merely the beginners.