Interactive Brokers customer service

When using an online broker, you may sometimes need assistance to locate a feature or sort out a problem. In such situations, it's good to have prompt and helpful customer service on hand.

Interactive Brokers offers OK customer support across multiple channels, but occasionally you can run into long waits or less-than-helpful responses. Read on for details and comparisons.

Interactive Brokers customer service is so-so

[Broker name] customer service is so-so

Adam Nasli

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I am an expert in brokerage safety, adept at spotting scam brokers in mere seconds. My guidance, rooted in my firsthand experience with brokers and an in-depth understanding of the regulatory framework, has safeguarded hundreds of users from fraudulent brokerage activities.

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Adam Nasli

Regulation • Fighting Scams • Market Analysis

I've tested dozens of brokers over the years, which often included contacting their help desks over various issues. Interactive Brokers has decent customer service but I saw room for improvement:

• You can reach Interactive Brokers customer service via several channels.
• Interactive Brokers's help desk is a hit-and-miss when it comes to response speed.
• Interactive Brokers customer support gives you useful and relevant information.
• Looking for better treatment? See how Interactive Brokers compares to its rivals.

Before we begin, let's see if Interactive Brokers is available in your country

Yes, you can open an account at Interactive Brokers if you live in the United States!

United States

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Like most companies, online brokers typically offer customer service via several channels. Phone support is usually best if you need to quickly sort out a complicated problem or emergency, while more and more users prefer live chat for simple queries. Meanwhile, email support remains your best friend if you're an introvert, or for more complex questions that aren't so time sensitive.

You will likely face many types of issues during trading, so choose a broker where you can reach all three modes of support. Here's how you can get in touch with Interactive Brokers:

• Live chat
• Phone
• Email

Unfortunately, you can't reach Interactive Brokers customer support 24/7, so keep that (and your time zone) in mind before reaching out for help with an issue that needs immediate attention.

Our first-hand customer service experience at Interactive Brokers

Customer service is available in several regions and languages, namely English, Russian, Chinese, Indian and Japanese.

Our experience with customer service was mixed.

We tested the chat, email and phone support, three times each. Email responses arrived within a day. The wait time for a representative in a live chatroom was rather long (e.g. more than three minutes), but after they came online, the experience was smooth and we received relevant answers. The waiting time on the phone call was around one minute.

This places the level of customer service a bit below the industry average.

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User forums as an alternative to customer service

Whatever your question or problem is, you're probably not alone. This makes online forums of traders a great source of info about brokers in addition to (or even instead of) official customer service. RandomUser1234 won't be able to help you restore your account, but they can probably offer good tips on platform usage or tell you whether a certain stock is available at a broker.

Some brokers have their own community forums on their trading platforms or websites; alternatively, you can always turn to well-known forum aggregators such as Reddit. Many popular brokers have their own dedicated subreddits. Just post your question, or browse previous threads to see if it's been already answered.

Always exercise caution when taking advice from other forum users. Some information may be incorrect, outdated, or reflect the subjective judgment of a user. Also, do not share sensitive data or other material, such as screenshots that reveal your personal or financial information.

When testing the overall quality of customer support at Interactive Brokers and its competitors, we paid special attention to response speed. Because let's face it, we're all very busy; so when faced with a ten-minute wait to get connected to an operator, most of us would rather jump on a Reddit forum for answers or figure out a solution to our problems on our own. So this is how we rated brokers:

• In the case of phone and live chat support, we considered waiting times of less than one minute as great, and waiting times exceeding five minutes as poor. We scored anything in between as mid-range; including brokers where responses were sometimes swift but sometimes too slow.
• When it comes to email support, a response within 24 hours is considered great in our book; while we believe it is poor service to keep you waiting for more than two or three days for a reply.

So why all the hurry? A little hold music won't hurt anyone, right? Perhaps not, but there may be situations where customer service speed can make a huge difference. Imagine you noticed that someone has broken into your account and started to withdraw your money from it. Or maybe you want to sell a free-falling stock but the order panel won't display properly. In such cases, swift customer support can potentially save you hundreds or thousands of dollars.

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Promptly picking up the phone is one thing, but it's just as important to give answers that are clear, comprehensible, sufficiently detailed and relevant to your problem. In addition to response speed, we also rated brokers based on the quality of replies and assistance we received.

• Brokers we rated as 'great' here gave us all the necessary information and assistance.
• Those we rated 'poor' left us scratching our heads and looking for alternative sources of information.
• We gave a 'mid-range' score to brokers where the quality of support was inconsistent or where assistance was often less than useful.

Here's how Interactive Brokers compares to its main competitors when it comes to the helpfulness of live chat, phone and email support.

Do you fancy using Interactive Brokers's services but not sure you'd get the level of customer service you deserve? Try our broker comparison tool, where you can size up 100+ brokers side by side and filter for many criteria including high-quality customer support.

Want to see how Interactive Brokers fares in other respects such as trading fees, funding options or platform quality? Read our full review of Interactive Brokers for 2024.

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