Forex Broker Complaints
Complaints about Forex, Crypto and Binary Option brokers are increasingly common nowadays and can be for a variety of reasons. Usually, investors that choose to trade with licensed or regulated brokers rarely face such issues. If you have invested in an unlicensed or non-regulated broker, no government agency can help you get your money back.
MyChargeback is a service created specially for these cases – they will hunt down the broker and recover your money if possible.
Complaining to regulated brokers
If your broker is authorized by the FCA in the United Kingdom or licensed by CySEC in Cyprus, follow the instructions below:
Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC)
CySEC takes all complaints submitted to them into consideration but warns clients that they do not investigate individual complaints. If you are unhappy with a service or financial product provided to you by a Cyprus Investment Firm (CIF), follow these three steps:
- Contact the Broker/ CIF directly
They will be required to respond within five days letting you know they have received your complaint. They are also required to let you know within two months whether your complaint has been successfully resolved or whether they need more time to look into it (a maximum of three months starting from the day of the complaint).
- Contact the Financial Ombudsman
The Financial Ombudsman is an independent service that settles disputes between CIFs and clients. If you are not satisfied with the CIF’s response or have not heard back from them in the required time period, you should check with the Financial Ombudsman.
- Go to court
If you are not satisfied with the decision made by the Financial Ombudsman you may take your case to court.
The CySEC also give you a form to fill if you wish to inform them about a complaint you submitted. The form and the full complaint procedure can be found file a complain to CySEC.
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA)
The FCA warns users to be careful before investing and check their FCA register or Warning List of which firms to avoid. If you have been scammed, you can report the firm or scam to them by contacting their Consumer Helpline on 0800 111 6768 or use their reporting form. Their full FCA complaint procedure explains the entire process in more detail. They will not be able to help you if you have invested in an unlicensed broker.
Withdrawal Complaints – If You Cannot Get Your Money Back
If you are facing issues withdrawing your money from your broker, we recommend using MyChargeBack.com which will help you get your money back.
MyChargeBack is a company that specializes in helping investors who have lost over $1.000. They urge users to not give up and “fight back” to recover their funds when having been scammed by a broker. To be able to use their services, you will be charged an upfront fee and a percentage of the money that they manage to recover for you.
Here are a few things to keep in mind when your broker is not processing your request to withdraw:
- The process of withdrawing money is in many ways more complicated than depositing money.
In order to withdraw money from your broker, you will be required to verify your identity with many different documents. The most standard of these are: National ID/ Passport/ Driver’s License, Proof of Residence: Utility bill, bank/credit card statement, local authority tax bill. Finally, deposits that have been made by Credit or Debit card require a front and back scan of the card.
- When requesting a withdrawal, never rely on a phone conversation or Skype message with your broker. Always make sure to email the compliance department and the customer support.
- If your withdrawal is not being processed by your broker in a timely manner, you can contact your bank and request a charge back. In most cases when people are facing problems withdrawing their money from a broker, they are dealing with unlicensed companies often associated with fraud.
Managed Accounts Issues
The scenario is all too common: you receive a call from a Forex broker offering to invest your money and trade on your behalf. The only problem here is that trading Forex and Cryptocurrencies, no matter the experience, can be extremely risky. In fact, you risk losing all the money in your account, and by authorizing a broker to trade on your behalf, in reality you are giving all that money away.
Instead, if you decide to invest in Forex, do the research and learn how to be a real trader. We have also written about some types of scams we have encountered with binary options. Do not believe someone out there is going to make money for you. In fact, all unregulated brokers make their money when you lose yours – so it is not even slightly in their interest to help you make money.
Consider this: If a broker is such a good and experienced investor, why are they not trading their own money and are interested in trading yours?
Trading Software Scams
It is often that investors see an advertisement for a “secret system” that generates money and they open a brokerage account. Examples of these are Bitcoin Code, Crypto Trader and Tesler app to name a few.
These so-called automated trading systems create an account for you at a scam broker, tell you to make a deposit, and reassure you that you will now start making money. The problem here is that this kind of software does not actually work and the brokers they use are often unregulated and unlicensed companies. If you visit many broker’s terms and conditions page, there is a clause that specifically prohibits the use of automated trading software.
This is not to say all auto-trading robots are scams, just always make sure to use a robot that works with licensed Forex brokers.
Bonus Policy Complaints
Another essential reason investors have trouble withdrawing their money from a broker is because they received a bonus.
You should always be especially careful before accepting a bonus. First, you should carefully read the broker’s bonus policy. It is very often that unregulated brokers require investors to trade 30 – 60 times the bonus value. Licensed brokers do not offer bonuses – and for good reason. They are also not allowed to if they are regulated by CySEC.
Let’s say you deposit $500 and receive a $200 bonus. This automatically means you will have to generate a trading volume of $500 x 20 = $10.000. Think about it – that is a lot of money. The catch here is that by accepting the bonus, the $500 that was initially deposited can only be withdrawn once that trading volume is met. In this hypothetical scenario you now have $700 in your account ($500 + $200 bonus). Let’s say you place a trade and profit $85, making your account balance $785. This amount is not eligible for withdrawal.
Some brokers even give bonuses automatically without even asking for the trader’s permission. This is why so many unregulated brokers receive numerous complaints and bad reviews on an everyday basis. People want to spread the word and warn others of this large number of scams.
Unauthorized Credit Card Charges
If you received an unauthorized credit card charge from your broker, there could be two reasons behind it:
- It was an honest mistake and your payment was processed twice by the broker.
- The broker you trusted was going to double your money, lost it all. They then call you to convince you to deposit even more money for them to trade with.
Either way, the minute you notice an unauthorized charge to your credit card, contact the credit card fraud department immediately to try and dispute the charges.
All in all, trading can be a huge risk and before investing your money with any broker, it would be wise to be aware of scams out there and how to properly avoid becoming one of their victims. Now, if you are late in reading this and have already been scammed by a broker, make sure to follow the steps outlined above for each case.