Forex Scams

More than 300.000 costumers trade with Instaforex and this makes Instaforex one of the biggest broker around. Overall Instaforex is very popular but nevertheless you have to ask if Instaforex is reliable or not. Just because it’s big doesn’t make it trustworthy.

There are scam complaints with every (!) Forex broker and Instaforex is no exception. A lot of complaints come from trader that tried to abuse the Instaforex bonus program and got their account locked. This is a good reason and the broker has the right to do so. There’s no need to worry and you won’t have any issues if you don’t abuse their bonus program.

Some trader don’t like the fact that the Instaforex server seem to be a bit slowly if you try to scalpe. These are technical difficulties that occur rarely and not every trader experiences these problems. So no need to call Instaforex a scam.

There was a dispute between Instaforex and the Forexpeacearmy. You can read about here. Instaforex is not the only broker that rages against Forexpeacearmy and criticizes its behaviour. You have to judge it on your own what to think about this dispute.

All in all you have experiences that go both in the positive and negative direction. But you have to say that most of the negative reviews are not well founded. It’s not enough to call a forex broker a scam without the necessary evidence. So we can’t even call Instaforex not reliable until illegitmate practices are proven.

FXCM is a very big Forex broker with plenty of thousand traders and with a high trafficked website. But you don’t hear only good things about FXCM. Quite the reverse: You hear a lot of bad things. Of course there are complaints about any (!) Forex broker but in the case of FXCM it does not look very good. We collected the trader opinions and experiences for you that you can judge whether FXCM is a scam or not.

One of the most common complaints is that everything works smoothly with FXCM as long as you lose. But if you’re trading profitably the story begins. They close positions or even your account for no real reasons. This is the most common way for a broker to cheat on its traders. Closing your trades is not possible for the following reasons: “Data not found”, “Waiting for Dealer”, “Your order didn’t execute because price moved”.

There are also complaints about the bad costumer support. They seem not to act in the traders favor and sometimes don’t even care about costumer complaints.

Of course there are traders that are happy with FXCM but there are not many of them. There was also a law suite against FXCM a few years ago.

Although it seems that there was no result that does not mean that FXCM is reliable. The complaints are very serious. Also it seems that there are differences between hourly and daily charts which is pretty strange. It seems that short term charts look different to “help” traders making the wrong decision.

Traders also talk about margin calls that should not be executed.

If you take a look at the websites of the NFA you can see that FXCM already had to pay a serious fine. You can read more about it here.

You can’t really prove that FXCM is a scam but you can say that there are a lot of strange things going on and it is not a reliable Forex broker at all.

Experiences with FXCM

Let’s take a look at other traders experiences with FXCM.

I opened a position and placed a stop loss. I left my PC afterwards for half an hour. After coming back the stop loss was executed although the chart did not even touch my stop loss. I tried to talk to their costumer support and they said that I closed the position myself a few minutes after openening it. Another employee told me to take a look at it but he never came back to me.

FXCM is a solid broker with a good platform.

Another large Forex broker that also offers an ECN account and thus fits the needs of more professional traders is called FXOpen. FXOpen is pretty large and you can find a lot of feedback online. We already tested FXOpen here: FXOpen review and we made nothing but good experiences with this broker. It’s not even close to a scam, we can already say so.

But there are also bad opinions on FXOpen. Not everybody is happy with them. Although there’s no Forex broker that everybody likes but you also have to take a look at negative experiences to stay objective.

A few traders compalin that trades go in the wrong direction immediately after opening a position or that you get scammed when you make profit. At brokers like FXCM or Forex.com you will hear this rather often but pretty rarely about FXOpen. It’s pretty interesting that the traders that say so only make short reviews without any evidence. Complaints that FXOpen is not regulated and not a real company are simply not true.

FXOpen offers an open forum for traders. Obviously we can’t prove it but the forum looks pretty objective and there’s not a lot censorship going on. This makes FXOpen more reliable.

In summary you will also find negative experiences with FXOpen but it’s pretty evident that most of them come from competitors. The nicknames and the way they write are pretty similar. The Internet offers this opportunity. You just don’t have to pay too much attention to reviews that look suspicious.

Easy-Forex is one of the larger Forex broker and its vision is to make FX trading as simple as possible for slightly intermediates and intermediate traders.

There’s a pretty famous dispute between an unsatisfied trader and Easy-Forex. The trader created a website to make others aware of ” Easy-Forex scam”. This can happen to every broker because every broker has traders that think the broker scams and if one of them wants to create a website there’s nothing you can do. Well, Easy-Forex thought there’s something they could do. A user at Forexpeacearmy (FPA) was linking to this website and Easy-Forex wanted them to take down the link. The made FPA responsible for this and threatened to sue them. This is a pretty stupid step by Easy-Forex and it doesn’t make them look good in this spot.

But let’s stick with the facts. Easy-Forex is regulated by IFSC which is a pretty good sign and not the case with Plus500 for example. Forexrealm doesn’t categorize Easy-Forex as scam but the experiences are pretty mixed (which is the case with every single broker).

Some traders have not been happy with the Easy-Forex trading platform and losts were refunded and the initial deposit went back to the origins. This is pretty good and makes Easy-Forex look reliable. You can’t find this service with every other broker out there. There were also cases where a stop loss did not work and the broker made a refund. But it is a bit strange that spreads vary a lot. Other brokers are more constant when it comes to spreads.

Some traders don’t like the Easy-Forex support. These are some negative experiences but it’s not close to scam. Overall you can say that there are no reasons to call Easy-Forex a scam. Although there are some traders that don’t recommend Easy-Forex but that’s the case with ever single FX broker. If you pay too much attention to individual traders that call a broker a scam you can’t trade Forex anywhere. You have to go with the majority and it says that this broker is not a scam.

eToro is one of the largest Forex broker in the world. And this is also the major reason why you can also find lots of negative reviews about eToro. Because with that many traders there are traders that lost money and think it’s the fault of the FX broker. But is eToro really a scam? We highly doubt that. What makes us say that?

Have you ever written a review about a broker when you were very happy? If so, you’re an exception. Because most traders don’t talk about solid and reliable broker. They just want to find a scapegoat when they lost money. And most traders lose money in the long run. It’s a fact. So if you put these two facts together you already have the reasons why even reliable broker like eToro are called a scam by some people.

In this article we take a look at the experiences other traders made with eToro. Great sites where you can find lots of good reviews are forexpeacearmy and forexrealm. What traders did not like at the beginning was the fact that the eToro platform did not run smoothly and sometimes frooze. These problems should be fixed now. At least nobody complains any more and we were also trading for a few months at eToro without problems.

Our deposits also worked out well (with Moneybookers). One trader complains that he made a Paypal deposit that never reached his account. We have to assume that this is an exception and there was some technical difficulties. No reason to think that eToro is a scam.

But there are also positive experiences with eToro that are published. As already mentioned, most of these positive experiences stay unpublished. Most positive reviews concern the software that is a big plus. It runs stable and offers more and more features to the trader.

The experience with the eToro support is mixed. Some traders are not happy with the support and others say that the support is fast and competent.

It’s a fact that eToro is a large broker with hundreds of thousand happy traders. eToro would not be able to grow this fast if it’s a scam. Lots of people recommend eToro to their friends and not because of the scam that is taking place.

Plus500 is a well known Forex broker that attracts new players with a no deposit bonus of $ 25. That means that you register at Plus500 and your account will be credited with $ 25 without making a deposit. This is a very good offer for newbies although you can’t do that much with an amount this small. And on top of that: Plus500 is not known as the most reliable broker to say the least. There are a lot of scam accusations recently.

First of all, Plus500 seems not to be registered properly at the International Financial Services Commission. You can read more about that here: IFSC. As you can see the Plus500 Ltd. Is not regulated by the International Financial Services Commission and that’s why you have to pay attention when trading with Plus500. Forexpeacearmy doesn’t call Plus500 a scam and there are some larger sites that promote Plus500. This sounds good but there are plenty of scam complaints you should worry about:
One trader explains that the spread is always one Pip higher as it’s supposed to because Plus500 closes the position one Pip lower than the platform shows. Other trader claim that credit card information have been misused.

Obviously there are extraordinary complaints that accounts have been closed when traders were realizing earnings. Plus500 claims that they were trading against the TOCs and Plus500 has the right to close accounts when that’s the case. This is something you won’t hear about eToro.

Forexrealm calls Plus500 a scam. But you have to add that Forexrealm is only based on trader reviews and the sample size is not that big. So if 20 fake reviews from competitors appear it can be highly influencial.

Nevertheless most of the opinions go in one direction. There’s no real proof but lots of complaints that show that there’s something wrong with this broker. He very fact that Plus500 is not regulated by the IFSC is reason enough to be suspicious and better stick with another Forex broker. There are too many other options that you have to go with Plus500.

Liteforex is a relatively unknown Forex broker and not as popular as eToro, AvaFX, Oanda or others. But there are enough opinions on the Internet that you can judge whether this broker is a scam or not.

Overall there are a lot of good experiences and only a few negative experiences. This is pretty strange because if there’s so much positive response why don’t you hear more about this broker? The major reason should be that Liteforex is very passive with their marketing unlike eToro, AvaFX, ForexPro or others.

Something that may look strange for traders is the fact that Liteforex is using a .org domain. org domains are pretty much the same as .com or .net but not that popular. Sure, brokerreviews is also working under a .org domain but we’re no FX broker and you can’t deposit money here. We think that Liteforex could invest a couple of thousand dollars to buy the .com domain and look a bit more reliable.

Overall the experiences are positive with a few critics. We suggest that you take a look at the trader experiences yourself.

Liteforex experiences

Very quick and easy to trade. I’m happy with this broker.

I hate the fact that there’s no demo account.

I don’t have any issues with Liteforex. The Metatrader platform is great and it only takes a few hours until the money is in my account.

Forex.com is obviously the best Forex domain on the Internet and guarantees a lot of traffic. But that doesn’t mean that Forex.com is automatically a reliable broker. In fact, there are a lot of complaints that something’s wrong there just like FXCM. One major complaint is that trades are automatically closed without the traders knowledge.

This is the easiest and most common way how a Forex scam broker works and how a Retail broker can maximize its profits. A reliable broker does not simply close positions or changes the take profit which causes the position to close earlier and make the trade less profitable. And there are way more experiences with Forex.com that make us worry.

Forex.com seems to close trades without any action of the trader and claim that the trader closed the position by himself. This is something that works great for the broker because you as a trader can’t prove that you did not close a trade. It’s very bad that traders made such experiences with a broker.

Another major complaint is that the trader verification seems to work randomly. Some traders need to send documents that don’t even exist and if they can’t send them they are not verified to withdraw earnings. This is a great way to scam traders because the broker can enjoy his free lunch: If the trader loses he wins and if the trader wants to withdraw profit they deny to do so. Obviously this is not the case with every single trader. But the fact that these cases do exist makes Forex.com look less reliable.

The next complaint has nothing to do with scam but also makes Forex.com look less reliable. They try to make you deposit as hard as they can. They call you several times a week and send daily emails trying to lure you to make a deposit. Obviously this is standard in this industry but not in the way Forex.com does it. It’s just too much and a reliable broker like AvaFX or eToro may send you such emails occassionally but not every day combined with phone calls.

Forex.com is not a proven scam company but it looks not very reliable to say the least.

Experiences with Forex.com

To judge a Forex broker it’s best to take a look at other traders experiences:

I’m trading with them for 3 years and never had issues. Great platform and good spreads. The support is great. They also pay interest in your account. Way better than FXCM.

They don’t let me withdraw because the address does not fit with my account address. The money I deposited a few hours earlier was accepted in no time and now they don’t want me to withdraw.

Oanda is a well known Forex broker that also works as ECN broker. With a few hundred thousand traders you can say that a lot are very happy with them and quite a few are not. The reactions are very mixed which is the case with most of the other brokers. Let’s take a look at the other traders experiences with this broker.

Something that a lot of trader complain about is the fact that Oanda seems to adjust spreads to their advantage. That means that the spreads become unbeatable after news events compared to other brokers. This also increases the spread that is actually showen. So if you except to pay 3 Pips it’s more like 8 Pips when the market moves in two different directions.

Furthermore it’s not rare that the connection to the server is lost and that makes it impossible to trade properly.

All in all you can say that there are a lot of complaints about Oanda but also plenty of traders that are very happy with them. But there’s no doubt that you will experience some issues using this platform.

Experiences with Oanda

The following quotes are taken from major forex review sites and show the experiences other traders made with Oanda.

I don’t see any problems with this broker. The spread is tight and there’s virtually no minimum to open a live account.

I don’t like Oanda at all. There are a lot of important features that are missing.

After news the spread is well over 25 which makes it impossible to trade.

I made more than 10.000 Trades and don’t have any problems. Great broker.

The delays are incredibly high and cost a lot of money!

Interbank FX is a Forex broker that not everybody trusts. There are popular issues with the execution of trades and with the connection and now this broker has open complaints from the NFA. They already had to pay high fines. This does not make this broker look reliable at all.

The most popular issue is the execution with trades. It’s common that the the platform freezes and you can’t proceed with your trades. You don’t have a chance to close positions and this can be very expensive. Traders experience suspicious slippages and “off quote” messages that make it hard to trade profitably.

To call Interbank FX a scam is not right or at least an unfounded decision. But you have to call Interbank FX at least not as reliable as the most reliable brokers out there.

Experiences with Interbank FX

Let’s take a look at the experiences of (former) Interbank FX traders:

The trading platform delivers wrong information. The spread is way higher as it’s suppsed to be. You will only recognzice when you close your position. This is not very transparent to say the least and I would not recommend trading with Interbank FX.

If you ask the NFA you will see that there are many complaints and they had to pay some big fines in the past. There must be a reason for that. They also try to lure you to make higher trades then you want.

You have to be very cautious with this broker. Slippage happens all the time. The software freezes or loses the connection. If I want to open or close a position I get the error message “off quotes”.