Trade Republic Customer Support so bad? #traderepublic #scalablecapital #interactivebrokers

Few days ago I posted this video about  the new updates from Trade Republic. Some viewers commented about the service  level of the trade Republic customer support. In Particular Georgios writes: Just one question... If you search them up,   they have a lot of complains, all for  the same reason: customer support. How can someone feel safe with an APP  that does not provide a phone number of   customer support so you can talk with a  human and the mails are never answered? And Christian: Never ever invest with Trade Republic.  They have 0 ZERO customer support and   its getting worse every day. A lot of  people complain that their cash money   is blocked and cant be transfered to  their bank account etc. etc. etc.   First of all let me thank Giorgos and  Christian for their contribute to the   channel and their comments and for  pointing out this interesting topic. This questions are legitimate and  truly understandable especially   by someone who wants to invest its  money in a online bank or broker. On internet in fact you find  some people complaining about   the service level of Trade Republic.  And I decided to investigate more. Today in this video I will show you the  results of the comparison I did between   Trade Republic and other competitors and the  an analysis of the main customer complaints. Before even starting, it is important  to highlight that the main difference   between a standard broker and a online broker  is indeed the support and the services offered. Standard brokers provides a wide range  of services including investment advice,   retirement planning, tax advice, and estate  planning and typically offers a dedicated   financial advisor maybe available 24/7  and this comes with a costs, of course. This kind of broker is ideal for  investors who want personalized service,   strong and always available customer  support and are willing to pay for it. On the opposite side, online brokers  offer trading platforms with only   basic functionalities, there are no  financial advisors and some of them   do not even offer tax support. On the  other hand they offer very low fees. In particular Trade Republic offer 3,75% annual  interest on your cash deposit always available,   1% cashback up to 15€ per month with their  debit card and saving plans have no fees at all. Personally, I do not know standard brokers  that offers such a good conditions,   if you do, please name them  in the comments here below. In general, Online brokers are Ideal For:   Self-directed investors who want control over  their trades and prefer low fees and online   interface. They are not willing to pay for all the  bells and whistles that a standard broker offers. So if you have the need to have a  closer contact with your broker or   if you have a complex portfolio  that requires often adjustments,   an online broker is definitely  not the right choice for you. You have always to carefully  evaluate the costs over the benefits. In my case instead I am an buy and hold  kind of investor I don’t do many operations,   I don’t trade with crypto, I don’t trade at all,  I only aim for low fees for long term investments   and in this respect I agree to trade low fees in  exchange for a basic customer service. And if I   can gain more with cashback or good interests  on the cash deposit is even better for me. Another point that has to be underlined  is that the serviced offered by a broker   have nothing to do with the  safety of the investments. You might have a big broker like  Morgan Stanley bankrupting for   fraud or whatever reason and on the other  end have a small online broker offering   diligently its basic services with  no fees and keeping your money safe. So we have to differentiate between customer  service and safety of the investments. With regards to the safety of the assets, I have  touched this point already in my previous video:   being trade republic regulated by the Bafin,  the Federal Financial supervisory Authority,   I feel confident that this broker is supervised  exactly as every other bank or financial   institution. Moreover the cash deposit is secured  by the deposit protection scheme up to 100k€. So today, let’s try to understand how good  is the trade republic customer service. Before starting, only a short  but important disclaimer: First, I am not sponsored by trade republic,  and I have no kind of affiliation with them,   beside the fact that I use it as main broker.  I do not get any money from this video.  Second I am not trying to convince you by no means   to invest your money in trade  republic or any other broker.   Ok, with that said, the first test I did  was to check how Trade Republic performs   in comparison with its direct competitors:  scalable Capital and interactive brokers. I choose trust pilot as one of the most, if  not the most famous web site for reviews. Let’s have a look on the average rating first. The average rating value for trade republic is  3.6 against what I consider its main competitors   interactive brokers with a rating of  3.4 and scalable capital with only 2.5 What I noticed here with the ratings of  Scalable Capital is that the number of people   very unsetified is equal to the number of 5 stars  reviews. It is like a take it or leave it option. With interactive brokers and Trade republic,   instead, the number of 5 stars  is way more than 1 start reviews. On the other hand , on trust pilot you will see  a lot of responses from the customer service of   scalable capital, showing a good diligence to  calm down and react to their customer base. As next step I checked on all three  brokers the main reasons for the   complaints on the 1 star reviews  only and I did a pareto analysis. The aim is to understand what is  the reason for the people to be   so unsatisfied. I have split the  possible reasons in 5 categories: Technical: here I included complaints  like platform performance, app or software   glitches including the management  of the recent Nvidia stock split,   which caused headaches for many users. Customer service: Here I counted all the reviews   blaming the customer service is  not good or not responsive enough Generic: here I included both complaints that  I could not classify because too generic and   complaints where the reason includes several  aspects. For example if someone writes I am   not happy with customer service, and I  cannot withdraw money and the app sucks,   and so on. Here we should ask ourself if we should   consider as serious enough this kind of  complaints, but that’s another topic. Subscription Problems: here I included all the  negative reviews of people struggling to subscribe   to the broker for any reason And finally Money transfer:   were I put all the complaints about  money transfer FROM and TO the broker. Here are the results: What we can notice at first glance  is that the customer service is by   far the first reason of complaint  by all the three broker analyzed. After that we have the generic  cluster which to me says not so much. And finally either technical problem or money  transfer is more relevant depending on the broker. On the money transfer topic I  would like to spend some words,   since this seems to be the second  reason for complaint by Trade Republic. In fact, approximately 90% of the  complaints about the difficulties   to withdraw money are coming from people who  tries to move their money from or to banking   accounts which have different names  than the trade republic owner account. This is forbidden by Trade Republic and it  is clearly written in the contract and also   in the Frequently asked questions. Let’s  read some of these complaints together: Almost 3 weeks ago I sent 1.5k to my trade  republic account, but the transfer was rejected   because the names did not match (The sending  account was an acronym of my name). Usually,   the transfer would be refunded to the  sending account, but they claimed that   the sending account is 'not active' and they  cannot send the money back to the sender. Can not make deposits or withdraws  with my own bank account, because   the layout of my name is just a bit different.  No one wants to help you, they just  don't care about their customers Lost all my money! Support is terrible Transfered money to the account. But   it is impossible to transfer the money back. The  helpdesk is terrible and only reply after weeks.  Telling me that it is not possible  because my name is different. What an idiotic business concept, with an  horrific customer service. I have never   heard of an alleged bank that refuses to  accept deposits. I can not receive money   from my Austrian bank because "my name does  not match" the one Republic signed me up with For money laundering reasons the name of  the bank account owner has to be exactly   the same (not an acronym like this user claim  or a “bit different” like this one), it has to   be EXACLTY the same of the trade Republic account  owner. Otherwise the operation will be rejected. Everybody can easily find this statement  in the Frequently Asked Questions and of   course on the contract, which I hope  this people read before. Trade Republic is not a bank (not yet  at least) where people can move money   from one account to another but  an investing broker and the money   has to come from a traceable  IBAN in the name of the user. So we should also question ourself,  how relevant is the complain of someone   who pretends to do something which is  forbidden or never read the contract. And more over, as far as I know, it is also not  allowed to open banking accounts with fake names   or acronyms, so the legit question is: What are  these people trying to do or better to hide? In any case, the number of people complaining  about their service level is suspicious,   and since trade republic is now my main  broker, I decided to look in to it. I feel the frustration of someone who does not get  answers when money and investments are involved,   so I decided to take contact with them  and try to measure their performance. In my next video I will try to get  in touch with the trade republic   customer support and I present my findings. So if you do not want to miss  it, subscribe to the channel ! Moreover, if you have any suggestion or remark,  don’t be shy and add your comment here below. With that said, if you are  still watching this video,   thank you very much for your  attention, and see you next time. Cheers!