Comments on: Questrade Announces Slightly Lower Trading Commissions

By: Four Pillars

Four Pillars — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 18:59:15 +0000

Telly – it’s like you are one of the family.

By: telly

telly — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 13:01:11 +0000

Thanks for considering me a part of the blog community.

By: NeverStopBuying.com

NeverStopBuying.com — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 00:52:23 +0000

moved out of QuestTrade here as well with $9.99 commission from TD Waterhouse

Not worth it to keep at QT, plus our margins got called without any time to transfer cash in
, and much easier to transfer within TD accounts

By: Four Pillars

Four Pillars — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 21:58:17 +0000

CC – I tend to agree with you. If you are getting $10/trade at your current broker and only trade infrequently then it’s probably not worth the move.

By: Canadian Capitalist

Canadian Capitalist — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 18:00:25 +0000

Mike: For some reason, I seem to have hit a number of mines at Questrade but others haven’t. Also, my decision to leave them should be seen in the context that I pay $9.99 at TD Waterhouse. A saving of $5 per trade (let’s say I do 10 trades a year) wasn’t worth the hassle for me.

If I was satisfied with Questrade, I would offer their referral program as well. But, I wasn’t and it didn’t seem right to me to offer referrals when I personally didn’t stay with them. Still, for someone starting out and doesn’t qualify for the $10 trades at the big banks, I’d certainly say Questrade is worth a look as it is possible to build a very low-cost portfolio of ETFs.

By: Four Pillars

Four Pillars — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 17:09:42 +0000

Cheap: Another problem is Questrade gets blogged about more than other discount brokerages because of their referral program so there is more opportunity for unhappy customers to voice their complaints.

From the blog community, I know that myself, Telly and Frugal Trader are all satisfied Questrade customers. Canadian Capitalist is not a satisfied customer.

By: Mr. Cheap

Mr. Cheap — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 16:44:16 +0000

Mike: Sounds like a great post, I’ll look forward to it. You’re totally right that its not a random sample of people who post about a product / company.

I came across an article which was the 10 worst banks. The idea was they did a google search on the banks name and complaint or something. So obviously bigger banks with more customers are going to have a higher (absolute) number of unhappy customers. The meaningful way to do it would be to look at the relative number of happy / unhappy customers.

By: Four Pillars

Four Pillars — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 16:12:03 +0000

Cheap – if you are not an active trader then it’s not going to make a huge difference.

Regarding reliability – I don’t want to sound like a shill for Questrade, but the reality is that people who do online opinions tend to either really like a product or really hate it. It’s very difficult to get a true sense of what a company’s product/service is like from online anecdotal evidence. I’m actually planning a post about this.

Mike

By: Nicolas

Nicolas — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 16:03:51 +0000

Mr. Cheap,

Maybe they are changing the price to save money and invest it in those “issues” *Sarcastic laugh*

FP, I think you got it right. It’s just simpler for them. But that’s a lot of publicity for not much.

By: Mr. Cheap

Mr. Cheap — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 14:55:29 +0000

I love the price of Questrade (I’m paying $20 / trade at E*Trade), but the reliability issues people have posted about scare me off a bit… It would have been nice if they could have fixed those instead of tweaking the price.