eToro — Forex Broker

I have an issue with retail fx / etoro.com. One of my trades was closed due to system error in August 2011. I contacted etoro support and my problem was saved in etoro CRM system with Case ID 28, 106. I asked them to investigate what happened with my trade and to compensate me for the loss. So far my problem hasn't been resolved. The problem is in communication with etoro. I have an account manager, who is supposed to be my point of contact at etoro. However, my account manager does no reply to my emails, nor is it possible to reach him by phone. I sent him several reminders about my case and tried to call him many times. As I couldn't reach my account manager, later I contected eToro live support. They promised to investigate my case and they insisted my account manager would contact me back. I contacted eToro support regarding this 4 or 5 times and I always got the same answer. But no one contacted me back from etoro. I also sent a complaint to info@retailfx.com several weeks ago, but it also stayed unreplied. Etoro platform is easy to use, but once you get into trouble, you are left alone.

I like his trading platform. Very easy for understanding. But I must to say this company is fully scam. I deposited 1000 EUR and made 1300 EUR on my account. After that they blocked my account. I spoke with livesupport and with manager of my account and they can not say me nothing for 7 days. Just wait. So be patient with this company.

Etoro has disconnect problems that has never been fixed in all the time I have been with them.

etoro invariably blaimes it on the user's connection but it's hard to accept such an explanation

when at the exact same time, I can maintain a problem free connection to my Go Markets account.

Most notable, the error mostly appears when trying to access the login page that has only two text boxes,

one for the user name and the other the password. If your server needs monster bandwith just for that

then it's obvious that something is seriously wrong with the etoro page. The more correct and likely

problem is that you simply have a server that is not up to the workload and haS been that way for months.

9:56 PM failed to login and had a screen with 'Error connecting to platform. Please try to login again.'

9:59 PM failed to login and had a screen with 'Error connecting to platform. Please try to login again.'

10:04 PM finally logged in.

10:05 PM I get disconnected from etoro

10:07 PM Still disconnected

10:09 PM still disconnected

10:19 PM I manage to connect again and I get disconnected again

10:23 OM My connection to Go Markets has been free of errors all this time.

10:24 PM Still cannot log in.

I had 2 negative posts against eToro in the past, based on wrong assumption, and its very common among small traders before they join any broker, and when you are paranoid every little thing makes you believe that your broker is trying to steal from you, due to stress of market uncertainty.

I email social@etoro.com and their manager called me on my phone for almost an hour and went through my concers and explained everything in detail and the even sent me all my trade history, which i went over trade by trade and i didnt find a single $ missing.

Now as i was complaining that eToro did not let me close a Gold trade, and after checking with other brokers i found out Gold can not be trade between 11-12GMT. And i think it was a coincidence both times, i was trying to close a trade around that time.

Now since eToro is getting more and more traders, which i think is because of its openbook and copy trader which makes it unique in forex biz, is making it difficult for eToro to keep up with new customers and old ones, so i think due to that reason, i wasn't able to get hold of live support.

Now after giving a good look at the rankings in openbook i realize that its different trader in the top 30 rankings every week and it can not be possible for eToro to hire that many guru's.

So i made a bad judgement and i am sorry for bashing eToro on a live forum. I did withdraw my balance and profit in the start of this month and i had no problem and it was just few misunderstandings which eToro manager cleared out and it is a quality of a good broker to challenge and solve clients problem on a live forum.

So after speaking to the manager, i have no problem now joining back eToro and i would love to have their service.

The things that made me comeback is their easy to use platform, and this is very important when market gets hectic and complicated platform with flashing red and blue lights leads you to wrong trades, etoro's platform keeps you calm.

And 2nd important thing is the copy trade and open book where you see what other traders are doing and 2nd, 3rd, 4th......opinion is very very important in this business, since no one can predict and forecast right everytime.

i am with etoro since last march 2011, and up till now i have already tripled my equity and not just playing with profits, most of the time trades open trades which end up in loss and they blame etoro , yes etoro has to improve on certain fronts such as (contract expiring in oil and indices trades,)_ as we can not trade long term in such category but to me it helps me to kick start my trading career, and fixed margin trading is best for me thumbs up to etoro.

Dear etoro team,

Not sure, how much training you got and how much you know about forex?? But lemme explain it to you the difference between market maker(dealing desk), STP and ECN ( Non dealing desk).

STP: Means straight trough processing and their spreads can not be fixed, since market( the bank or fund) your clients are trading against decides the spread and it varies from market to market. When etoro has a fixed spread all year long, it can not be a STP, thats market maker, And for STP its impossible for any broker to put through trades worth 1$ for 3-5 pips every 5 min, and thats for one trader, if you have thousand traders than your system will be jammed. So STP applies to clients thats trading with minimum account size of atleast 10,000$ or up and it has to be atleast 2 standard size lot for the broker to put through to the bank, and there is no forex market for small traders, they are trading against a bank or the broker itself, so with etoro where most clients are trading with a balance in $100-$1000 range, they are not even trading against a bank or fund its etoro they are trading against so etoro is definitely a Market Maker.

ECN: If eToro claims to be ECN thats more believe able than STP. So with ECN a broker pair all the long and short trades and traders are trading against each other. And in a situation where 20% trades are long and 80% short, there is 60% more short than long, ECN brokers put it through to the bank or they trade against it, So even ECN brokers has to be STP/ECN or MM/ECN. There is no such thing as just ECN.

Market Maker: Thats where Etoro comes and nothing wrong with being a market maker, there are many big reliable forex brokers that claims to be market makers, since they are honest. And etoro is denying the fact that it is market maker, so how can some one trust everything else that you are saying, when the foundation is based on a big lie.

So the conclusion is i experienced etoro myself and it was brutal, and for everyone else, u should know what any broker letting you trade with $10k or less and has fix spreads, they cant be STP.

And rest of the games etoro plays i already explained in detail in my previous post, but i acknowledge/appreciate etoro's bravery to challenge their ex-clients on an open forum

Dear Imran,

Thank you for sharing your experience with our platform. I am sorry that you’ve had technical problems with our platform and that you found our support services sometimes ineffective. As I have said earlier in this thread, we have just released a new version of the eToro WebTrader that has been designed to solve all the technical problems. As for the support staff, I urge you to write to us at social@etoro.com and give us the name of your account manager or the support representatives that you’ve talked to. We make great efforts to keep a high standard of support and would really like your help in doing so.

However, as for your claims about eToro practices and the eToro OpenBook, they have no basis in reality. We have absolutely no interest in treating long term successful clients poorly, in fact the opposite is true. As an introducing broker service we make profits exclusively from spreads, and thus it is in fact in our interest that every trader make profits so that they can open more trades, thus earning us more spreads. I am truly sorry that you were lead to believe that eToro was betting against you once you became profitable, but this belief is based on an unfortunate coincidence alone.

Secondly, when it comes to eToro OpenBook, none of the OpenBook Gurus are eToro staff. They are simply successful professional traders from around the world who have accumulated a lot of followers thanks to their consistent results. Of course we at eToro give them some encouragement by enabling them to earn a share of the spread profits brought in by their followers as part of our Guru program, but that’s as far as our association goes. Since they are trading for themselves they have absolutely no interest to make their copiers lose money. Also, the amount you can dedicate to copying any one trader is limited to 20% precisely to prevent traders from risking too much of their capital on a single trader.

The fact is that since the launch of CopyTrader our traders’ performance has gone up by 20%!

It is also untrue that most of our traders lose their money, if you look at the eToro rankings you will see lots of consistently profitable traders from all over the world.

I truly hope that you will give eToro and especially OpenBook another chance. You seem like a serious trader, and a potential candidate for the Guru program which could earn you a lot of extra profits. If you’re interested please contact us via the email provided above.

Thank you for your time and input.

Sincerely,

Rafael, eToro Team

This company is a bigg scam, i joined them 2 months ago, the first month the support was nice and i was getting all the help i needed, but as my profit got bigger, they really started to play dirty when i tripled my account balance, and i was mostly trading gold and oil. So here is the tricks they play

1) When you are in profit and needs to close your trade in profit you get a message that " Current instruments are not trade able " at the moment.

2) They stop giving you live support help to complain, it transfers you to a page where you can submit your issue and some one will get back to you, I had to contact them as a new client, and when i do get hold of them, i get a response that from certain GMT - certain GMT you can not trade certain instruments, then i look in the openbook ( stupid feature to see what other traders are doing) i see other traders are buying gold and oil no problem, apparently this restriction was only for me.

3) You would hardly see a good trader with consistent profit trading with them more than 6 months, and openbook is wide open for anyone to check, since they wont let a good trader, trade that long, I started seeing these dirty games after 2 months, so it all depends on how good you are. The only way you can survive with them is to loose.

4)The biggest scam is their copy trades, and most of the so called guru's that you can follow are etoro's staff, and its all programmed to ruin you in the long run. What happens a guru makes one trade, regular traders opens the same trade with 50% of their account some times more. So sooner or later that will max out your account.

5) And the worst part of the platform is, it let you trade 100% of your account, regardless of what leverage you use, which in itself will fail you sooner or later.

So they made it almost impossible for me to trade and forgot to mention not letting me get into my account and they have bugs in their system, eating your balance in cents consistently without even you noticing. So stay as far away as you can from these scammers.

Dear Michel,

Thank you for using our platform and sharing your experience with others. I’m very sorry to hear that you’ve had problems with the CopyTrader feature. We are aware of the problem you speak of, and although it is rare among our traders as far as we know, we are doing our best to resolve it. In fact we have just released new versions of the eToro WebTrader and OpenBook applications. The login problem that you’ve mentioned has definitely been fixed in the new version, and we seem to be getting good feedback on the CopyTrader issue as well.

Please, if you continue having further problems with the CopyTrader, contact us at social@etoro.com with the details. We would really like to look at specific examples of the kind of bugs that you mention so we can be more efficient at fixing them.

Thank you, and please accept our sincere apologies for any inconvenience you’ve experienced with our platform.

Yours sincerely,

Rafael, eToro Team

I am still new here and working as a practice trader with the eToro platform. Looks good. But disconnection is really great problem though I use 512 kbps internet connection.

I am interested to start real within few days and I hope to share new problems as soon as possible.

Thank you.

More than one month ago I posted here about a software bug that displayed an incorrect account balance. This has not been fixed, and even more serious bugs have appeared that also do not get fixed. eToro's main selling point is that users can set their account to copy the trades of other users. But this has stopped working properly some time ago, and after a few weeks is still not fixed. The bug works this way: the user you are copying opens up a trade and the exact same trade opens in your account. Later, when the original user decides to close the transaction very often the transaction stays open in the copier's account, resulting in a loss for the copier and the copier must then deal with eToro for compensation.

Regarding spread as soond we buy the money comes out of our account so we get charged strait way then if we make money fine if not etoro did so there is a charge as soons we buy and confusing as they show you profits you are not on profits because bthey had taken money from your account

I have been using eToro for some time, and the software platform has glaring bugs that never seem to get fixed.

The first it that logging in can be nearly impossible at times, so if you have a position that needs to be closed you can be dead in the water. By the time you can finally get online the market has turned against you and you lose money instead of making money.

When you copy another trader and the trader closes the position the screen fails to be updated properly and shows an incorrect account balance. I contacted support about this and after support denying that there was bug they finally admitted that there was, but claimed that I just needed to help the software to update itself by logging out and then logging in again. Seriously, you have a financial services website that cannot maintain account balances??? So I have to log out and PRAY that I can log back in??? How about this crazy idea, assign someone to fix the bug??? Just to ad that I have been a professional software developer for 30 years and this is not quality work.

Disconnects are also a big problem.

Live chat support can be totally inept and if you challenge them that they did not answer the question they often claim that they did with sarcastic remarks and then disconnect the chat.

There is a real problem with how they rate their top traders. You can look up a top trader on the site but when you look at the trader's details you discover that the person has been actually losing money.

I am highly satisfied with etoro. I was very new to forex but etoros trading platform and demo account gave me nice experience.

Dear trader,

I am extremely sorry that you were subjected to rudeness on behalf of your account manager. I urge you contact us at social@etoro.com with details of your username and account manager so we can see what can be done about it, and so we can take a look at your claim.

On a more general note, if you have ongoing problems with the eToro platform it is probably caused by connectivity problems, such as an unstable router, a weak wifi connection etc. It is extremely improtant to have a good internet connection when trading because it can seriously affect the execution of your trading orders. I strongly advise that you get in touch with your internet provider and check the quality of your connection.

Also, if you're trading with our downloadable software, please don't forget that we also have a web-based platform, the eToro WebTrader, which will often work better with slower internet connections.

Once again, please accept our sincere apology and we hope to hear from you soon.

Sincerely,

Laura, eToro Team