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Customers score
Overall score
Robinhood used to take pride in being one of the few companies that do not require any commissions for trading. That’s right! Namely, you could have gone trading stocks, cryptocurrencies or commodities left and right, no matter the amount of deposit you are willing to give. Soon, of course, they found this story to be highly damaging to their profits, despite attracting more traders than ever before.
And though this worked for some time, I guess the Robinhood grew out of this image it tried to obtain. After all, taking from the rich and giving back to the poor can only get you so far. And also, it is not a good business strategy, as this company will later learn. So, what went wrong with this cute idea and led to Robinhood becoming just another trading company that overcharges and takes their clients for granted? Let’s see.
Platform and Execution SCORE: 62%
The Robinhood trading platform seems to be designed to attract mainly new and young investors, who are looking to spin some money around and see where it leads them. However, there are many things that are wrong, or simply strange, with this broker’s platform.
For starters, Robinhood does not release most of their information and statistics about trades or market performance. I was so confused when I first visited this platform, to be honest. How am I supposed to choose the asset of my desires if I have no idea how it is performing or will it bring me any money? This is a pretty ridiculous and unnecessary feature that is off-putting and not at all useful if you ask me - quite the opposite.
Withdrawal Speed SCORE: 57%
When it comes to withdrawals at the Robinhood, they take the usual amount of time of a few days. Despite their pride in trading Bitcoin, this is a surprisingly slow service of processing. However, this is not the biggest concern when it comes to the platform.
What I’ve noticed quite later down the road is that they charge a ridiculous $5 dollar fee for “maintenance”. When I dug deeper in order to research this ridiculous request I learned that this fee is actually a representation of your account being taken care of and simply put up on the network. Like I said - completely ridiculous!
Still, on the deposits side - you will notice that your funds will be available on your account in a few brief seconds. But when it comes to withdrawals, it’s a completely different story. In addition, the live broker fee is set at $10, while on the other hand, it is not clearly explained how to get in touch with one.
Support and Assistance SCORE: 33%
The customer support system at the Robinhood company is severely lacking the basics. From the phone number where you can reach them to the slow replies, you name it. The only available option is for us as the customers to leave our phone and pray for a callback, which can happen anytime - from minutes to months. I’m still waiting on mine, so you can imagine how the story goes.
In addition, the live broker that I mentioned before is only available for you to place your trades through them. When I tried reaching out for their help, however, they only briefly explained that they are not in charge of that and advised me to contact the customer support service, which is, you guessed it… unavailable.
Education and Tools SCORE: 21%
For educational purposes, you can find a few articles when you visit the “Learn” page of the Robinhood website. This may sound ok, but what I actually learned is that these articles are only organized by the time when they were published. Otherwise, they are not divided by the topic or otherwise gathered, which was a huge waste of my time while scrolling through each one.
Speaking of the articles, they seem to be the only form of education you can get from this website. There are no video tutorials, webinars, or other types of educational tools. I guess the Robinhood is expecting for us to come fully prepared and educated, which is a shame.