Questrade

Avoid this company like the plague. I have had endless problems with my RRSP account including a withholding tax issue on which Questrade was blatantly wrong. I’ve lost countless hours having to manually fix issues which would never crop up with any other broker. I will be transferring my investments as soon as I have the energy to undergo yet another painful process with this useless company. The worst.

I do not understand the complaints from other users. I opened my account in 2011 and use the IQ Web platform. It took a while, had to send even a photograph of myself. But then everything worked smoothly. I am not a day trader, but had usually several trades per year. No inactivity fee if portfolio is over a minimum amount. Exceptionally low transaction costs — max. $ 10; I never paid more. The original software was a pain and required two logins with different passwords. But this has been changed to one login only. All facts about past transactions, incl, dividends received are still there — good to know for tax purposes. I would have liked a bit more advice in preparing my tax report. At the beginning of the year (about Feb/​March) you can download your tax receipts to do your tax report. It includes only the dividends received! Capital gains and losses are not reported, only the proceeds from sales. You have to go to your account to find the purchase price of each stock sold during the past year. For this you have to go back to find out in which year you bought it.

After reading everyone’s reviews I should put in my mine.
First, I got what I wanted which was $ 4.95 to $ 9.95 per trade. How this is calculated is 1 cent per share but a minimum of $ 4.95 to a maximum of $ 9.95. If for whatever reason your trade cost exceeds this then it’s probably the type of security that you are trading. Also for cost to be covered when transferring over from another broker, you need to give them a big enough account for them to justify the cost because what’s stop you from just transferring over to get the promotion and then bounce to another offer at a different broker?
So a lot of these reviews that I’m reading are people who don’t read the guidelines and have small account sizes and expect the world.
I’ve been with questrade for about 4 — 5 years, love die mobile platform for stocks and options trading. Cost of trading is on the low side compared with the major banks. Their web base platform is great for quick analysis and placing trade however not good for chatting and day trading, use their actual computer base platform.
Once you get the hang of using your back office to request for service like withdrawals, changing accounts, opening accounts, etc. then you would save a ton of time by calling not having to call in for some of the simpler things. People this is 2015 and you need to learn how to be self sufficient.

Trying to withdraw money from my accounts there has been a very frustrating process. Extremely unsatisfied with their customer service.

Junk. Finally, help desk sends me an email saying they will get back to me in 1 – 2 days, 3 days after I sent them an email. Still waiting for my deposit to go through which was like 4 days ago. Can only use my mobile to check balances, desktop application is 1 day behind. For what it’s worth, I will take the hit $ 4 a trade hit to use a company that works. Lesson learned. Should have read the reviews before signing up.

BEWARE of Questrade!
Just want to warn people about this horrible platform. I’ve had numerous bad experiences with them over the past few years but have let it go until now. Today was the last straw. I currently own one stock. Last week I received a margin call and fulfilled it by depositing $ 8,000. A few days later, I received another margin call telling me $X amt was due today at 1PM EST. I was at a medical appointment today when they called me around noon and sent an email saying that I was in a real time margin call. As soon I got to my car (less than 5 minutes), I called. I spoke with someone and explained that I was on the road and he put me on hold and then came back and confirmed that they would give me until 1pm EST. I ran home and made a transfer for $ 5,230 immediately, responding to the most recent margin call email with a screen shot of the transfer as required. As I always do, I called them immediately as well to ensure that it was received and things were okay. I spoke with «JOBBY» and he assured me not to worry, that it would be fine. He began discussing something else, and then right there as I was on the phone with him (after talking with him for approx. 15 min), I see that a large portion of my shares are liquidated. I told him this and he said «Oh no, that can’t be right.» After telling me he would look into it, I receive an email shortly after apologizing for the inconvenience. They cost me almost $ 5,000 and they are sorry for my inconvenience. I called and spoke to management «MAMADOC», and was on the phone for an hour and a half and again was told «Sorry» and that the margin call time frame is simply a courtesy and does not have to be adhered to.
This is unacceptable. My wife and I have been clients for a few years and always adhere to all procedures. I want to ensure that Questrade loses from this by letting all prospective clients know that this is how the company is run. And any current clients– be extra cautious, or I would advise, as I will be doing — move your money as soon as you can.
If I could give it a 0 I would. Not even deserving of one star.

It’s been more than a week trying to set up an account. All steps have been approved and still my account is no where in sight. I have called their help line about a 5 times over the past 2 weeks.
I was quite patient waiting over a week due to the reviews of «you get what you pay» however, I did not know they operate at a snail’s pace. It takes more than 2+ weeks to get up and running (mind you the account had been long approved). The line «It will be ready by tomorrow morning» seemed to be thrown out to me like it actually meant something.
Garbage service. I will be taking my money elsewhere. The advice of «you get what you pay» holds true. Avoid this company like the plague.

I have to agree, the customer service is terrible. They are slow to respond, and extremely frustrating to deal with. Also, they tend to issue tax forms late, and/​or with errors. Some of my 2012 T3s were issued in June. Many 2013 tax slips have been issued late and many have errors. With all the amendments and cancellations of T3s and T5s, coupled with the lack of backup showing where the income came from, figuring out my taxes is a real nightmare.
Also, be careful with the low commissions. With ECN fees etc, I’ve had a few trades cost close to $ 20.00, where the same trade at my bank’s discount broker would have cost $ 9.95.

After about a year of use I can see why Questrade has such low fees. They have horrible customer service and a really crappy system. On multiple occasions the site said an order of mine went through and I later discovered that it had not. A missed opportunity is painful but believing you closed a position on the decline when you actually haven’t is inexcusable. I’ve closed my accounts and will go back to using my regular financial institutions.

I agree with the comments that Questrade has very poor service.
I have opened an account with them recently and my mom has as well, and both times it has been a nightmare. Every customer service representative gives you different information and they are not very helpful. I recently had an issue that could have been solved quickly by another broker (I have 2 other accounts with different brokers) and after speaking to the customer service rep on live chat for over 25mins, it still wasn’t resolved. I guess people, including myself, will put up with this because of the low commission and it’s very disappointing.

Opening an account was easy. Moving my funds from my previous broker to QT was also easy.
Then I actually had to call their client service staff for a transfer request. They kept giggling me around for 3 weeks, every staff members kept telling me a very different story on why my accounts are not active and where my funds are. They all promised to call back at the end of the day but they never did.
Till this moment my issue wasn’t fixed and i truly regret giving them my business. I think other mature brokers (not giving recommendations) are worth the extra pennies per trade

Even though the commission is very low, the service is awful.
I was charged $ 30.00 for some platform that I never asked to subscribed to. Then when I asked them why I was charged this, they commented that I asked for this service.
I don’t use Level 2 quotes, which is what the charge was for.
I would not recommend this. I would rather pay higher commissions than deal with these incompetent people.
If you use choose to use them, check your balances every day, otherwise you’ll probably get some charges you’ve never agreed to.

Questrade is cheap. But you get what you pay for. Their service is no good — seldom or never do they answer your questions — their website is unreliable as hell, the platform is confusing, and both signing up and signing in is a pain in the ass. Also they’ve recently added inactivity fees. Would not recommend them.

My original review was written when all I had done was deposit money and make some trades, now that I have had the misfortune of dealing with Questrade’s customer service staff, as well as having had the audacity to attempt to make a withdrawal, my view has changed drastically.
QT is the classic business where every CSR tells you something different and none of it appears to be correct (that’s once you wait on the phone for half an hour to speak to one of them of course). They also have an online chat, which works like MSN, but also takes forever because they verify your identity one message at a time and each new message is sent and received at a painstakingly slow pace.
Most offensive is that I have been trying to get my money out of my account for over a month now and still do not have it (despite numerous hours devoted to calls, e-​mails and chats). Basically if you want to trade on the cheap and have no interest in actually being able to withdraw your money, QT is for you. I also agree with Edwin’s comment about the accounting being slow/​unreliable.

I have to agree with some of the previous reviews. The commissions are pretty low and the actual platform is actually pretty easy to use. They do have tools for more advanced investors that are a little more pricey. But for the money, you really can’t go wrong with a simple trading platform like QuestTrade’s.
I think they were also voted as one of the top brokers in Canada at some point. I remember seeing that survey on Globe and Mail.
Anyhow, worth a try.

it’s a discount broker and the commissions for stocks are low but the accounting and service here has not been reliable nor expedient.