Problem Vantagefx Account Suspended - Profit and DEPOSIT FREEZED for 90 DAYS

[musketeer]

Can you confirm us about the right email where to send the complaints? I used this one (as written above here, in my previous post): "complaint.info@financial-ombudsman.org.uk", is it the right one?

yes, same, and I've got an answer cited above

 

[Elio Matacena]

My update:

On April, the 6th, I have sent to complaint.info@financial-ombudsman.org.uk (and Cc: Vantage FX <support@vantagefx.co.uk>; Robert Berkeley <robert.berkeley@vantagefx.co.uk>; 'Tess Nicholson' <tess.nicholson@vantagefx.co.uk>; help@timesplus.co.uk; newseditor@independent.co.uk; talkback@the-sun.co.uk), this email:

---
Dear Mrs. / Mr.,

good evening. As you have requested me, here you have – attached – your compliant form, filled and signed.

Waiting for your news, I send my
Best regards,
Elio A. Matacena.
---

Attaching the compliant filled and signed.

Today (thursday 11/04/2013, 15:16) the answered me, from Customer Contact <customer.contact@financial-ombudsman.org.uk>, with:

---
Your complaint
Thank you for contacting us. We will reply as soon as possible – but within two weeks.
If you need to get in touch before then, please use your reference, 13819423.
Yours sincerely

Kurtis Say | CCD (Admin) | Financial Ombudsman Service | Tel No. 020 7093 5500 | Fax: 020 7093 5501 South Quay Plaza, 183 Marsh Wall, E14 9SR
---

So, I have to wait for some news.

I hope this is helpful.

Best regards.
EM

 

[Pharaoh]

The FOS shared a phone number. You may be able to call for updates.

 

[Vantage FX]

COMPANY RESPONSE TO RECENT CLIENT CONCERNS ON ACCOUNTS AND EA TRADING

We at Vantage FX are aware of the grievances and aired concerns of our traders and have been in the process of addressing these accounts individually, also undertaking further investigations of external third parties.
On the 20th March, 2013, following a request from our liquidity providers a small number of traders had their accounts temporarily suspended pending investigations into suspicious trading and in particular, usage of internet and connectivity delays in order to take advantage of arbitrage on Trading Systems. The suspension was in accordance to our terms and conditions for Margin FX and was necessary so as not to potentially contravene with our Licences from regulatory bodies. Full terms and conditions can be accessed here: https://www.vantagefx.com/about-us/legal-documents/

A formal correspondence via email was sent out to individual traders informing them, that the investigation may take up to 90 days and their accounts would be held within this time. Fortunately, this was not the case. All accounts were unfrozen after only 7 days and all accounts have been freed with no limits on trading or withdrawal.

During the week suspension, the frozen accounts were reviewed and confirmed as having used an illegitimate automated trading robot, also referred to as an Expert Advisor (EA), executing trades with the following characteristics:
• Causing systematic manipulation or abuse of markets
• Interfering with the markets efficiency and integrity
• Exploiting mispricing
• Operating in Breach of our Terms & Conditions 14.1, 14.2, 23.1.1 and 23.1.4

The offending EA which had produced these illegitimate trades was BTN Lightning. BTN Lightning (BTN Lightning - The ultimate Forex service > newHome) promote themselves as a “news trading” EA, despite not actually working as so. BTN Lightning EAs target latency arbitrage. Latency arbitrage takes advantage of delays in the price feed and hence, an incorrect price. News trading EAs work upon the release of economic news reports focusing on short-term movements in the market as a whole, not mispriced feeds.

Such mispriced latencies occurred for Vantage FX during some minimal server down times. We have addressed these server issues by expanding our existing Equinix servers redirecting client feeds to those servers closer to them. The server downtimes came at the peak of our client growth and trading activities greatly attributed a sudden quadrupling growth in Binary Options, online and mobile trading.

We at Vantage FX do welcome all the types of methods, trading strategies and EAs that are not in breach of our terms and conditions, namely that of latency arbitrage trading.

All of the trades executed by this EA have been cancelled and the associated profit and loss have been adjusted accordingly. Some traders have mentioned that only profits were cancelled whilst losses were left alone – this is untrue. All trades executed by this automated trading robot were reversed. Manual trades were not and commissions collected by BTN cannot be reclaimed by us.

We are currently in the process of compiling research and evidence against BTN. We are aware that other brokers have also undertaken investigations and suspensions in light of BTN Lightning trades. Within their original promotions and reviews, BTN recommended Vantage FX as the preferred broker for use with their EA (without our knowledge). Vantage FX has attempted to locate BTN to make contact on behalf of affected clients.

BTN has now locked out some traders’ accounts and removed all contact details off their website. According to many websites and forums, many users are knowingly trading with BTN despite its suspicious practices - with some even encouraging secrecy and sharing of the EA. This is knowingly trading against the terms and conditions traders have agreed to not only with us but with nearly all brokers. BTN have told some of our clients that they will be refunded the commissions from BTN but have yet to have seen anything. This also goes as a fair warning to traders to be wary of handing over their trading account details to any sort of system that appears ‘too-good-to-be-true’.

We apologise for the delay it took in identifying the offending system and only took action once we were positively sure of the issue at hand. If any traders have any further concerns, contact us directly. We are more than happy to provide any trader with their transaction record, along with audit numbers, for every trade calculated in this adjustment. You may request this record or ask any questions related to your account by emailing us at support@vantagefx.com.

 

[chitak]

COMPANY RESPONSE TO RECENT CLIENT CONCERNS ON ACCOUNTS AND EA TRADING

We at Vantage FX are aware of the grievances and aired concerns of our traders and have been in the process of addressing these accounts individually, also undertaking further investigations of external third parties.
On the 20th March, 2013, following a request from our liquidity providers a small number of traders had their accounts temporarily suspended pending investigations into suspicious trading and in particular, usage of internet and connectivity delays in order to take advantage of arbitrage on Trading Systems. The suspension was in accordance to our terms and conditions for Margin FX and was necessary so as not to potentially contravene with our Licences from regulatory bodies. Full terms and conditions can be accessed here: https://www.vantagefx.com/about-us/legal-documents/

A formal correspondence via email was sent out to individual traders informing them, that the investigation may take up to 90 days and their accounts would be held within this time. Fortunately, this was not the case. All accounts were unfrozen after only 7 days and all accounts have been freed with no limits on trading or withdrawal.

During the week suspension, the frozen accounts were reviewed and confirmed as having used an illegitimate automated trading robot, also referred to as an Expert Advisor (EA), executing trades with the following characteristics:
• Causing systematic manipulation or abuse of markets
• Interfering with the markets efficiency and integrity
• Exploiting mispricing
• Operating in Breach of our Terms & Conditions 14.1, 14.2, 23.1.1 and 23.1.4

The offending EA which had produced these illegitimate trades was BTN Lightning. BTN Lightning (BTN Lightning - The ultimate Forex service > newHome) promote themselves as a “news trading” EA, despite not actually working as so. BTN Lightning EAs target latency arbitrage. Latency arbitrage takes advantage of delays in the price feed and hence, an incorrect price. News trading EAs work upon the release of economic news reports focusing on short-term movements in the market as a whole, not mispriced feeds.

Such mispriced latencies occurred for Vantage FX during some minimal server down times. We have addressed these server issues by expanding our existing Equinix servers redirecting client feeds to those servers closer to them. The server downtimes came at the peak of our client growth and trading activities greatly attributed a sudden quadrupling growth in Binary Options, online and mobile trading.

We at Vantage FX do welcome all the types of methods, trading strategies and EAs that are not in breach of our terms and conditions, namely that of latency arbitrage trading.

All of the trades executed by this EA have been cancelled and the associated profit and loss have been adjusted accordingly. Some traders have mentioned that only profits were cancelled whilst losses were left alone – this is untrue. All trades executed by this automated trading robot were reversed. Manual trades were not and commissions collected by BTN cannot be reclaimed by us.

We are currently in the process of compiling research and evidence against BTN. We are aware that other brokers have also undertaken investigations and suspensions in light of BTN Lightning trades. Within their original promotions and reviews, BTN recommended Vantage FX as the preferred broker for use with their EA (without our knowledge). Vantage FX has attempted to locate BTN to make contact on behalf of affected clients.

BTN has now locked out some traders’ accounts and removed all contact details off their website. According to many websites and forums, many users are knowingly trading with BTN despite its suspicious practices - with some even encouraging secrecy and sharing of the EA. This is knowingly trading against the terms and conditions traders have agreed to not only with us but with nearly all brokers. BTN have told some of our clients that they will be refunded the commissions from BTN but have yet to have seen anything. This also goes as a fair warning to traders to be wary of handing over their trading account details to any sort of system that appears ‘too-good-to-be-true’.

We apologise for the delay it took in identifying the offending system and only took action once we were positively sure of the issue at hand. If any traders have any further concerns, contact us directly. We are more than happy to provide any trader with their transaction record, along with audit numbers, for every trade calculated in this adjustment. You may request this record or ask any questions related to your account by emailing us at support@vantagefx.com.

I would like to quickly respond here as I've had profits cancelled on me by Vantage as well as GO.

I don't buy this at all. I personally don't know what "BTN Lightning - The ultimate Forex service" is, and my profits were cancelled. I think this might have something to do with my VPS maybe being in a data center with other accounts, perhaps they used an IP address to identify accounts. But I bet a data center hosts thousands even 10s of thousands VPSs. If you tell me a bit more about how you decide who has used "offending systems" maybe I can show you how my system is different. Maybe it is very similar I don't know, all I know is I trade the news using software to get me in as quick as possible before the price spikes up/down.

I did use a news trading software to trade right around news, and this could potentially be seen as arbitrage, as generally my software gets me in really fast before the price has moved. A liquidity provider could see this as latency arbitrage in hindsight, however I make the decisions when to trade and I also take a large risk as sometimes price goes against me and I lose.

The issue I have with Vantage and GO regarding this whole thing, is cancelling very old trades. A broker or a liquidity provider can't just go around cancelling trades, there needs to be a sense of security in knowing trades that are older than 1-2 days(even 1-2 weeks for argument's sake) are considered safe, and can't be reversed. Common sense dictates that if there was an error it will be caught in time, and generally 1-2 days is enough of a time period to discover such errors, if you didn't catch the "error", well too bad you can't do anything about it. Telling your clients that they've been abusing your price feed and taking advantage of price errors going back months is just a hard thing to prove , and I'm sure regulators will side with the trades when it comes to it.

You come and tell me I've used such and such software so we're taking all your profits away. Hold on, I have no idea what this software is that you're talking about, I use a newstrading software called Oracle trader and I've built an EA to to help me manage multiple accounts when the oracle sends the clicks for buy/sell over to the broker, what software or and EA I use is none of anybody's business, but I have nothing to hide.

 

[blackrose]

COMPANY RESPONSE TO RECENT CLIENT CONCERNS ON ACCOUNTS AND EA TRADING

Your statement is a joke! Nothing has been 'proved'! Go on, please!

 

[Pharaoh]

We've got at least one person who says he didn't use BTN.

We've got trades cancelled days back, weeks back, and even many months back.

This keeps looking worse and worse to me.

 

[victoryforex]

We've got at least one person who says he didn't use BTN.

We've got trades cancelled days back, weeks back, and even many months back.

This keeps looking worse and worse to me.

What do you mean?

 

[bodgybrothers]

COMPANY RESPONSE TO RECENT CLIENT CONCERNS ON ACCOUNTS AND EA TRADING

We at Vantage FX are aware of the grievances and aired concerns of our traders and have been in the process of addressing these accounts individually, also undertaking further investigations of external third parties.
On the 20th March, 2013, following a request from our liquidity providers a small number of traders had their accounts temporarily suspended pending investigations into suspicious trading and in particular, usage of internet and connectivity delays in order to take advantage of arbitrage on Trading Systems. The suspension was in accordance to our terms and conditions for Margin FX and was necessary so as not to potentially contravene with our Licences from regulatory bodies. Full terms and conditions can be accessed here: https://www.vantagefx.com/about-us/legal-documents/

A formal correspondence via email was sent out to individual traders informing them, that the investigation may take up to 90 days and their accounts would be held within this time. Fortunately, this was not the case. All accounts were unfrozen after only 7 days and all accounts have been freed with no limits on trading or withdrawal.

During the week suspension, the frozen accounts were reviewed and confirmed as having used an illegitimate automated trading robot, also referred to as an Expert Advisor (EA), executing trades with the following characteristics:
• Causing systematic manipulation or abuse of markets
• Interfering with the markets efficiency and integrity
• Exploiting mispricing
• Operating in Breach of our Terms & Conditions 14.1, 14.2, 23.1.1 and 23.1.4

The offending EA which had produced these illegitimate trades was BTN Lightning. BTN Lightning (BTN Lightning - The ultimate Forex service > newHome) promote themselves as a “news trading” EA, despite not actually working as so. BTN Lightning EAs target latency arbitrage. Latency arbitrage takes advantage of delays in the price feed and hence, an incorrect price. News trading EAs work upon the release of economic news reports focusing on short-term movements in the market as a whole, not mispriced feeds.

Such mispriced latencies occurred for Vantage FX during some minimal server down times. We have addressed these server issues by expanding our existing Equinix servers redirecting client feeds to those servers closer to them. The server downtimes came at the peak of our client growth and trading activities greatly attributed a sudden quadrupling growth in Binary Options, online and mobile trading.

We at Vantage FX do welcome all the types of methods, trading strategies and EAs that are not in breach of our terms and conditions, namely that of latency arbitrage trading.

All of the trades executed by this EA have been cancelled and the associated profit and loss have been adjusted accordingly. Some traders have mentioned that only profits were cancelled whilst losses were left alone – this is untrue. All trades executed by this automated trading robot were reversed. Manual trades were not and commissions collected by BTN cannot be reclaimed by us.

We are currently in the process of compiling research and evidence against BTN. We are aware that other brokers have also undertaken investigations and suspensions in light of BTN Lightning trades. Within their original promotions and reviews, BTN recommended Vantage FX as the preferred broker for use with their EA (without our knowledge). Vantage FX has attempted to locate BTN to make contact on behalf of affected clients.

BTN has now locked out some traders’ accounts and removed all contact details off their website. According to many websites and forums, many users are knowingly trading with BTN despite its suspicious practices - with some even encouraging secrecy and sharing of the EA. This is knowingly trading against the terms and conditions traders have agreed to not only with us but with nearly all brokers. BTN have told some of our clients that they will be refunded the commissions from BTN but have yet to have seen anything. This also goes as a fair warning to traders to be wary of handing over their trading account details to any sort of system that appears ‘too-good-to-be-true’.

We apologise for the delay it took in identifying the offending system and only took action once we were positively sure of the issue at hand. If any traders have any further concerns, contact us directly. We are more than happy to provide any trader with their transaction record, along with audit numbers, for every trade calculated in this adjustment. You may request this record or ask any questions related to your account by emailing us at support@vantagefx.com.

I'm interested in why it matters if someone uses a bot of any kind. If you are a legitimate provider, why are your prices wrong to start with? if a bot trades it trades at the market price, right? I don't get why people are punished because of a system that works. How can something use an arbitrary unless your prices are so very wrong?

I also want answers to this problem on the Binary platform. Why is it waiting for the next signal and disallowing the trade if it moves in the customers direction? But it only happens after the account made lots of money (which you eventually pulled out because of some liquidity provider excuse. )
Enfinium Scam after you win big they cut off your ability to trade! - YouTube

It seems Vantage has a conflict of interest and is betting against their customers. About time to stop playing games with peoples money because we will fight this to the end.

 

[Pharaoh]

What do you mean?

I mean that it looks like vantageFx and GoMarkets both look more and more guilty of deliberately grabbing money that belongs to traders.