“I could not pass their tests to get answers, so they would not tell me my account code which is recorded on the statement as *****. I am now trying to transfer the account to Cofunds, but they are putting every obstacle in the way. They should have completed the transfer a month ago. They refused to receive letters from Cofunds, I had to send it myself!!”
“Platform runs fine until you want to close a binary trade at the last minute then, it runs ridiculously slowly or doesn't respond until it's too late, and surprise surprise your moneys gone. Have been trying for 2 minutes before closing time to close a binary trade but no response, until it's too late, yet all the charts/prices still working fine. Not hard to see what's going on....but how to prove it?”
“I didn't have a bad experience in purchasing items. Your survey e mail however, is another thing; having decided to fill it in I was surprised to find that it consisted of 46 questions most of which were intrusive. I appreciate your survey people have to put these things together to justify their fee but why it should be so long and why you expect customers to lay their bare for your statisticians their whole lives following the purchase of an item I don't know. Needless to say I never completed it.”
“They are NOT a customer focused company.
Here are a few examples
To be a good trader, money management is very important. IG have, since I joined increased the minimum bet size of trading from £0.50p to £1 per point (it may sound a little but it all adds up)
Now of late, they have increased the minimum bet size on the phone from £1 to £10 per point!
They have also recently increased margin requirement - you may argue that in the long term this reduces risk of loss to the customer, on the other hand one gets margin called earlier.
Calling to place a bet - has been at times a wait of over 5 minuets! YES 5 Minuets!
Although this amount of time is unusual, I found that the average time to answer the phone could exceed one minute. This is meant to be a firm which is traded on the FTSE250 !?
They do not provide options for a half a year ahead - why not?
Having said that they have an excellent platform and many good points which I am sure many others will point out.”
“Some of your spreads are horrendous, 200 points on Hungary, 36 points on China a50, 12 points when China open. The fact that I can pay in thousands, tens of thousands and you have no problem with that but the minute I try to take out £1 of winnings then I have to send all my bank statements, credit history to prove that my winnings aren't laundered money. The daily rollover "minimal!" Charge of £20+ adds up to thousands over a year. I am just starting out in the spread betting so look forward in the near future of enlightening anyone thinking about joining IG with more specific detail, including time delays in deals and skewed indexes/share prices.”
“The trading platform is not stable. In few occasions during peak hour, the system went down.
Also change in the order limit wasn't processed immediately.
Being a company for 40 years the level of service provided is not what I expected.”
“Just like any other rip off companies. It trading against the professionals. You can never win.
No matter what market does. the moment you take the trade it goes against you and you are immediately in a loosing trade, although all indicators and trend and market is going the direction you think it will go but as soon as you take a trade it always goes opposite direction. I never gained. I have been stupid. Be careful you are trading against the machine and professionals, Remember they invested millions in system not for some novice trades like me and you to win but that investment is for them to make money not for you and me.”
“Platform constantly crashes.
Recently when closing a trade, platform crashed and I lost money as a result.
Despite acknowledging the platform failure, IG staff refused to compensate me for the small loss.
Mobile app is very unstable on iOS”
“Large company with sound financial backing, a major league player in the leveraged markets of CFD's and Spreadbetting. Reasonable quick to pay out from clients accounts to their bank account. Very wide range of instruments to trade from FX, UK, USA and European equities, sectors, commodities etc. IG's standard charts are poor. You can pay extra (£35 month) for advanced charts that are a little better. If you trade regularly they will discount this. Clients must realise that if you use more than 50% of your account balance you run the risk of IG closing out your trades. By comparison City Index allows you to use up to 80% and FXCM almost all of your account. Platform reliability could be improved. Recently their platform for both CFD's an SB has fallen over being down for a few hours preventing clients from opening or closing trades. Their IT seems dated and rickety. Standard charts sometimes show prices differently to the open ticket prices although they sometimes warn you by displaying this on the chart. Just check before accepting the ticket price. There can sometimes be as much as 10 points difference. There data feed can be slow. I've compared IG's spot prices with live streaming prices and they can be up to 20 sec difference, this could be to you advantage or otherwise, you decide. Don't forget all of these SB and CFD companies are your counter parties, that is when you win they lose and vice versa. Read all of the Terms and Conditions before trading even though there up to 50 pages long. Don't overtrade, keep to your stategy. IG is basically a sound company but in my opinion their platform performance compared to their competition is poor.”
“Wide and uncompetitive spreads is the biggest negative. Don't imagine you'd change that!
Design of platform is the second biggest negative. Silly things like when the cursor is over the buy or sell, a window pops up that says 'buy' or 'sell' accordingly. Why would you need that? Lots of little things like this that suggest the person designing the platform is not a regular user.
The most negative design aspect to all the platforms, not just IG, is that the screen is full of information you don't need and cannot hide from view (space is at a premium and it's nice to see all info simultaneously). Apart from the charts what you need is just the ticker codes of say 100 instruments simultaneously on your screen (rather than IG's about 30). You don't need to be told that GSK is GlaxoSmithKline, that your list of instruments is a 'watchlist' (duh!) for example, waste of space and a distraction. The code should be bold and other than that just buy/sell boxes, the whole window taking up about 15mmx20mm rather than approx 2" X 3" minimum currently.
Countless other improvement could be made, would be happy to provide examples but don't imagine you'd make the changes.”
“Regarding Working Orders; had one order yesterday that was not filled because quote: "the order price was hit exactly and only for a very short time - this is the way these orders work and is normal."
Also, another order today was not filled - kept getting message about 'market rolling over - unavailable'.
Altogether, this has cost about 190 pips at present.”
“Charges are non-transparent. Linking the charging of holding short positions to the prevailing LIBOR rate being below 2.5% seems like a cynical attempt to benefit from being able to charge overnight holding of both short and long positions.
Mobile app is unreliable.”
“As a bigtime loser, there is definately not enough (any) coaching/advice re when trades are placed. I did an awful lot wrong in my previous trades and a little tap on the shoulder may have been useful. However, nothing arrived - save for requests to fill my account with more money. Left a bad taste.”
“There has been lot of execution problem. Need to improve a lot on that aspect . As winning customers are monitored and are on dealer referral which increases rejections in trade. Dealer intervention shouldn't be there as there is increase in number of rejections in trade.
Regards”
“When action in fx is going on you don't honour price, you have no personal contact , your stops haveno margin , fat profits for you .your rollover rates are a liberty think fca should know”
“Some smaller securities are not listed even though the underlying market exists
Trading is selectively halted on companies which have market moving news even though the underlying market is still active, and positions can only be closed and not opened.”
