David versus TDWaterhouse

Online Stock Trades - Problems with TDWaterhouse Online Brokers

Problems with TDWaterhouse

Cheap Online Brokers - Are TDWaterhouse Any Good?

I don't often get angry. In fact that is one of my great faults, I am the most laid back guy you could ever find, so laid back in fact I often have difficulty making myself vertical in the morning ! But today I am absolutely livid ! Fuming, in fact, so much so that my blood pressure might suffer as a result ! Angry and very annoyed that I have been forced to spend many hours battling against a mixture of incompetence and bad faith.

TDWaterhouse have just written me the most arrogant and exasperating letter it has ever been my misfortune to read ! The reason I am angry ? TDWaterhouse's inability, or unwillingness, to accept a simple fact. They made a mistake !

Problems with TDWaterhouse

It is a long and complex story but please read it, as you may be able to help me in my battle against their generalized incompetence and/or lack of good faith.

The story starts late on a Friday afternoon back in September 2007 when I tried to place a sell order online using TDWaterhouse's realtime online trading system. Unfortunately, the sell order I tried to place, didn't go through, so I had to hold the stock over the weekend and sell on Monday. This resulted in a loss.

I shrugged my shoulders and told myself "oh well next time I'll need to be more careful" (or words to that effect). It was only a few days later that I realized that the reason the sell order didn't go through was not because I had made a mistake, but, it would appear, there had been a problem with the TDWaterhouse site (which I discovered but which TDWaterhouse refuse to accept) and if this problem had not existed then I would have closed my order and saved myself some money and co-incidentally a lot aggravation and worry.

When I realized what had, in fact, happened with the TDWaterhouse site I naturally, being a laid back sort of guy, wrote to them explaining the situation, in the naive belief that they would look at the facts objectively, and logically conclude, given the facts I placed before them, that yes indeed there had been a problem and that they were very sorry for the inconvenience caused and that they would therefore, as a gesture of goodwill without any admission of liability etc... etc... refund the money I had lost as a result of their apparent mistake, and that would be the end of the matter. They could have quietly fixed the problem that I had taken the effort to point out to them, nobody would have been any the wiser and we would all have lived happily ever after ! Unfortunately it seems that I read too many fairy tales as a kid ! And this happy scenario proved just a lot of wishful thinking on my part !

I have so far written to the TDWaterhouse Customer Service department three times, at length, clearly laying out the facts, yet each time my claims have been met with a mixture of incredulity, disbelief, insinuations, indifference and possibly even 'economy with the truth' (this last part is of course difficult to prove).

I have consistently provided them with documentary evidence of the error that appeared to exist in their system and they have consistently refused to accept that there was anything wrong with their software, preferring instead to impugn my motives.

A strange event took place, however, the apparent error that I brought to their attention and that they say never existed, has been miraculously corrected ! Allelujah ! A miracle ! It was corrected in fact at some time on or around 28th September - one week after my initial letter to them. How fortuitous ! Pure coincidence no doubt, the Lord does indeed work in myterious ways ! But TDWaterhouse continue to insist that there was nothing wrong with their system. As I asked them in my third letter 'If it wasn't broke, why did you fix it?' - they didn't bother to answer that one, I'm not even sure if they bothered to read it either.

They have refused to admit any error on their part and have also of course refused to make any refund. They blame me for not closing my open position and now tell me to get in touch with the Financial Ombudsman, which I shall do given their obstinate and ostrich-like refusal to accept the evidence placed before their eyes, no doubt in the belief that all they need to do is deny that something exists for it to not exist ! Reality however is not like that.

I demonstrated to them quite plainly that a + b = c but their argument is a + b = whatever we want it to equal, so if you're not happy take it up with the Ombudsman. [Update : I did take it up with the Ombudsman and I was not at all surprised to discover, this was a total waste of time, he basically asked TDWaterhouse if they had made a mistake and they said 'no your honour, certainly not'. He also informed me however that if there was a mistake with the TDWaterhouse software then he was not the person I should have contacted, I should have contacted the FSA instead. This may explain why TDWaterhouse invited me on more than one occasion to contact the Ombudsman, but never invited me to contact the FSA.]

As the sum of money involved is quite small (£1,000 or $2,000) I can only assume that they are refusing to accept that they were at fault as they fear this might leave them open to many more claims from other clients if the nature of the problem were to become public knowledge. At this point in time the money is no longer my primary concern, what I am concerned with is honesty and justice and discovering how many other people lost money at the same time as me. There may be many thousands of people who have lost money as a result of the same event that happened to me ! I trust that if there are, then I will be able to find some of them and alert as many people as possible to the situation.

I do not believe, given the nature of the problem I encountered, that I could have been the only one to have lost money, though I may be the only one so far who has discovered why my trade was rejected when it should have been accepted. If you have had problems with the TDWaterhouse online system you may need to check your order slips.

Before I reveal the exact nature of the problem encountered with their online trading system, I would like to invite other clients of TDWaterhouse to get in touch if they noticed anything odd about any trades they placed or tried to place online with TDWaterhouse up to and including the 27th September 2007, particularly online trades towards the close of play at 4.30 p.m., which were rejected when you thought they should have been accepted.

If you did encounter such problems, then please leave a message in the comments section below.
Some people may be of the belief that TDWaterhouse is a very large online stockbroking firm with an impeccable reputation and that surely their software is beyond reproach, infallible and beyond all possibility of error. The facts are not quite so rosy - please take a look at this article published in the New York Times describing how TDWaterhouse was fined $250,000 by the New York Stock Exchange -TDWaterhouse Fined for Online Trading Problems

Please leave comments and questions below, particularly if you noticed problems with trades up to and including 27th September 2007.

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