Interactive brokers is awful. I missed out on so many great plays because their options strike prices always go blank. Not only do they go blank restricting you from making a great trade. If they go blank on you when you're in a position you are straight sexed. Sometimes they go blank for 5-10 mins. If you're in position it doesn't let you exit when it's blank. Think about how much damage could be caused to your account when you look for a heavy sized 45 second scalp, and you can't get out for 10 mins .... Ya. This happened to me several times. I have filed for a compensation but who knows if I'll get it. Either way, I'm done with interactive poopers. Just thinking about them makes my blood boil. They will steal your money without hesitation. Also, not sure where they get their customer service reps. Every time you go in a live chat the representative gets dumber and dumber every time. You may as well talk to the closest wall, at least the wall can't give you a stupid response in return. AWFUL DO NOT SIGN UP WITH THEM YOU WILL HAVE A HEART ATTACK

Website is next to useless. Can't access tax reports. Very unhelpful when ring them up. Tell you to ring a number that doesn't exist. Was locked out and they wont reset my password. Terrible to deal with.

WORST WORST WORST broker/system/platform. Do not use Interactive Brokers if you can avoid it/don't have to! Maybe its cool if you really need all their products or different if you have have boatloads of money and maybe they actually look after you - but if you're a smaller investor then essentially they tell you to SUCK IT and deal with their nonsense. (I had about AUD40k securities with them at one point plus a bunch of cash cos of their stupid rules and it was STILL AWFUL). So you can just trust me or read my highlights [lowlights] of all the terrible parts that make up the whole of the mess that is IB. NB: I only needed to trade Australian and US equities (wanted to do bonds but never got around to it), and manage my cash. I was required to use them because of compliance requirements at my previous firm, but I have finally been able to escape the hell-hole that is IB due to a change of firm. 1. Their systems (both on app and web platform) are horrendous - security is so tight (cool sure, to a certain degree, but it's really overdone!!!) you have to log in multiple times, use a phone token etc etc and half the time it just logs you out anyway or crashes. Functionality goes down often, its not intuitive, things are really hard to find, its slow. 2. Sure they have a low cost-per-trade and other low fees/costs and you can trade bonds or whatever, but you pay for it in other ways. If you have less than AUD20k just sitting in your cash acct and aren't trading actively (also your money is not earning interest because why would IB ever actually do anything to help you), they charge you a monthly fee - at my current savings acct interest rate which is one of the best, if not the best rate in the market, it would take me nearly 4 months just to earn back the monthly fee I pay. If you withdraw cash more than once a month, boom you get a charge. Even when I was finally able to escape from them, BOOM AUD55 charge just so my new broker could do all the work processing the transfer, and IB sit back and collect AUD55. Then they mysteriously take another AUD16 out my account for no reason, before I can shut down my account. Even depositing money in is a two-step, slow, archiac nightmare. They even once liquidated a portion of one of my share positions because my cash funds were running low (I didn't realise at this time THEY CHARGED YOU JUST FOR THE PRIVILEGE OF KEEPING YOUR CASH WITH THEM), which then got me in trouble with compliance because I didn't have pre-approval to sell the share - IB just went ahead and made the decision for me anyway and I got a trade confo after the fact! 3. Getting any sort of help from them is incredibly frustrating. Calling in - you are on hold for ages and the people are pretty much all useless and never do what you ask anyway, or you get transferred to someone else and they still can't help. If you chat with them online you get generic 'computer says no' answers or you get told to raise a web ticket, where you get another 'computer says no' answer and nothing really ever gets resolved properly (maybe half the time, in a semi-efficient manner?). Then when you finally get a response on a web ticket, they don't email you, oh no, nothing every gets sent right to your email, you have to log back into their rubbish app or platform and go to the stupid message inbox, by which time (most of the time) the system either breaks or you have to do YET ANOTHER LOG IN ! Wow. I could go on but I think you get the picture. AVOID AVOID AVOID IB! Try someone else first. Or try IB first, waste your time and money, and then move to another broker :) It will save you your sanity!

I've been trying to get my money back been over 10 days decided to call and they told me I needed a photo ID. I believe they required this when I set my account up. Had I not called I would never had known. Plain and simple they suck stay away. If they had zero stars I would have given it to them

Good commissions, average trade platform, but chaotic margin handling and extremely poor and bad customer service. Bay far the worst CS. Inexpert and bounder. Rarely receive specific answer to my questions, usually 1 sentence or a copy+paste bullpoo. Getting fed up with them.