Robinhood FTC Complaints Surge Dramatically, Some Furious Over Having No Way Out

Urian B., Tech Times 05 February 2021, 09:02 pm

(Photo : Screenshot From Graham Stephan Official YouTube Channel) Robinhood Users Furious with Platform: 'I Just Want my Money Back so I can be Done with This Service'

A particular US consumer watchdog has recently been seeing a surge in complaints regarding the controversial Robinhood platform last week. Some clients are also claiming that they were reportedly unable to liquidate their own holdings and proceed to move them to other brokerage firms!

Robinhood blocks 50 stocks

The Federal Trade Commission or FTC has already received over 100 Robinhood-related reports spanning from only Jan 24 up to the 2nd of February. This was according to the agency. According to an article by CNBC, the prior week has brought in seven of such complaints. Agency data on the other firms was also not immediately available.

Last week was reportedly chaotic for the specific trading platform as the investors had piled into both AMC and GameStop as well as a few other high-flying stocks. Robinhood restricted trading of up to 50 different names, according to an article by The Verge, due what they claimed as "market volatility" and has since already lifted those particular limits.

Robinhood FTC complaint

The move actually caused quite a backlash coming from both users and lawmakers who had accused Robinhood of market manipulation as well as siding with certain hedge funds managers that were shorting those stocks. The start-up stated that it did not make those decisions that are based on their relationships with the market makers, and that they needed to limit the total buy-side so that they could meet the needed capital requirements.

A number of the FTC complaints had highlighted those particular trading limits but still show widespread frustration when it came to Robinhood's own customer service. Over the course of the past year, users have been complaining regarding the lack of support when certain things start to go wrong. These include account hacks or some issues when it comes to trading options.

Robinhood stated that it tripled its own customer support team and also hired about hundreds of other registered financial representatives some time last year as the company's own user base started to surge past 13 million. The start-up said that historically, it can still best serve customers over their email, but it still does not reach out to the customers through a phone call around certain instances.

User complaints on Robinhood

A Robinhood spokesperson gave a statement to CNBC saying that they are committed towards improving the total support that they give its customers. During the whole GameStop chaos, some of the Robinhood clients even noted that they were unable to cash out their own accounts in order to move towards other trading platforms. A particular Robinhood user noted to the FTC that even the ability to continue depositing money still works and is active but the act of either withdrawing money or even trading stock is now completely blocked.

Another Robinhood client had written to the agency that people send their complaints directly into a void with only little hope that anyone would then get back to them. The trader noted that he just wants the money he made so that he can finally close the account and be done with this service.