Interactive Brokers Reviews

Hi folks, I set up an account with Interactive Brokers just a few weeks ago. I've been using Charles Schwab for some time now and was drawn by the margin rates that IKBR offers. After joining, I moved my money temporarily into a Money Market Fund with symbol SPRXX. When I made that purchase there was no mention of any commission fees. However, when I attempted to get my money back out of that fund I was charged a $14.95 fee. This was surprising to me, coming from Charles Schwab, where they offer a Money Market fund, SWVXX, without any fees or commissions. On my own, I was able to find a webpage that tells me how I can find "No Transaction Fee (free)" mutual funds for IBKR. That would have been great to know about beforehand (https://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/pricing/commissions-mutual-funds.php).

It is a wonder that they are still in business. I have closed my account with over 100K. Even though I have been investing for over 45 years I was told I could not buy OTC and other stocks, Really? You are restricting and limiting what I can buy? I have never had a brokerage firm tell me that before. Once you do run into issues, good luck trying to get your money out of their hands. Customer service is a joke, I have spent hours a day on hold with them and they were never able to answer a single question. Pathetic!

Interactive Brokers has locked my withdrawal for no reason. All the document requests, ID and selfie verification have been completed however, now 15 days later, they are unable to provide me with a reason for the delay. Engaged.

First off, I didn't have any problems with execution of trades. Fills were immediate, dividends were correctly applied. The first big issue I had was when you sell a stock, you need to wait 2 additional days to use the funds from that closure. Because this company is inept, good luck getting your money out. You are pretty much left to figure out how to withdraw your money. IB has no instructions on how to withdraw your money. If you initiate a transfer through your bank, they put the money in your account, then remove it two days later telling you it wasn't authorized. Nothing is said on HOW to authorize the transfer.

They will provide your P&L and market value at the mid point but force your order entries to sell at the bid and buy at the ask. This will cost you hundreds if not thousands of dollars and there is no way to change that dumb feature. At least have consistency across like list both at market.

There's literally so many negative things to say about this Horrible Company, I don't know where to start. If your account goes into a Margin Call by even $500, they liquidate your positions within seconds. That's not a misprint, they literally liquidate positions within seconds of the Margin Call. Everything is time stamped, so there's a time stamp when the account went into margin and less than 10-30 seconds later they've already liquidated your positions. The Customer Service is not located in the United States, so none of them speak English and they don't have the slightest clue as to what they're doing. They put you on hold for 20 minutes at a time, then come back with an incorrect answer. I'm looking to switch firms ASAP, I can't think of one good thing to say about these clowns. The entire company is beyond embarrassing and a complete disgrace to the Trading Industry.

In all my life I have never seen someone give me the runaround like did, they made me trust and believe in them then took all my money. Real scammers. Had to get the professional assistance of High Forest Capital Ltd.com to track and make sure time and resources were not wasted.

I've had accounts at 6 investment firms over the last 30+ years and have never experienced anything like Interactive Brokers. I can't comprehend why they are still in business. They are the worst company I've experienced for investments or otherwise. BEWARE!!!

Today, it took four (4) hours to complete a simple task on the website. The site kept freezing and I had to redo the same form numerous times to submit. Then, when it was finally submitted, there was no confirmation. I only found out it was submitted after I called the company three times. The first two employees could not answer my questions.

A huge complaint I have against this company is being told that I am not wealthy enough to buy any OTC stocks regardless of their share prices. Other companies like Morgan Stanley, Etrade impose no such arbitrary restrictions. I only buy a limited number of OTC stocks but I will buy them when they look promising to me. Of course I'm well aware of the risks, but it's my job to decide if the risk should be taken, not theirs.

IB Trades against the customer accounts. Funds missing from account. They play games and will not fulfill requests to transfer out account. IB not a safe place to hold funds and likely to go bankrupt as banking crisis unfolds.

I am a sophisticated trader with 40+ years of experience. I never write online reviews. But the attention to the customer of this company is so abysmal, I had to post. Today, I could not trade because my account got coded as though I reside in Japan (I have never been to Japan). After waiting on hold for 40 minutes, the guy tells me "yes, our tech team is working on this and all customers are affected." Is there not one thinking person at this company that would have thought to send customers an email or text message proactively stating this fact? These people that manage this company are total idiots when it comes to addressing the customer. The rare times I have had to use the client support message center, I get back a half-baked explanation - after 5 days. Unless the other features offered by this company are really important to you, I suggest you go elsewhere as their customer focus is non-existent.

Please away from this company! 1. I can guarantee that their trading platform would be the worst you ever encountered on earth. 2. They claim they have low margin rate, but they would sell your stock at lost without notifying you, on day 2 when you use your margin. Unlike other companies, they gave you 3 days to deposit more fund into your account. They simply assume you are poor and they do whatever they want to take your money.

Just like every other dumb schmuck out there, I was attracted by the low margin rates, but it's been almost FOUR WEEKS SINCE I FUNDED MY ACCOUNT AND IBKR WILL NOT DISPENSE THE FUNDS I WANT TO WITHDRAW. This is NOT a margin loan. It's settled cash in my account. WTH? They just keep sending me notices that I need to confirm "activity" and "changes made" - and when I call them they simply ask the same questions over and over (name, DOB, citizenship, "do you REALLY intend to take out this amount?", "what do you need this money for?" - WHAAAAAA???? You have the GALL to ask me what I want MY MONEY for??? This is the clown-show feature at amateur hour. I am going back to Vanguard PROMPTLY after IBKR GIVES MY MONEY TO ME.

I passed the General Principal's Exam decades ago - this gives me the ability to open up my own brokerage. I've written investment articles in 12 countries. The OTHER REVIEWS ARE NOT LYING. This the worst trading site and perhaps the worst and least user friendly site ever. I was dummy attracted by the low margin rates as I am investing more than a million dollars here. It's not worth it. Today it took 1 hr 21 min to reset my password. Each day there is a new problem.

They claim they paid my dividend to my account. But the statements they issue are so confusing there is no way to tell. There is no obvious way to determine if you have received dividends in your account. Do NOT use this company!!!!

My business opened a Business Brokerage account with Interactive Brokers and ended up closing it within the first year. We don't have experience with their desktop app having preferred to work through their website, however I found the website to be an absolute maze to the point that I couldn't use it to submit trades, which is its primary function. When I attempted to call customer service I would always receive the same error message, that service in English was unavailable at this time. Needless to say this is a very perplexing error to receive for a US based company. I would not recommend this company for Investment Brokerage services, especially if you run a small business.

I got stopped out 185 pips on top of my stop loss for holding my trade over the weekend. They said it was due to low liquidity and they pride themselves to be tight in the spread with good liquidity. A check with the other 5 major FX brokers all does not have their prices even come close to my stop loss. BTW, this is not the first time I face a liquidity issue with IB.

Placed a limit order for a credit spread on 3-11-2021 for 1.5 credit. It executed at a debit of 0.10. This time it was small loss but when it happened with bigger orders with thousands in loss, I had called customer service only to end up with absolutely rude person who won't let me complete my sentence and hung up. You would think he is having PMS. I would love to attach a picture here but don't see that option.

Worst brokerage I've ever used. Closed my account within the first 3 weeks. The customer service is absolutely useless. TWS can be slow sometimes. Orders don't even fill as well as people claim. Stay away if you can or if you have other options.

I have to spend some time to write this review about IBKR platforms to save peoples' time who are looking for brokers. I have used this broker for a couple of years, its platform is just a piece of garbage, one bug follows another bug, never end, also the same bug keeps emerging. The error message "logged in without data" comes daily, which prevents you to put any orders. If you like to have headaches, try this platform, otherwise keep away as far as possible.

I've called several times over the course of several months and have been on the phone with them for over 30 minutes each session with no solution. I still cannot access my account. The last time I called I had to toggle between the app and website to try to fix my pw problem.?? This has gone on months. Still can't access my account.

Because of my net worth and annual income, the amounts are "greater than most people your age," I have waited almost 3 weeks for approval. - Two (2) days ago I got a message saying, "Your application has been received"? (After 3 weeks?) So I cancelled my application yesterday. Today I got a message that my application had been denied?? Then attempting to recover funds deposited with application, has been 2 hours of hoops, hurdles and talking to agents. When I finally got to my acct and asked for a withdrawal, I got the message "Because you have used your one free withdrawal for the month, you will be charged an ACH fee." My God, how do these people get/keep customers???

Contacted them 4 times to get tax documents because I can't get logged into my closed account which they keep telling me I should be able to do for the purpose of getting the tax documents. They keep telling me it's been sent and still nothing. Also before closing account it was extremely difficult to get my money that was there, it took over an hour on the phone and two different people to try and figure it out. They would NOT work with the new firm that was given permission to handle everything dealing with transfers. Oh and the reason for moving the money is they started charging a monthly fee.

I was a client of Interactive Brokers (IB) for over 15 years until recently. My experience with them had generally been good - granted, all I was doing with them was a moderate amount of trading of stocks and options, so I didn't need to interact with their customer service. Once I needed them to do something, the trouble began.

I have the same issues as the previous reviewer. You never know when you may or may not have made a trade... System logs you out without telling you or changing format so it LOOKS like you are still logged in. Absolutely terrifying and tear your hair out level frustrating. The TWS platform is ghastly and the customer online portal is 100% unreliable for even the simplest transaction. They took away their dedicated legacy webtrader a few months ago and it has been a disaster ever since. Moving everything out of there ASAP. AVOID AT ALL COSTS.

Dishonest, unethical, terrible customer service. I have been trying to get issue with its system since last summer. Every time I jump through one of their hoops, they set up another one. Today, I spoke with a condescending person who identified herself as "Joe" by randomly called to at about 19 times who informed every time to me that their old manager Brian will contact me and last week said by another Brian the old Brian is NOT manager anymore (fired??) and new manager Sue will contact us. NEVER again as expected!! More detail example in next reviews.

Absolutely horrible trading platform. And trying to talk to a customer service rep, yeah, right... Not gonna happen. Their website constantly kicks me out of being able to trade with the system saying that I already have a session opened (when I have not opened ANY other windows or browsers, just literally clicked on the open trade to go close it). Please avoid this company at all costs until they figure out that they are supposed to be providing services of value to their clients.

They are known for being cheap but almost everything else about them is awful. One advantage they have is that they integrate with Global Auto Trading to allow for automatic trading based on some popular investment newsletters. But everything else is so much harder than it needs to be. Everything from site navigation to transferring funds to getting customer service all are woefully lacking. I spent 5 minutes just looking for my account number, for example. Want to get real-time quotes on basic stocks? Good luck finding how to do that. And on and on and on...

Unhelpful and confused staff, really long waiting times to get through and then when I cancelled the process, held my initial deposit funds hostage with and unending stream if issues. For a simple custody account to migrate a 7 figure portfolio the amount of information was intrusive and not needed by any other platform. Appalling service, thank God I didn’t move substantial funds to this broker, I hate to see how poor their customer service is when a real problem presents itself. Bunch of pirates, stay away.