Live Chat disabled?

I can’t imagine how t212 could correctly “staff” for the current events we are experiencing, if hundreds of people want an answer to “why can’t I sell or buy” and fill the forum up with posts like “I’ve lost millions in the last second” and then they don’t need to contact t212 support for the rest of the year. Where does that leave all the staff brought in by t212 to answer a question that could have been asked by one person?
It would be handy if everyone could post a fault in one place on the forum in a concise manner and then the t212 team could view it and correct each persons problem rather than all of them going on support at the same time as bashing the forum and then saying “they’re understaffed”

There’s alway one isn’t there !?

If you think waiting more than a week for a serious query ( not your frivolous example) and closing Live Chat is acceptable then I guess you live in a different world to me

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Well, they could have a professional approach and put out a communication explaining what is happening, why and when they
plan to have things fixed.

What surprises me is not the issues, it’s the complete radio silence we get from them.

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What was your query?

The only trouble they’re in is scaling to support 800,000 users up from 200,000 a year ago (so I read), seems like a good problem to have. I expect they’ll get there. The trading problems earlier in the week were the fault of IB - a larger fee-charging broker so go figure. I had a share purchase delayed for 2 hours on Tuesday but as I’m investing with a time horizon of months or years this is insignificant.

I find it hard to believe that the day-traders whinging on the forums all had such great positions if only 212 were quicker. I wonder if they’ve even read the T&C stating there should be a minimum of 5 minutes before closing a position. The transaction volume from traders closing orders within minutes must be quite a burden on the system and I think it would be better to have a modest charge for this kind of trading.

I’ve had a reply to an email request this morning which took two working days which is fairly standard turnaround time for a lot of support businesses and they did this at a time where they were obviously very busy :wink: so I’m happy with that service. They actually answered my question which wasn’t straight-forward with intelligence rather than the bog-standard brush-off’s common with a lot of customer support from other businesses.

Overall the service, cost and interface is vastly superior to my experience with a previous broker (AJ Bell). I can’t wait for them to launch a SIPP product. @Team212

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Luckily I was not impacted by the issues yesterday (I realised how big the spreads were before trading), however, I saw spreads increases unlike anything I’ve seen on other platforms.
Like you I’m a long term trader, however, with such large spreads it becomes harder to find a good entry point.
Yesterday I wanted to buy Trade Desk, if I had proceeded I would have opened the trade with a 15% loss. I didn’t trade so no issues, however, if a 15% spread is the new norm then I’m gonna have to change provider.

Also, the real issue is in regards to their comms - yesterday people experienced something unusual and just needed to be reassured that everything was under control - it’s that easy - you put out a statement as to why the spreads are so high, what customers can expect going forward and if any issues you provide an ETA. That’s what professionalism looks like.
The statement that there were extreme conditions doesn’t really hold water when other providers are not showing any signs of such extreme conditions.

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Yep this. Just more proactive customer support a clear simple statement acknowledging the issue, and also another clear one explaining it once its been sorted.

Add in sorting out the un cancellable pending orders and it wouldn’t be an issue.

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I always check the spread before trading. Though yesterday the spread widened as I was in an active trade. I was shorting a position and as the stock was dropping, the spread widened keeping me in the red. Actually for a while, the more the stock dropped, the more red my position got rather than green!

That is crazy. On top of it then, other users having issues where they couldn’t close trades (literally the button didn’t work), or orders stuck on pending and not being able to cancel them. Lots of fundamental stuff here being done incorrectly.

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I totally agree with you Ciaran,
When I realised how big the spread was I decided no to trade, however the worst part was also how “unstable” the spread was.
At some stage the spread had gone back to a more reasonable amount but it kept changing way too fast and in big jumps. I just decided it was too “dangerous” to trade.

I don’t use stop losses and I was in no need to close trades so I just took a day off, but I do understand that what happened yesterday might have impacted people quite a bit.

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No query? Just find it strange how everyone has overloaded both the forum and the live chat and then wonders why it won’t work or claims they are understaffed, no business can plan for an overload

Yeah agree, I meant it for @perrigaux though… Stupid replies.

I’ve had HL and Fidelity down more than 212, or at least its been more noticeable to me.

Quick small trades peak times a recipe for disaster

Likewise, my main goal yesterday was to close as many open trades as possible and not open any new ones. I’m going to wait and see how this all pans out as I do like the T212 platform (when it works!) It’s just a shame that daily customers will lose faith in the service.

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May be change the title of the post! :slight_smile:

We use their services free? That’s lies. Nothing in this world is free.

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You clearly did not read my further comment

I did, but I replied to that one as I read it first.

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This is the actual problem that has caused so much anger for T212 users. The lack of communication. They could have pushed an official notification via the app and let us know that these are unprecedented market conditions and some measures have to be taken. They issued a notification on FCA change to cryptocurrency orders and the USA holiday calendar. Why are they not using the notification more to let users know: changes to the platform, changes to the spreads, changes to … they only need one person to issue notification. That person would do more good that 100 people working in customer support.

In the end they are making money from their users (one way or another) so keeping the users engaged and happy should be a priority. Because if enough users decide the platform is not stable and withdrawn all their finances form the platform than we all loose.

T212 has been an ok broker that has always tried to add new features and develop their product (unlike most other platforms). It would be a shame if users loose confidence now just because of lack of communication/support/transparency

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@dragosMLT I respect your point here, and I agree that we could include more details in the in-app notification, so we can avoid confusion. Yet, a couple of points to consider (not trying to find an excuse, instead - I’m sharing the situation from our perspective):

  • the main point was that trading with the instruments would be suspended;
  • we had to act promptly, given the circumstances and the rapid change of the market conditions;
  • we provided all details possible in the different community threads, along with a statement issued in our HelpCentre.

Nonetheless, as mentioned - point taken.

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I agree communication has been poor, particularly given that there have been a number of different (though possibly inter-related (if not directly connected) issues) ie:

  • technical problems with connection to IBKR systems
  • market instability which is making prices volatile, which in turn has made spreads larger as it is much more difficult to hedge and also increased costs for swap rates

The later problem has a much bigger impact on CFDs but isn’t that part of the risk/reward ie you are trading highly leveraged financial instruments which rely on the CFD provider being able to cover exposure (rather than a direct link to the stock that the CFD is based upon)?

Where spreads are massive then people have the option not to trade, where I have much more sympathy is widening spreads and increasing swap rates for already open positions - I doubt there is anything illegal and short term it may protect T212 from exposure but long term I guess it will drive CFD customers to other providers.

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