Canadian Online Brokerage Review – TD Direct Investing (TD Waterhouse)

[Mike]

I am extremely frustrated with TDWATERHOUSE ONLINE WEB BROKER, this company has been having constant problems with providing real time quotes, accounts are not up to date on daily bases, but that is not the only problem, there are no days or weeks that we do not have problem with this company logging in our accounts.

It is May 22 2013 all day I have tried to log in my account and I have not been able to do so, it has been on going problem for many years I do not know why I keep giving them chances, It is 45 mints and I am calling them trying to talk to someone to find out what is going on and yet no answer just hearing their goddamn on hold music. I have no idea how else I can express my frustration about TDWATER HOUSE ONLINE BROKAGE FIRM, My account number is xxxx [account number masked by site owner] I am putting my account number to prove this is not a lie message, I am going to leave this message all over internet to make people aware of it, I am very close to jump of my roof because of TDWATERHOSUE, I have lost enough money in this market and tdwaterhouse has added grief and frustration to it, there have been days and I was quite sure that the market is going to be on rise and I can recover my money but when I came to log in I noticed problem logging in my accounts so I have lost many chances and I blame TDWATERHOUSE, I am a day trader in this volatile market so every second counts, so if you are looking for a online broker TDWATERHOUSE is very wrong one, you buy yourself so much problem, good luck

[ED]

Today, after 30 minutes on phone hold, my wife had to leave and asked me to relay a message about her account, newly linked to TD-Waterhouse’s on line WeBroker. Simply put she just wanted to remind them that because of our high household assets across 6 accounts, that she was eligible for the lower, ($9.99), trading commission. When an agent answered 15 minutes later, (45 minutes in total on hold), she refused to discuss anything with me because I did not have authority to manage activities in my wife’s account. She just couldn’t get it through her head that I did not want to dabble in my wife’s account, but rather just wanted to relay a request to have TD-Waterhouse apply their commission rules to a relatively new account. Common sense, along with Elvis, has left the building at TD-Waterhouse.

[Ken YKeymaster]

As with several of its peers, earlier in 2014 TD Direct Investing lowered their standard commission pricing in this case to $9.99 per trade (flat). Th[See the full post at: https://www.sparxtrading.com/canadian-online-brokerage-review-td-direct-investing/]

• This topic was modified 4 years, 3 months ago by  Ken Y.

[Greg]

I have been a TD customer for decades and they have always held my mortgage and my LIRA from a previous job. I have moved my day to day banking to CIBC because the TD mobile app is horribly inadequate and hasn’t changed in years. I have recently started trading actively and the banking app is also the extent of their Canadian mobile offerings. After 2 weeks of fumbling with the desktop website on my iphone (the only way to place an options trade) I am ready to throw in the towel. I called them and asked if the superb ThinkOrSwim service from TD Ameritrade was available and was told no and they have no plans to change anything either. Overall a sad offering from Canada’s largest bank. If they had decent mobile access for options trading, and US$ trades I’d stick around. Virtual Brokers might be my next try, but it’s really difficult to find reviews of the apps outside the app store. Interactive offer a trial and the app looks great but they don’t do registered accounts. It would be great if you guys could do a hands on review of mobile platforms.

[Sparx_AdminKeymaster]

Thanks for your comment. Sorry to hear about the frustrating experience with mobile trading. We’ve actually covered a small sample of mobile platforms (which can be seen here.) and we’d love to do more! Mobile trading and platforms in particular are tricky to get right because technology moves much more quickly than many of the financial firms can keep up with. Different screen sizes, resolutions and form factors all play into the physical layouts. Start layering in the complexity of user experience, security, aesthetics and interoperability with other services (like banking) and it’s no easy feat to pull off let alone do well. While that is not an excuse, it does help explain why certain firms can make changes faster than others.

[Greg]

Thanks for the response, and you do bring up a lot of other factors that are at play beyond my simple observation that it just doesn’t work for me. Unfortunately TD have not even made an effort to improve, despite having suitable offerings on the other side of the border. Technology and it’s rapid change is certainly an obstacle, but the bank/broker with arguably the greatest resources at their disposal should be able to field something at least beyond mediocre. I have gleaned a lot of useful information from your site lately and appreciate the effort given in to it’s presentation as it will ultimately lead my decision on who to try next. I will share my observations when I cross that bridge.

[Sparx_AdminKeymaster]

Thanks for the kind comments (to us!). I think you’ve touched on a really interesting paradox of being ‘responsive’ and innovative and the size of the firm’s resources. For bigger firms, especially bank-owned brokerages, innovation is trickier because there are so many layers of complexity and administration to go through. Smaller firms can probably get the changes done faster but don’t always have the resources to debug or provide traditional service to step up when the technology changes. Change is a six-letter word that is often followed by/feels like a four-letter word for many financial firms. Going back to your original issue, seeking out a mobile platform that can help execute possible equity and options trading, Qtrade just released an iphone/ipad version of their mobile trading site that you might want to request a test drive of (we mentioned it in the most recent weekly roundup). Good luck on your hunt and we look forward to hearing how it all panned out. Feel free to drop the comment in our new community section also.

[brenda]

Td online trading site is always having issues. today is the last straw. no online trading available. Due to a technical issue, certain security symbols are currently unavailable for Order Entry and Real-Time Quotes in WebBroker and on our Mobile App.
Which means you cant trade anything online until they fix another issue, But you can phone in your orders if you have the time to wait on hold for 10+ mins.

[zipster]

What’s with the CONSTANT problems that TD Waterhouse online WebBroker has?
I believe they need to totally re-do their technology platform as it crashes so often… Today it is intolerable (see Brenda above). They should be ashamed of this terrible website. They either can not handle the volumes of trades they get or they have not maintained technology currency.
They also seem to think it’s ok to take the site down for upgrades. Wake up TD, this is a 24x7x365 world! We on the west coast especially do not appreciate being down as early as midnight! They don’t publish relevant service levels for incident management or technical currency and I wonder if they have them. Their phone-in Customer Service is generally very good but wait times are way too slow during these incidents. Their online customer satisfaction surveys are a joke – there is no opportunity to tell them what we really think – very slanted questions. We need excellent process management (incident, problem, change, customer satisfaction etc) for online brokers – TD you don’t got it!
TD – Get over telling us you are the Peoples’ Bank… you are NOT!

[Flo]

Wow, I’m surprised to see so many negative comments. I’ve been a TD customer for many many years and manage a sizable self directed portfolio in four separate accounts, as well as HELOCs and regular accounts. I’ve used other online brokerages and so have some real comparison. The research material on TD is exemplary. The integration with all my banking accounts is clear and convenient. The recent addition of the ‘performance’ functions in the trading accounts is awesome. Clear charts and numbers. The interface is superior to others I’ve used. My only request for enhancements would be within the portfolio manager.. (to allow me to import a .csv file with historical data) and that it is faster in it’s searches and results.

[Author]

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