Hi Ray:
I think you misunderstood Jon's complaint. Fido has done the same thing to me.
Jon placed a limit order inside the spread, and expected it to reflect on quotes screens and his order status screen. Instead, the indications he gets on his computer are that the order never got into the system -- quotes don't reflect the increased bid, and order status remains open. Then, trades begin to show below his bid, but order status still indicates "open."
So, he REPLACED the order (not sending in a separate cancel and a separate new order, but a replace, which is intended to assure the cancellation is recognized before the new order is entered) at a lower bid to reflect the new market pricing. Then, when trades begin to happen at his new bid price, he thinks he's been filled at that price. But, BINGO, he gets notice, 10 minutes after the close, that his HIGHER bid was executed, and that his screens were lying to him as he was letting his $10K get bounced around by people who weren't concerned with letting him know what was going on.
The bottom line problem is something that Fido does frequently, and they could care less when you call to complain: they are slow to report order status, and if that gets you in a bind, tough.
I suspect that when Jon checked his screens this morning, he found that he only bought the initial 7K shares at the first bid price, and that despite his screens, the order was never replaced.
Fido is fine if you don't trade much, and don't care about a couple of fractions one way or another. But, if you trade often enough to get into their lowest commission bracket, you're going to get screwed by their slow servers and inaccurate order status reporting.
jim |
