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For instance, one Robinhood customer who had turned margin “off,” tragically took his own life in June 2020. In a note found after his death, he expressed confu

For instance, one Robinhood customer who had turned margin “off,” tragically took his own life in June 2020. In a note found after his death, he expressed confusion as to how he could have used margin to purchase securities because, he believed, he had not “turned on” margin in his account. As noted in the settlement, Robinhood also displayed to this individual (and certain other customers) inaccurate negative cash balances. Additionally, due to Robinhood’s misstatements, thousands of other customers suffered more than $7 million in total losses. As part of this settlement, Robinhood is required to pay more than $7 million in restitution to these customers. wow

jw1224 5y ago
The customer who took his own life over the margin bug had repeatedly tried to call Robinhood's customer support, for several days, but nobody ever picked up the phone.
- MobileVet 5y ago
  Deplorable. If you are a photo sharing site using an ad supported business model, your ‘support’ can be some silly chat not. If you are taking people’s money for banking or investment, you provide 24/7 phone support. Period.
  - Scoundreller 5y ago
    My broker is one of the biggest banks in Canada and the US (TD) and it doesn’t have 24/7 support anymore. Monday-Friday 7am-6pm. I’d usually call outside of market hours when I could to avoid market-hour demand/wait times, but not anymore. And they charge me $10 for trades! https://www.td.com/ca/en/investing/direct-investing/services/ https://www.td.com/ca/en/investing/direct-investing/services...
    - MobileVet 5y ago
      They likely have a considerable amount of your net worth. You might want to reconsider that. Schwab provides this and they don’t charge for trades. I am sure they have warts, but I can always talk with someone. https://www.schwab.com/contact-us https://www.schwab.com/contact-us
      - Scoundreller 5y ago
        I’m not in US.
        Snuupy 5y ago
        Consider Interactive Brokers.
        MobileVet 5y ago
        My bad, should have realized that. Sorry they took away service that should be standard. Like you, I love calling off hours. Never a wait.
  - xtracto 5y ago
    > If you are taking people’s money for banking or investment, you provide 24/7 phone support. Period. So much this. I have been working in Fintech for 8 years now, and the lack of seriousness I've seen in different aspects of startups in this fields is appalling. When you are mingling with other's people money, you don't get the advantage to "move fast, break things". You don't get to "whoops" when someone hacks you and steals funds, you don't get to say you are sorry when a bug makes you lose millions to fraud. But still my experience has been that the majority of product and business people in startups don't take it seriously. They keep pushing Engineering teams to move fast and release yet-another-half-assed-feature instead of listening to the clamours of the developers for bug fixing and security improvements.
    - MobileVet 5y ago
      I worked on a reimbursement platform for a couple of years. It was an added layer of stress in my life that I frankly could do without... and it was just reimbursing company expenses. Can’t imagine doing investments or raw banking. Not surprised the ‘startup motto’ lives strong regardless of sector... but disappointing for sure.
  - stinky 5y ago
    Afaik they don’t charge any brokerage fees. From what I gather, they use PFOF (payment for order flow) to get revenue, instead. This essentially means that they sell the information on the just placed customer orders to 3rd parties, so that those 3rd parties can front-run the trades and skim the profit off of RH customers.
    - ac29 5y ago
      Front-running is illegal and is not why firms pay for order flow.
    - bryan_w 5y ago
      I can't believe you've managed to fit so many wrong things into a short post. Do you often make comments about things you have no clue about with such confidence? At least this will be a good litmus test for community moderation.
    - fighterpilot 5y ago
      That's not how it works. With PFOF, the market maker (e.g. Citadel) takes the other side of the trade with Robinhood's retail client, instead of that retail order being sent to the actual market.
  - apexalpha 5y ago
    If you are taking people’s money for banking or investment, you provide 24/7 phone support. Period. This seems excessive. Even my own, regular bank, only has phone support between working hours. I understand the sentiment, but this whole "everyone can trade options" is not solely Robin Hoods fault. It was, and still is, hyped and promoted on Reddits' WSB.
- spaetzleesser 5y ago
  This is one of the things that bug me about modern tech companies. They often “disrupt” a market by not offering any meaningful customer support and can save a lot of money that way. It’s all smooth sailing when things go well but if you encounter a bug you are basically out of luck. See all the stories of people having their PayPal, Google or Amazon accounts shut down for unknown reason and there is nothing they can do to clear things up other than having friends in the company or having a large Twitter audience.
  - bena 5y ago
    They often disrupt by either deliberately ignoring or just not being aware of the industry's edge cases. AirBnb style rentals and ride-sharing are both slowly rediscovering exactly why the taxi and hotel industry operate the way they do. Every single stupid rule has a story attached to it.

jw1224 5y ago

The customer who took his own life over the margin bug had repeatedly tried to call Robinhood's customer support, for several days, but nobody ever picked up the phone.

MobileVet 5y ago
Deplorable. If you are a photo sharing site using an ad supported business model, your ‘support’ can be some silly chat not. If you are taking people’s money for banking or investment, you provide 24/7 phone support. Period.
- Scoundreller 5y ago
  My broker is one of the biggest banks in Canada and the US (TD) and it doesn’t have 24/7 support anymore. Monday-Friday 7am-6pm. I’d usually call outside of market hours when I could to avoid market-hour demand/wait times, but not anymore. And they charge me $10 for trades! https://www.td.com/ca/en/investing/direct-investing/services/ https://www.td.com/ca/en/investing/direct-investing/services...
  - MobileVet 5y ago
    They likely have a considerable amount of your net worth. You might want to reconsider that. Schwab provides this and they don’t charge for trades. I am sure they have warts, but I can always talk with someone. https://www.schwab.com/contact-us https://www.schwab.com/contact-us
    - Scoundreller 5y ago
      I’m not in US.
      - Snuupy 5y ago
        Consider Interactive Brokers.
      - MobileVet 5y ago
        My bad, should have realized that. Sorry they took away service that should be standard. Like you, I love calling off hours. Never a wait.
- xtracto 5y ago
  > If you are taking people’s money for banking or investment, you provide 24/7 phone support. Period. So much this. I have been working in Fintech for 8 years now, and the lack of seriousness I've seen in different aspects of startups in this fields is appalling. When you are mingling with other's people money, you don't get the advantage to "move fast, break things". You don't get to "whoops" when someone hacks you and steals funds, you don't get to say you are sorry when a bug makes you lose millions to fraud. But still my experience has been that the majority of product and business people in startups don't take it seriously. They keep pushing Engineering teams to move fast and release yet-another-half-assed-feature instead of listening to the clamours of the developers for bug fixing and security improvements.
  - MobileVet 5y ago
    I worked on a reimbursement platform for a couple of years. It was an added layer of stress in my life that I frankly could do without... and it was just reimbursing company expenses. Can’t imagine doing investments or raw banking. Not surprised the ‘startup motto’ lives strong regardless of sector... but disappointing for sure.
- stinky 5y ago
  Afaik they don’t charge any brokerage fees. From what I gather, they use PFOF (payment for order flow) to get revenue, instead. This essentially means that they sell the information on the just placed customer orders to 3rd parties, so that those 3rd parties can front-run the trades and skim the profit off of RH customers.
  - ac29 5y ago
    Front-running is illegal and is not why firms pay for order flow.
  - bryan_w 5y ago
    I can't believe you've managed to fit so many wrong things into a short post. Do you often make comments about things you have no clue about with such confidence? At least this will be a good litmus test for community moderation.
  - fighterpilot 5y ago
    That's not how it works. With PFOF, the market maker (e.g. Citadel) takes the other side of the trade with Robinhood's retail client, instead of that retail order being sent to the actual market.
- apexalpha 5y ago
  If you are taking people’s money for banking or investment, you provide 24/7 phone support. Period. This seems excessive. Even my own, regular bank, only has phone support between working hours. I understand the sentiment, but this whole "everyone can trade options" is not solely Robin Hoods fault. It was, and still is, hyped and promoted on Reddits' WSB.
spaetzleesser 5y ago
This is one of the things that bug me about modern tech companies. They often “disrupt” a market by not offering any meaningful customer support and can save a lot of money that way. It’s all smooth sailing when things go well but if you encounter a bug you are basically out of luck. See all the stories of people having their PayPal, Google or Amazon accounts shut down for unknown reason and there is nothing they can do to clear things up other than having friends in the company or having a large Twitter audience.
- bena 5y ago
  They often disrupt by either deliberately ignoring or just not being aware of the industry's edge cases. AirBnb style rentals and ride-sharing are both slowly rediscovering exactly why the taxi and hotel industry operate the way they do. Every single stupid rule has a story attached to it.