Traders Court 2022

[AsstModerator]

Traders Court 2022​

The FPA Traders Court has undergone several major changes over the years. Each change was an attempt to make the system work better and to reduce or eliminate existing problems. This is the change for 2022.

In order of priority, the main goals of the FPA's Traders Court system are...

1. Helping traders and companies get issues resolved fairly whenever possible.

2. Providing larger exposure to unresolved problems in the forums and reviews. A major part of this involves increasing the weight assigned to qualified reviews. This lets the ratings of companies that refuse to properly address issues fall faster than if the rating was based on evenly weighted reviews.

3. For the most outrageous and egregious scams with solid evidence and multiple complaints, a vote can be held regarding a Scam label.


Here are the new rules for Traders Court

Some of these rules date back many years. Some are new. I want to put them all in one place.

0. Stop and think for a moment. If a company promises to process withdrawals instantly, that doesn't mean that the withdrawal will reach your account instantly. Check the fine print and see if it includes estimates of how long it can take for money to arrive. If you buy a digital product from a small company on Friday afternoon, it might not be emailed to you until Monday. Try to contact a company and ask what's going on before yelling Scam and starting the whole Trader's Court process. A large amount of the time, this is all you have to do to get a problem resolved.

1. Start a Thread. If you feel you have been scammed by any financial company and have not already opened a Scam Alerts thread about the issue previously, open a thread and share the details about what happened.

Don't forget to mention the name of the company.

Screenshots are nice too. When posting evidence, edit out any of your private information first. Recovery room scammers regularly check the FPA's forums hoping to find new victims. Don't post your contact info publicly and click the Report Abuse button on any post or private conversation message from any recent member with few or no posts who tries to give you their contact info or asks for yours privately.

If your thread ends up in moderation don't panic. Those are usually approved in 1 business day.

If you are some sort of IB, affiliate, or have any financial relationship with the company or any of its competitors other than as a client, you should disclose that in the first post of your thread. If you forget, put that information in the thread as soon as possible.

One person having One issue with One company needs ONE thread. If you can't find your thread, make sure you are logged in. You should see your name in the green bad above this post. Click your name and select "Your content" to find your most recent posts.

Oh, and PLEASE DON'T TYPE IN ALL CAPS. OtHeRwIsE yOuR pOsT mAy Be EdItEd To LoOk LiKe THiS.

If you are still trying to figure out how to get Scam Alerts thread started, look for this button...



Inside this folder....

https://www.forexpeacearmy.com/community/forums/scam-alerts.30/


2. The Review (if you are qualified). If you have no financial relationship with the company or any of its competitors other than as a client, please submit a review. There is no need to put a link to your forums thread in the review. The FPA has a slow, annoying, manual way of putting that link in for you. Give enough details so that readers of the review page won't need to visit your Scam Alerts thread to get a general idea of what happened.

If you DO have a financial relationship with the company or any of its competitors other than as a client, DO NOT submit a review. That extra financial relationship is a conflict of interest. IBs and affiliates can't leave positive or negative reviews.

If you submit a review and it's not approved within 5 business days, go read this page...

Hey Dude, Where's My Review?

The page explains most review rejections. If the page doesn't explain it, fill out the form on the page. Someone will reply to you.


3. Edit the Company Invitation in your thread. As soon as you create the the thread, you can edit the invitation. Edit does not equal send. Only you and a few people who work at the FPA can see what is in your invitation. If there is an account number, make sure to enter it accurately if you want the company to take the invitation seriously. Enter the company email addresses carefully. If you send with the wrong email address, your invitation might not reach the company.

Save your work when you are done editing.


4. Send the company invitation. A newly created thread you just made one post in won't be able to send an invitation. Why? A lot of issues are resolved in a day or two. Also, FPA members may have faster solutions for some cases. Instead, before the Send Invitation is available, 2 things MUST happen.

First, you must make a second post in the thread. Second, the thread must be at least 4 days old. Until both of these conditions are met, you can't send the invitation. Once the conditions are met, you can press the Invite Company button.

If you have trouble with the company invitation process. CLICK HERE for a more detailed tutorial on how it works.


5. Keep your thread up to date. Check it every day or two for questions or new posts. If you find more evidence, post it. Remember to not post your private information when sharing evidence. Answer any new questions and add information about new developments.


6. Resolve Your Thread (hopefully). If you get all the money owed to you, report that in your thread and declare the issue to be resolved. Remember that resolved means RESOLVED. Do not say your issue is resolved in your thread or in a followup review unless you have received all money you and the company agreed to. If you are pressured to lie about having all your money when you haven't received it, use this form to let the FPA know first. Otherwise, if you say "I got my money." I'm going to believe you. If you come back later and try to say something about not having gotten all your money, you'll have no credibility.

With a few exceptions, resolved threads are moved to the Resolved Issues folder.

If you have a completely new and unrelated complaint to a resolved thread, you may open a new thread. If you aren't sure, ask first.

If you attempt to open a new thread about a resolved issue, your new thread will be deleted or merged into your resolved thread. If you continue trying to do this, your ability to open Scam Alerts threads will be removed. This is not something the FPA "did to you." This is what happens when you falsely declare your issue to be resolved.


7. Reply to Company Reps and Answer Questions. Remember that Abandoned means ABANDONED. Please don't bump your thread every day just for the sake of bumping it, but don't disappear either. If you make no replies for more than a week after an FPA members ask questions or a company representative posts a reply in your thread, your thread may end up labeled as Abandoned or Unsupported.

Replying while refusing to answer questions from FPA staff, senior FPA members, or company representatives will get your thread marked as Unsupported. Saying "I don't know" is often reasonable. Refusing to answer is not. You don't even have to say "I refuse to answer." All you have to do is reply without answering unanswered questions directed at you. In some cases, posts end up in moderation, so questions you didn't see may later appear in front of a new reply. Because of this, if you are active in your thread, action won't be taken until you ignore a question or very similar question twice.

Abandoned and Unsupported threads get moved to the Resolved Issues folder.

Once your thread is abandoned or resolved or moved to the Resolved Issues folder for any other reason, you may not open a new thread for the same issue. The FPA didn't "do this to you." You either walked away from your complaint thread or refused to answer questions in it, so it was closed.

Resolution, abandonment, and failing to support your case by not answering questions is detailed more in the Resolved Issues Rules.


8. Multis are Forbidden. There is one exemption. In a small number of cases, with my advanced permission, a multi may be allowed. In these cases, the multi is not permitted to leave an extra review for a company or to open a second Scam Alerts thread. Since I know who all the few approved multis are, I can watch to make sure no one decides to cheat. Without my explicit permission in advance, one person gets one account.

If you forget your username or password, CLICK HERE and let the FPA know. Someone here will attempt to restore access. If not, at least provide the names of any companies you may have previously posted about.

As of today, if I see anyone using a multi to open an additional Scam Alerts thread, "helping" in an existing Scam Alerts thread the same person created or posted in, or leaving a second review for the same company, I won't waste time asking for an explanation. Instead, all the related accounts will be permanently banned. Any Scam Alerts threads started by multis will be labeled as Complaint by Multies and will be moved to the Resolved Issues folder.

In cases like this, the FPA is not favoring the company you are complaining about. The FPA is working hard to keep the process as fair as possible and cannot support people who don't want to act honestly.


9. The FPA Wants to Help You, But Isn't Your Servant. Demands for instant scam findings and votes will get a link to this thread. Continued demands like that will result in any linked review losing weight instead of gaining weight. If you turn your thread into non-stop demands for the FPA to take action, your thread will be closed and moved to Resolved Issues.

The FPA can't help you while you are fighting against the FPA.


10. Don't Waste Time on Conspiracy Theories. Demands containing anti-FPA conspiracy theories are a waste of time. My staff and I are set up to not see banner advertisements by default. Most of the time I find out that a company is advertising because someone says something like "You are favoring that broker because they advertise. If you don't declare that broker to be a scam now, you've just proven the FPA to be a scam."

The FPA doesn't have time to address the lasted variation on conspiracy claims multiple times this week. If you are just nervous the FPA might have gone over to the dark side, read THIS and THIS and THIS. If the only way I can convince you the FPA isn't evil and corrupt is to obey your demands to throw out all the rules designed to ensure fair play, then there's nothing I or anyone else here can do for you. The FPA can't help you by breaking its own rules. The FPA can't help you while fighting with you. If you use attacking the FPA as a method to try to get more attention in your Scam Alerts thread, your thread will be moved to the appropriate folder and any TC related extra weight on your review will be removed. If you push the boundaries of civilized behavior too far, you will be banned and all reviews you have left will be removed.

The FPA didn't "do this to you." You decided to demand help from the FPA while also trying to actively fight against the FPA. The rules exist for a reason. Open your own site to help scam victims and see how long until some people decide to waste your time fighting you, your site, and your site's rules.


11. There is a time limit for opening your thread if you want it to really count. If someone scammed you a long time ago and you didn't post about it at the FPA, you can open a thread. Just don't expect your review to gain weight or your issue to be counted towards any Scam label vote. The deadline is 9 months from the incident happening. Getting evidence on old issues isn't easy and the idea of Traders Court is to try to get issues resolved while everyone still remembers what happened.


Some General Advice

Research a company before giving them your money. Don't blindly believe a claim of being regulated. Take a few minutes to look it up on the regulator's website. If the regulator makes it hard to look up companies, email the regulator and ask.

If a company looks like an obvious scam or even seems risky, don't give them your money.

If you start doing business with a company, save all emails and attachments they send. Download copies of their Terms and Conditons. If it's a multinational company, make sure you know which branch you are dealing with before sending any money.

Don't wait until you have a disagreement to run a statement on your trading account. Instead, run a full statement every week or two and make sure the comments are visible. If you and the broker get into an argument and they lock you out, you just lost access to critical evidence about what happened. Always run a full statement before filing a withdrawal request. Always run a full statement before starting an argument over any issue with your broker.

If you aren't sure how to get MT4 or MT5 to give you a trading statement THIS ARTICLE will guide you through the process.

 

[AsstModerator]

Why is Traders Court Changing?​

The FPA Traders Court has undergone several major changes over the years. Each change was an attempt to make the system work better and to reduce or eliminate existing problems. This is the change for 2022.

The FPA has been doing 3 things that other review sites don't do.

1. Holding votes which can lead to Scam labels for companies.

2. Increase the weight of qualified reviews linked to old-style Traders Court threads and Scam Alerts threads. This starts small, but a review can become more "heavy" if a company refuses to reply or won't provide adequate evidence in a qualified thread. This lets the rating of companies that have these issues fall faster than they would based on evenly weighted reviews.

3. Helping traders and companies get issues resolved whenever possible. This can be a very time-consuming process. The FPA doesn't get paid for this, but is willing to put in the time and effort to try to make the world of forex a safer and fairer place for all involved.

Most people tend to focus on these 3 in the order presented. I believe this is backwards. I feel that helping resolve issues is the most important, closely followed by a weighted review system. The weighting speeds up the decline of a company's rating more rapidly if it gets many Traders Court complaints. Labeling a company with a low rating and a bunch of bad reviews as a scam isn't a bad thing, but it's not as important as the other two items.

Unlike many forums, the FPA also moves resolved complaints from Scam Alerts to the Resolved Issues folder. I also consider this to be important. Every company, no matter how good it is, will get complaints. How a company handles complaints is important information for those considering doing business with a company.


There have been several problems dating back to the earliest days of Scam Investigations and Traders Court.

1. Some people open threads, disappear, then come back months or years later. Some want to pick up where they left off. Others wonder why the FPA didn't visit the company they complained about and forcibly take the disputed cash.

Abandonment disqualifies a complaint permanently. You can't file a complaint in a real court and expect to walk off for an extended period of time and then resume or refile the complaint, but many people seem to think that they can wander in and out.

Using the FPA's paratrooper squad to raid broker offices to recover trader funds sounds like a great idea, but only the police and government regulators are allowed to do this. The FPA doesn't support illegal activities no matter what the motive. Committing a new crime to settle an old crime is how societies break down.

2. More than one person has declared a case as resolved, only to come back later and say promised payments were not made. In one such case, the original statements were "I have received my funds and no further complaints against them." and when asked to confirm "You mean to say your issue has been fully resolved, right?" replied "Yes. I received my profits." Later, he claimed that the agreement was to be paid some now and the rest over time and that he didn't specifically state that he had received all the promised payments yet. Resolved means Resolved will now be very strictly enforced.

3. Use of multis in complaints. This usually is one or more extra accounts popping up saying "I got scammed too!" in the reviews and forums. Multis are not permitted in general and using multis in this way is the main reason why. Even if you suspect the company slipped in fake positive reviews, this doesn't give you permission to do the same. I am trying to run a fair website, not a "pay the person complaining whether or not it's fair" website. Recently, a member who had been with the FPA for 4-5 years created several accounts to post for clients. I ended up digging back through all of the accounts and found multi after multi.

Then I was called unfair for defending a bad broker because I removed all of this person's reviews. Too bad. Once I saw how this person had broken the rules again and again for years, the only fair thing I could do was to remove every review left by all of this person's accounts. This even included complaint reviews against some proven scammers.

Other people forget their login credentials, make a new account and also somehow "forget" that their original account already left a review. The rule is One Person, One Vote. Those who violate this lose their right to vote. If you lose your login credentials, contact the FPA. Someone here can restore your old account or else can at least check to see what companies it already left reviews for.

4. Demands for instant Scam votes or instant Scam labels. The original FPA Scam Investigations took time. The original Traders Court cases took time. Since TC was implemented, it almost always took multiple cases before a Scam label was applied. Now, in part because of the time wasted on so many "make them scam now" demands, Scam labels will be reserved for the worst of the worst and need to be backed up by multiple cases with very good evidence.

5. Refusal to answer questions from FPA employees and senior FPA members in the thread. If you file a complaint with the police, a regulator, or a civil suit in a court, would you refuse to answer questions from the investigators or judge? How far do you think your case would get if you said "Evidence is a waste of time! Asking for evidence helps the scammer! Declare them to be guilty now!"?

If you are too impatient, you can always set up your own review site and label companies as scams the moment the first person says they have a complaint. Your site will call companies scams very fast, but will be completely unfair.

6. Spewing conspiracy theories if the FPA doesn't instantly obey the whim of the person who started the thread. Sometimes this even comes from someone who joined the thread later. How far do you think you would get in a legal proceeding if you accused the investigator of siding with the opposition because they wanted to follow a carefully established procedure? How about if you accused a judge of taking payoffs because the judge wanted to look at the evidence and make sure to follow the law before making a ruling?

All these useless accusations waste considerable time and effort. Every time I or a moderator has to add a reply to a thread, a note on a review, or reply to a PM or email from someone demanding the FPA ignore it's own rules about abandonment, abuse of forums and reviews with multis, demands for instant action, or responding to "You didn't OBEY me, so you must be working for THEM" conspiracy garbage takes time that can better be used somewhere else. There are only so many people working here, so the time stolen by those who want the FPA to be their personal slaves reduces time adjusting review weighting on other complaints. This HELPS bad companies. This stole time also means less time and effort is available to try to help resolve issues, which HURT other FPA members.


I've tried lesser policies, but the people who only care about their issue and don't care about rules, evidence, or even fairness to their fellow FPA members left me with no choice but to put firmer rules in place.

As of today, Traders Court votes will be reserved for only the most egregious cases of scam and fraud where the FPA has seen large amounts of evidence proving the company to be a direct threat to the bulk of its clients. Things like deposit-only brokers luring clients into kiss of death trades or demanding fake fees and then more fake fees to process a deposit would qualify, if we can get multiple clients with proof.

For smaller issues, weighting of reviews and relevant FPA alerts on review pages will be the primary way to convince a badly behaved company to treat clients more fairly. Issues including, but not limited to, slippage, execution delays, and disputes over bonus terms are almost always restricted to increasing weighting on reviews. Issues involving trades not on actual currency pairs will generally be given less weight. Good evidence helps increase weight. Failure to reply or failure to provide a reasonable reply by a company representative will increase weight.

 

[AsstModerator]

If anyone thinks I'm kidding, the ink was barely dry on this policy when someone decided to refuse to answer questions about his case. He thought accusing the FPA of supporting the broker would make me throw the rules out. When he realized I wasn't going to change the rules for him, he decided to get uncivilized.

He's been banned and dishonorably discharged. His thread is marked as Unsupported and is now in the Resolved Issues folder.

The FPA is here to help traders. The FPA can't help people who fight against the FPA. The FPA does not permit uncivilized and abusive behavior.