IG have kicked me out and closed down my accounts…

[Guest Xammo]

I am not entirely sure which section is best to post this in but assume it comes under feedback of a sort...

I have been kicked out due (IG say) to having requested too much support… I have requested too much support and am not making them enough money so my accounts have been set to ‘closing only’ and I’ve basically been told to pack my stuff and leave with only hours notice after years of being with them

The story behind why this has happened…

Last week I experienced an issue with a live PRT strategy running on the USDJPY 5s TF where an order was opened then immediately closed (obviously at a loss) and another order opened all within 1-2 seconds of each other so I sent in a technical report

I received a near immediate response from IG asking for me to confirm the trades I was referring too which I did and was told they would send it onto PRT for further investigation

Two days ago I received an email from IG support containing a forwarded email from ITF the likes of which I have not seen before going into great detail with step by step logs and explanations of how each order had been placed with comments such as ‘This is not restricted to the 1s TF’ (the strategy was running on the 5s TF so they go that wrong) ‘I believe on this occasion the situation could have been prevented by IG’ – ‘This issue can happen on any timeframe’

It has since become apparent this was an internal email and sent to me by mistake I can only assume they do not want clients to know the reasons behind what is going on so will refrain from saying anything further but would encourage whoever is interested and ‘brave enough’ to find out to ask and insist on answers – I don’t really understand why they are hiding it

I carried on reading down through the email and read this;

Now from what i understood, this client is not a high value client for IG and maybe it would be just a matter of disabling ProOrder for this client? I believe it is up to you guys.

Hardly able to believe my eyes at this comment after being so happy at reading the rest of the email explaining in great detail how the issue was basically a known issue and it was not through any fault of my own that it had happened – why would they be saying something like that?!

Yesterday morning I received a call back to my unsuccessful call the evening before and we discussed at great length the contents of the email but the conversation kept coming back to the problem being it was me requesting too much support and not bringing in enough money to warrant such a level of support whilst consistently avoiding the point I was trying to focus on which was surely the more important fact is that it is a known (to IG/ITF not their clients) issue and was now clearly evident the very reason why I had been requesting ‘so much’ support!

The conversation ended with me being told the issues have been known about internally and ongoing for a very long time and were unlikely to be fixed for a very long time either so it was up to me if I wanted to carry on using the services as they were or to leave…

Half an hour later I received the following email and ongoing conversation

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Since our call this morning I have discussed this further internally at IG.

I would like to apologise again for the internal comments from ITF being sent to you, obviously this was not meant to have happened and understand if it caused further frustration.

That said I’m sure you can appreciate that IG have to take into account the value each client is generating in relation to the resources spent on them. We have provided significant assistance to yourself regarding ProOrder issues however it appears this support and ProOrder itself is not to your satisfaction or what you require.

Ultimately this is a business relationship and not one we are able to continue in the same manner. Hence we believe it is necessary to either disable ProOrder on both live and demo for your account or close your account with IG entirely.

Please confirm which option you prefer so I can action this on your account.

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That is absolutely shocking!

I simply cannot understand why you are doing this or why it is necessary what on earth is going on?

I do not want either of the given options is there anyone else at IG I can speak to about this please?

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These are the options in this case and there is no further discussion that can be had regarding this.

Please let me know which option you prefer.

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This is crazy why on earth are you kicking me out?!

If you just said there are known issues and I will have to deal with them then ok – you had said I can make my mind up what I want to do but now you are literally forcing me out without being able to speak to anyone else about this

What of my currently running strategies and open positions?

I am utterly dumbfounded you are doing this it seems extremely heavy handed and totally unfair

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The reasoning is in my initial email:

“That said I’m sure you can appreciate that IG have to take into account the value each client is generating in relation to the resources spent on them. We have provided significant assistance to yourself regarding ProOrder issues however it appears this support and ProOrder itself is not to your satisfaction or what you require.

Ultimately this is a business relationship and not one we are able to continue in the same manner. Hence we believe it is necessary to either disable ProOrder on both live and demo for your account or close your account with IG entirely.”

I’d like to remind you there is no legal obligation for IG to provide you an account with us.

If you do not decide on one of the options we will set your accounts to ‘Closings only’ at 16:00 today meaning you will only be able to close existing trades, not open new ones. You would then be free to close any open trades whenever you like however other than closing such positions the account will be considered closed from our side.

Closings only would block any strategy trying to open new trades so would likely be stopped after too many rejections. Therefore it could be worth manually stopping and closing associated positions if you do not want strategy to stop and close them.

Or you can choose option to have the positions remain open when strategy stops: Options > Trading options > AutoTrading > Position and order status after stop of systems (see attached). Then you could manually close them when you like.

I can see you only have 2 live ProOrder positions on Aus account in profit and a slight loss at time of this email.

Please let me know if you have further questions.

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I am stunned absolutely stunned

Do you have records of the amount of time I have taken re: issues?

How can you be blaming me for requesting support when it is evident due to the incorrectly sent email that it is your systems at fault?

And how is it possible that you are in a position to be making this decision please?

There must be other members of staff that are involved and I am requesting to be speak with them directly please

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I can offer you the correct procedures to make a complaint if you wish. Other than that there is no recourse for discussion.

It is a business decision, not mine. I have offered my input however multiple people and teams were involved in coming to this conclusion.

Also regarding case 9561 as this was confirmed to be wrong I can see a loss of £1.26 was incurred. Please confirm if you accept refund of this.

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Multiple people and teams?!

Good grief almighty what on earth is this all about?!

Seriously over the top and why the threats and rush to kick me out is that really all necessary?

Yes OK I will close up my positions and transfer out funds and close my accounts but will need a couple of hours please am not able to do so right at this moment

I have to say I am extremely upset at being treated like this and very sad at being forcibly made to leave IG

I am very happy with the IG platform and have praised it on a number of occasions and never had any complaints about it

Not in a million years would I have dreamt such shocking behaviour when I chose IG as my broker

I could understand if I had done something wrong but as you have clearly stated this decision has been made because the amount of support I have received (which I very much dispute is excessive) re: only PRT does not match the money IG makes from me so I am being forcibly kicked out with only a few hours notice to close all my positions pack my bags and leave

And to think I hold shares in IG too that as no doubt you are aware have taken a considerable nose dive due to recent events at IG only adds insult to injury

Despite this quite unbelievably shockingly poor behaviour I wish you all the very best and thank you for your support over the years

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I understand you are upset so please find avenues of making a complaint below.

You are able to raise a complaint directly to IG following the procedure outlined in the following link: https://www.ig.com/uk/complaints

I would also like to inform you of your right to refer the matter to the Financial Ombudsman Service (“FOS”) within 6 months. Please find a link to the consumer leaflet below, this explains how to raise a complaint to the FOS: http://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/publications/consumer-leaflet.htm

Thank you for the kind words.

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Thanks yes I have been referred there a number of times

Does this kind of thing happen often at IG then…? Clients getting kicked out like this I mean

Yes I am upset very upset more so than you will possibly ever imagine I have poured my life into PRT and IG over the last few years and now that is all being taken away from me in the blink of an eye and I am still too stunned for it to sink in properly and realise what it is I have actually done that is so wrong to have warranted such a thoroughly vicious and irrational response

I just cannot believe IG consider this to be acceptable or even civil behaviour

Anyway the fight must go on and perhaps one fine day I’ll be sitting on my fortune gained via another broker of course looking back and laughing at all this and quite possibly the demise of IG if this is how they intend to treat their clients – plenty of good shorting opportunities out there at the mo eh!

All the best

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Well there it is… I will leave you to make up your own minds as to what is really going on here but to say I am shocked at the way I have been treated is an understatement and despite being sad, angry and disappointed I guess it is with a very heavy heart I say ‘so long and thanks for all the issues…’ and best of luck to all the 95%’ers out there trying to make a buck – you’d have thought the odds were already stacked up against us high enough as it was…

[Exhale_Trading]

Hi Xammo,

I think you recognize my avatar, I was posting under the alias Despair on prorealcode. I'm feeling sorry for you having this problems but at the same time I'm not surprised.

The ProOrder-modul of PRT is not stable and has several (known to ITF) bugs that can (and will) cause financial damage to its users!

I have send countless mails (reports) to ITF regarding this bugs but they never came up with a solution and usually blamed the problems on first on my code and after I gave them permission to analyze my code they usually blamed it on IG. When I now read your post I'm amazed I was never asked to leave because requiring too much support. Maybe I was generating more turnover than you, so they thought "I'm worth the hassle", I don't know.

After I lost several thousand USD through this bugs and was refused compensation by ITF I stopped using PRT entirely and now run my strategies via IG's API. So far this works great and very stable. Taking PRT out of the equation eliminated the problems.

So for me it looks like ITF (PRT) is the problem and not IG. Did you ever consider trading via IG's API? If you leave IG, you will not be able to use PRT for your automated trading anyway since IG is the only broker offering auto trading with PRT as far as I know.