or as successfully as it’s ever likely to get…

You’ve hit a problem – a trade hasn’t been filled properly, major slippage, they’ve made a margin call on you when you know they shouldn’t…

First, count to ten and try to calm down. If the situation is under control and if at all possible, give yourself ten minutes off, (make a cup of soothing herbal tea, yeah right).

Look again at what’s happened. The mistake might be at your end. If it’s still wrong, get your facts together, trade #, prices, units, margins, so that you know exactly what you’re talking about before you start.

Get in touch, and whether by support ticket, email, chat, be polite. Be sensible, rational and also don’t instantly announce that you’ve been scammed. By being polite, you are not being a patzer.

The people on support, they’ve got a job to do, but they don’t want too much hard work. Tickets that look like hard work drift to the bottom of the pile. Tell them there’s a problem, give the details, say what happened, and say what you think should have happened. Don’t use the “I’m going to post to all the forums about this” weapon at the beginning.

When they reply, read it. Don’t immediately carry on with the same mindset. Even if it’s a spectacularly dumb reply – keep it polite, show that you are going to be reasonable but persistent.

The whole purpose of the exercise is to get the problem fixed, not to be smart. If you really want to show off to support people by scoring points over them, the time for that is later, when the problem is fixed.

There’s a lot of brokers in the market – they want to keep their reputation. And they basically want to keep a client – no matter how micro your account, they know that micro can grow. So there is always some negotiating room here.

Internet tech can be faulty – these excuses of ‘we just didn’t receive the instruction’ might be true, in that case you just have to negotiate round the problem. Again most brokers will reach an accomodation if handled sensibly.

If you can’t reach agreement? – and it does happen that way – then you have to go elsewhere, and then you can say what you like about them

A quick checklist

• Make sure you understand the problem before you start shouting at them – think about it, don’t assume
• Remember that the vast majority of brokers will try to sort it if you let them
• Give them the background info as concisely as possible – it always looks better.
• Don’t open multiple tickets about the same problem.
• Be persistent, but always polite.