Only just joined, wanted to give my opinion on FX open AU.
I have a few large accounts with Pepperstone. As a broker you can’t get better, great support, no dropouts but terrible executions. I do about 20 to 40 trades a week and about 80% of them have some form of slippage. I trade the razor account, best spreads but so what!! You never get em. Spoken to support over the phone about this issue, and the usual spin is given, must’ve been some news, low liquidity at the time and blah blah blah. I mean really? You get slippage when the market is volatile and when it’s quiet, so when don’t you get slippage??
So, I thought I’m gonna try other brokers and see if I can get better executions. I called FX Open and spoke to Mr X (don’t wanna say his name, don’t wanna cause any trouble for him, but I can name him if it warrants it.) I told him about the slippage and he said, “That’s unacceptable, you won’t get that slippage with us, they must be adding a little to their spread. He said all the right things, so what the heck, I’ll open a small account (5k) and give em a go.
Opening an account and depositing was flawless. Support was always available and everything went very smoothly and quickly. The only problem I had was not being to able to log into my account via the link on the web page. Contacted support who gave me a different link and I was able to log in. There is some apparent problem logging in via FX Open AU and FX Open. Ok, no real drama I suppose, little did I know this was gonna be a tale of woes later.
After one week of trading, the slippage was the same if not worse. Contacted Mr X via phone and he remembered me and I told him about the slippage. He started the same spin, market volatility, low liquidity etc. Told him don’t wanna hear it. You said that this would not happen with FX Open and the only conclusion I can come up with is that you must also be adding to the spread, after all that’s what you said Pepperstone must be doing.
He then said it was a crazy week (even though it wasn’t, just a normal week in the forex market) and give it another week and you will see that it will be much better.
Ok, so I did, and the same sort of slippage occurred. I use a Robot and it places pending orders. One of my pending orders didn’t execute. I contacted support by phone and they couldn’t help me and said they would escalate the problem and find out why. I reported the problem on the 25 June 13 and didn’t get a reply till 28 June 13. Email below
#########################################################################################
Hello Don,
We have investigated why your order 152****** went to Order-Accepted but
did not trigger. This was a bug with the latest build of MT4 which
should be resolved with the next update on MT4 which should be out
soon. So there is no issue with your EA nor a liquidity issue. We
sincerely apologise for the inconvenience.
--
Regards,
*************
FXOpen AU Sales
FXOpen AU Pty Ltd
Level 26, 1 Bligh St, Sydney, NSW 2000
+61 2 8226 8629
FXOpen AU Pty Ltd is part of FXOpen Group
Authorised and regulated by the Australian Securities & Investments Commission
ABN 61 143 678 719 AFSL 412871
################################################################################################
They must be kidding right?? “SOON”, I mean really?? This issue should be fixed immediately; surely this didn’t only happen to me. To his credit though, I did have further correspondence with him, I asked what would happen if the trade would’ve made a profit ( it was a loser) and he said FX Open would honour any profits if this happens again. But I don’t need these sorts of hassles and anxieties. The next night it happened again, and that was enough for me. I decided to close the account. I might as well stay with Pepperstone at the moment. Why change?
I was promised much and FX open AU didn’t deliver. Can’t complain about their support, they were friendly, professional. My sample is not a big one, only two weeks, but never the less, it was my experience.
For those that don’t know, to fund your MT4 account with FX Open, you need to first deposit into your e wallet account that gets set up for you when you open an account. You then do a transfer from your e wallet into you MT4 account. This happens immediately so not such a hassle, but still one more step that I’ve never had to do with other brokers.
Now, to withdraw money, you need to also go through these steps. Transfer from MT4 into your e wallet account and then withdraw from e wallet to your bank account. But this is not as easy. I logged into my account via the link that support gave me and transferred my money from my MT4 account into my e wallet account. A message popped up saying that an email has been sent to you and that I need to click the link in the email to verify the transfer.
I got the email and clicked the link and I was given a log in page. I tried to log in and of course the same problem occurred, I couldn’t log in via this link. I contacted support via chat and it was hopeless. They didn’t know what I was talking about, they can log in no problem, you should be able to log in ok etc. I said well I can’t and after 40 mins or so I just gave up. I contacted support the next day and the same music started. I finally got someone that helped me and I don’t know what he did but I was finally able to log in via the email link and confirm the transfer. I then got a message saying it would take up to 48 hours and that my request has been sent to the finance department and that I was on a queue.
I contacted support via chat and asked them why is transferring from e wallet to MT4 immediate and instant and transferring from MT4 to e wallet not so easy. After a few lame reasons, they finally said it is for security checks. I then said, “So when I transfer from e wallet to MT4 there are no security checks? They didn’t like that question and basically said, “just accept it, that’s the way it’s done.”
The transfer was done in about an hour and not 48 hours, so that was good. I then filled out a withdrawal form and another email with a link to confirm was sent. You can imagine the anxiety I had when I tried to log in, but alas I logged in ok. Another message saying it could take up to 48 hours but the withdrawal happened the same night and the money was in my bank the next day.
So all in all, I can’t say they are terrible, but obviously nothing special. Don’t understand why they make promises they can’t keep. Were they hoping I wouldn’t notice? If you want traders from other brokers, then when someone decides to give you a go, you have to be better than your competitors or they’re not going to change.
I haven’t lost anything, but they’ve lost a good client that does a lot of trading and pays a lot of commissions that was prepared to change brokers.