OANDA email - Changes to the fxTrade Customer Agreement

Does anyone else received this email today from OANDA, and knows what exactly it means?

Dear User,

Please be advised that OANDA Corporation has made changes to our fxTrade Customer Agreement effective May 8, 2017 (EDT).

Please note that the inactivity fees (detailed in #36 below) do NOT apply if:
You have placed at least one trade in the past 12 months, OR
You have no current balance in your account, OR
You never made a deposit into your account

If you have any questions about inactivity fees, please see our Frequently Asked Questions.

The detailed material changes made to our client agreement are:

9 e) Core Pricing. If you choose the Core Pricing Plus Commission option, OANDA will charge your account the Commission Charges, in addition to any other charges or fees as set forth in this Agreement. As long as Core Pricing is in effect on your account, the Commission Charges will be assessed on all Trades executed by you in your Account

36) Inactivity Fees. The period in which inactivity fees are charged, is changing from 24 months to 12 months. The fee amount is not changing and continues to be the lesser of (i) 10.00 units of the currency in which your Account is denominated (with the exception of Accounts denominated in JPY and HKD, which will be charged 1000 JPY and 75 HKD respectively) or (ii) the remaining balance in your Account.

39 e) Amendment. You may not amend this Agreement unless such amendment is in writing and signed by both you and an authorized executive officer of OANDA. No oral agreements or instructions to the contrary shall be recognized or enforceable. This Agreement and the Exhibits hereto embody the entire agreement of the parties, superseding any and all prior written and oral agreements and there are no other terms, conditions or obligations other than those contained herein.
Please find the revised fxTrade Customer Agreement on our web site for full details regarding the changes.
If you wish to reject the changes under the revised agreement, you will have 10 business days effective from the date this email was sent to do so. If you do choose to reject the terms of the revised fxTrade Customer Agreement, you can do so by contacting our Customer Support Team. OANDA Corporation will complete all transactions under the existing terms of the Agreement that will permit you, the customer, to close your account without detriment or raising any charges for closure of the fxTrade account. If such notification is not received, you are deemed to accept the changes under the revised fxTrade Customer Agreement. Thank you for trading with us.

Kind Regards,
The OANDA Client Experience Team

No decent intermediary would ever charge an "inactivity fee." By the very model used to establish their business, they make compensating balances from the deposits you have on account with them. However, the real revenue from a Market Maker and a Broker who takes the other side of your trade, comes from both the spread and off their book when you lose - and 95% of you end up losing to the house because you have not yet honed your skills.

Find a broker that charges no such fee and move on.

as a 10 year oanda customer, i do agree with you. this inactivity fee is just retarded. but at 1 trade every 12 months, it's not that hard to avoid.

you can even just take a 10 unit trade, just to satisfy that requirement.

I agree that it is no problem to avoid the fee. I opened my Oanda account in 2010 .... I have choose Oanda for his reputation that it is a serious broker (not the best by any means), and especially for the advantage of very flexible unit size...starting from 1 unit. At that time no serious broker had an offer like that. It was (and still is) excellent for testing purposes, actually I did my demoing with real money...those who understand what I'm talking about will agree that this is a huge advantage versus virtual dollars demo.
Meanwhile I had several exotic carry trades that where open 1,2 or even more then 3 Years...banked a few k dollars doing virtually nothing. So I think that this fee should not be an issue if one is serious about trading.
Strange do...I searched my email and found out that I already received this back in October last year>
Please be advised that OANDA Europe Limited has made changes to our fxTrade Customer Agreement effective October 13th, 2016
The difference is that I have the account at the European division...

It is a psychological incentive to keep the uninformed driving in revenues for the broker through capturing terms (the spread) and from counter-party wins after the uninformed loses - which is most of them over time.

Learn the Craft - that's step one. Learn how to grow capital on a retail platform consistently - that's step two and no doubt the hardest given the nonsense that Bucket Shops will try to run on you along the way. Conserve capital until such time that a prime broker relationship can be established. Your funds should be completely segregated, access to deep and wide liquidity should be available on the trading platform, advanced order types should be the norm, settlement fees should be reasonable, spreads will be inside the pip, access to depth of market should be transparent and your PM will not have a conflict of interest setting themselves up as the counter party to any trade you make. Your deposits should be off balance sheet and not vulnerable to the liabilities of the PM's credit granters (very important).

The key will be in the fine print of both the Business License issued by the jurisdiction where the PM is domiciled or based and the Agency Agreement (you may want your attorney to review this for you) that you sign. The PM should not be allowed to hold proprietary positions either executed through the same platform or within the same liquidity pool (very important). The PM should not be allowed to act as Counter-Party to any trade you seek to execute. The PM should be restricted to an exclusive Agency Model Relationship and in no way, shape or form, engaged in modifying and/or altering your executed positions on behalf of themselves and/or any other third-party, whatsoever.

At this stage in your trading career, you would be looking for a solid PM with zero conflicts of interest and retail hell would then be well behind you and you will be conducting all trading activity through an appropriately established Corporation and/or appropriate legal entity.

A Retail Trader having sufficient motivation and commitment can reach this level, but not without approaching their trading with the mindset of running and operating a business model.

I likewise received the e-mail. I'd opened an account with 0anda several years ago, but stopped trading with them after finding br0kers that I liked better, then I forgot to close the account, LOL. IMO the inactivity fee is more than retarded, it's disingenuous: 0anda not only has the use of my money for investment, now they want to also charge me for that privilege, just as a bank would. That's very unprofessional in my view, it's hard to for me to take them seriously. As a non-US resident, I can't trade the account any more anyway, hence rather than have them take money while I watch helplessly, I'll simply close the account and move on.

I totally agree with what you say. I do not have an account with oanda. But I received the same treatment from ETXCapital last year when they charged me $25 per month and back dated it by 6/7 months. It took some hot emails to eventually get a refund. Don't know if this is normal practice for dormant accounts.

So if you get refunded i guess that was their routine practice to charge customers and you escaped from their plan and got the charge refunded.