Note: this is an affiliate program which means that any time someone signs up for this offer, I will potentially receive monetary compensation in the future. I’ll explain my thoughts on why I accepted participation in this affiliation below…
If you do just a bit of searching on the web you’ll find lots of useful reviews on the various discount brokerages available to Canadians. You’ll find no such thing here, but only because I haven’t used them all (or even visited their sites to really check them out).
I can tell you that I personally use Questrade for my discount brokerage accounts and my decision was based purely on the fee schedule. There are no account fees, and equity trades are as little as $4.95 and no more than $9.95. If you buy US listed securities in your RRSP there are no forced currency conversions (and corresponding forex drag) and so on and so forth. For me, the price was right. I had read some of the blogs which reviewed Questrade and noticed a few complaints here and there – enough that I opened my account with my eyes open and on the lookout. I haven’t had any issues so far with Questrade.
However, to recognize that others have had some issues in the past, when Questrade contacted me to see if I wanted to participate in their affiliate program I told them that I would consider it only if they provided me with the contact details of a senior client support person that I could contact if any of my readers signed up and had problems they couldn’t reasonably have sorted out when contacting the regular client service personnel at Questrade.
So if you have recently been thinking about switching discount brokers, or are looking to open your first discount brokerage account, you might want to look into Questrade. They are offering $50 in free trades for new accounts through this offer.
Click here if you are interested in signing up.
For a bit of a primer on Questrade’s services you can visit this page.
Personally, I’m not happy with Questrade. Their customer service is one of the worst. Also, I tried to withdraw money a couple of times from my brokerage account. One time, it works just fine; the other time, they rejected my request.
@1st – sorry to hear that. Did you finally get things resolved? Or did you switch to another brokerage?
I just decided to switch to another broker.
@1st – well, all I can say is that every transaction I’ve had has been smooth, been using them for over a year now, but always double check my transactions as I would with anyone.
Hi Preet:
Have been using Questrade for a couple of years now and have a lot of money with them. I find their customer service severely lacking in regards to unannounced site changes and dealing with the CSRs (who try their best but will not connect you to someone with authority).
I notice that you made an agreement with them to provide the contact details of a senior client support person that you or them could contact if any of your readers signed up and had problems they couldn’t reasonably have sorted out when contacting the regular client service personnel at Questrade.
The unnannounced changes are particularly frustrating because something that previously worked (intraday chart for the TSX as an example – has happened twice now) all of a sudden doesn’t work anymore. Another change was the width of the Symbol column was greatly increased and now one has to scroll over to see the right hand columns and then the Symbol column disappears …… this didn’t used to be a problem.
In regards to all of the above, could you please provide me with the contact information for the senior client support person. It would be greatly appreciated. Am really trying to find someone in the organization that will listen to customer feedback and suggestions for improvement.
Many thanks in advance.
Regards ………. Don Nelson
Terrible service, do not save just $5 fee for all these headarc, but do check out that it is not straight $4.99, there are some tricks if you were charged more.
QuesTrade is a terrible company. A couple of years ago they REFUSED to unlock a locked in RRSP for me, because they did not know about the rule that if the balance of the account was below a specified threshold – about $18,000 as I recall – it can be deregistered. First they denied that this was true,a nd when I provided three different sorts of proof, they tried to block me by saying that I had the wrong kind of account. Further probing revealed that all that was necessary was to convert the registration of the account to another kind of account, and then deregister it. Then they tried to block me because the account was $100 above the threshold. I simply made a bad trade to lower the value. In all of this their attitude was oppositional and obstructionist – their obviously did not want me to deregister this account, presumably because they see these funds as a source of revenue for them. Their customer service attitude was us first, you the customer second. The coup de gras was that when I finally did deregister my funds and try to arrange to have them wired to my bank account, the woman asked me to complete a survey about why I was doing this, and when I refused, she informed me that Questrade WOULD NOT RELEASE MY FUNDS UNTIL I COMPLETED THE SURVEY – something I am sure is completely illegal. It’s true, Questrade is cheap. Expect to get what you pay for, especially in the area of customer service.