optionshouse

The Worst of all the discount brokers

FIrst of all, your money is not safe with OptionsHouse. Three times this year they have removed over $2000 from my account. Each time I caught the "error" and they returned the money. I really believe they are dishonest and most likely taking advantage of people who don't watch their accounts closely. And good luck getting anywhere with Customer Service. They are completely clueless. This entire company is in a very small office in Chicago. All young clueless kids working there as far as I can tell. I would stay away from this chop shop.

Greybeard55

Tools
Customer Service
Value

Cheap Options trades with a huge cost

Opened my account with OptionsHouse almost a year ago and will be closing it out immediately after repeated failures to deliver any kind of customer service whatsoever. The only positive about this broker is their commission structure for options, which I cannot seem to find a lower price on anywhere else, HOWEVER, and this is a huge caveat, you can expect the worst customer service of your lifetime with this firm. The platform is extremely buggy and prone to crashes and the customer service is utterly unapologetic and almost non-existent. Would have rated that aspect 0 stars if I could.

I was willing to put up with all these problems because of the dirt cheap prices until one final incident pushed it over the top. Their software crashed on a Friday afternoon, when of course options were expiring. During the down time in which their software could not be accessed AT ALL, their customer service was also impossible to get a hold of. After repeated emails and calls I finally got a call back a week later from their "Trade Desk Manager" who offered me 10 free trades to compensate for the several hundred dollars lost due to that service outage. Because $50 in free trades totally makes sense in that case after I've paid them $1,000 plus in commissions and would continue doing so if the account would have been credited properly. Extremely poor management and like I said, the worst possible customer service, you cannot even imagine how lax this broker is when it comes to their customers.

Chycity

Tools
Customer Service
Value

The Worst Brokerage Ever

Options House is the worst. The Customer Service is non-existent. The place is run by approximately 5 people total, with no supervision, all are young kids in their early 20s with no experience and very little education. You can bet that some of your trades will somehow get screwed up. Once that happens, their is absolutely no help from their Customer Service. Try emailing Customer Service, 70% of those emails will be ignored. They will also lie to you and tell you someone will call you back to help you, but nobody will ever call. Options House is basically a chop shop. Beware, you have been warned. Options House is the worst.

Ldog

Tools
Customer Service
Value

The Worst Broker on the Market

The worst mistake of my life was wasting a month with these asses. Stock trades are 3.95 unlike the description above. That does not include stocks that trade under 2.00 and other OTC and Pinks which they have a completely different price schedule for.

My favorite is when shorting a stock under $4.00 they charge a 10.00 per fill fee based on their routing. if it takes them 10 fills to reach your total of say 500 shares you pay 3.95 twice along with $10 x 10 times. No problem right? $107.90 in commissions for a $2,000 order. One time I literally had fills of 3 shares on a 200 share order. I had no idea about the fee structure which is my fault. I thought this company was credible, I should have taken the extra effort to read the fine print. We are in a day and age where the customer has to go the extra mile to find out why something sounds to good to be true.

They shout to the moon about there low fees but what they don't tell you is that most every trade has a separate set of regulatory and transaction fees staked on to the base commission fees which add another .40-60 cents. When I called to check on this the CR rep talked as if he was shocked i didn't know this. "Every broker charges these," he replied. FALSE!! I have a separate account with IB and they do not charge these.

If you enjoyed getting F*cked over come on over to Optionshouse, home of the $3.95 trades :).

WallStreetNole

Tools
Customer Service
Value

Not great, not bad. Could do better with executions.

OH was the second brokerage I used (back in late-2011). I had an individual and a Roth account with them at the time.

3.95 per trade is pretty cheap (next to Just2Trade's 2.50) for stocks and they provide two different plans for trading options.

The biggest problem I have with them is being forced to use their browser-based platform for trading. Why? You cannot execution an order with one click.

Instead, you have to open a new window, enter the symbol, enter in the # of shares, preview, and finally confirm. This is unacceptable when you need one-click executions for stocks that are breaking out intraday. By the time you input the information, the stock has already taken off. The only option you have is to modify your order, increase the buy-limit to the current ask, and hope by the time it is resubmitted the stock's price hasn't increased.

Again, the biggest weakness is the web-based platform (inefficient execution speed).

Also not a great brokerage if you want to trade OCTBB ($0.005/share).

The only positive - in regards to activity fees - I can give is there is no minimum amount of commission required per month/quarter in order to avoid any fees. Ever since I changed my broker (for my individual account), my Roth has remained at OH. Still figuring out what to do with it.

Poorprae

Tools
Customer Service
Value

Not a good brokerage

You get what you pay for. The customer service people are so bad. And they have no supervision, so they don't care if you get helped or not. Just terrible. And asking for a manager makes no difference. The managers will refuse to help you or fix your problem.

OnTheBeach

Tools
Customer Service
Value

Great Broker, Especially for Options

I think people who have given this broker a bad review, either have not tried them lately or used them for the wrong reasons (trading penny stocks).

I trade mostly options, some stocks, and occasionally penny stocks. For basic stocks and options (including multi-legged, complicated trades), you CANNOT beat this broker for all around value. Before choosing OptionsHouse, I researched a ton of brokers. I wanted the best value I could find. If you trade regular stocks and/or options, I challenge you to find a better valued broker. If you do, please let me know.

For their trade costs, they offer a ton of tools. I didn't dislike their old trading platform, but their new one is super sweet, user friendly, and offers a ton. It's ease to personalize and the executions are very quick. There may be better or fancier tools at other brokers, but you'll pay a lot more, particularly for options.

I used Scottrade for years (and still do for some trades), but OptionsHouse kills them on prices, options tools, and overall value. The only thing I like better about Scottrade is their charting - to me, it's easier to manipulate and looks better.

I've only had to use their customer service a couple times, but it was good both times. They also offer a lot of educational videos/training on options that are very informative. Also, their costs for a live broker are the same as "do-it-yourself."

If you trade regular stocks and/or options, I can't recommend OptionsHouse enough.

Secatu

Tools
Customer Service
Value

It's the inner beauty

I've been using Optionhouse (OH) since this March and simply love them for two reasons:

- they have the LOWEST commissions I have ever seen

- the orders are executed fast

Compare to the other brokers (e.g. ThinkOrSwim) I use, I can't comment how well OH tools are in doing stock scans, fundament analysis and so on since I never spent the time to use them. I use other tools and methods to find my winners.

The only thing I can ding OH on is that I wish they had an easier ordering system in doing advance orders. For example, with ThinkOrSwim I can with one mouse click do something like this.



- Buy ABC at 100 shares at $5.25

- If ABC stock price increases by 20% then automatically sell all shares at market price or at X price

- If ABC stock price decreases by 10% then automatically sell all shares at market price or at X price

With OH, it will take me at least 6 mouse clicks to do this same order, and this is such a time waster. If they would mimic ThinkOrSwim functionality (found in their thinkDesktop software) I would give them a perfect rating.

Different

Tools
Customer Service
Value

Low Commissions

Great for folks who like to trade options because they are inexpensive. However, if you like to be able to talk to someone on the phone or need phone support don't expect it here. The reason they have lower commissions is because they expect their clients to be self sufficient. However, they are good at executing options and doing it for less especially when you trade larger contracts.

7Digit

Tools
Customer Service
Value

Bad first impression, hard to win me over after that.

I was excited to give these guys a try, but they stumbled early on by losing a fax twice. Some other miscommunication and a bit of an aloof attitude by one customer service rep left me looking elsewhere. I also saw they had extra fees on penny stocks. When you are dealing with people's money, first impressions and attention to detail really matter. I found better brokers with less attitude and better customer service. I liked their platform however.

Pamod1

Tools
Customer Service
Value