yes, same, and I've got an answer cited aboveCan 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?
Please try to select the correct prefix when making a new thread in this folder.
Discuss is for general discussions of a financial company or issues related to companies.
Info is for things like "Has anyone heard of Company X?" or "Is Company X legit or not?"
Compare is for things like "Which of these 2 (or more) companies is best?"
Searching is for things like "Help me pick a broker" or "What's the best VPS out there for trading?"
Problem is for reporting an issue with a company. Please don't just scream "CompanyX is a scam!" It is much more useful to say "I can't withdraw my money from Company X" or "Company Y is not honoring their refund guarantee" in the subject line.
Keep Problem discussions civil and lay out the facts of your case. Your goal should be to get your problem resolved or reported to the regulators, not to see how many insults you can put into the thread.
More info coming soon.
yes, same, and I've got an answer cited aboveCan 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?
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.
COMPANY RESPONSE TO RECENT CLIENT CONCERNS ON ACCOUNTS AND EA TRADING
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.
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.
What do you mean?