TD Waterhouse Discount Brokerage Review

I opened up a self directed RRSP and TFSA with TDW and couldn’t be happier. They waived the account fee when I was just below the minimum threshold on my RRSP account, and now that I’m above the $50k level I qualify for the cheaper trading fees of $9.99.

I find the platform easy to navigate and the research is top notch. Can’t really say I’ve had any bad experiences with TDW, although I’m not as active as other people.

I just tried to login this morning and the site was down. I take back everything I said 😉

Comprehensive review Mike!

Curious, what discount brokerage do you use, why, likes and dislikes? Will you be writing a post or do you already have a post about that?

Cheers,
Mark

“Upload some demos or online videos to show how features can be maximized – “taking a tour” is not very learner-centric.”

I guess Patricia Lovett-Reid isn’t doing a good enough job. She devotes 10 minutes a week on TD’s Moneytalk infomercial on BNN to maximize the features of webbroker. I wonder if there is some strange broadcast regulation prohibiting TD from adding the Moneytalk segment to their website?

I’m surprised to read the dislike about TDW charging $100 for LIRA that’s under $25K.

I’ve had one for four + years without any fees. Previouly, when I was charged $100 for my RRSP, I called to ask why when my total accounts exceeed the “household asset” point. Somehow the two had become unlinked so the TDW rep relinked them and refunded the fee.

At the time the LIRA was opened, the link was automatically created and presto – no fees.

i am not a day trader, but i wish i could buy & sell a stock in the same day occasionally. but you can’t hit the sell button when until your account balance shows that you own the stock, the next day. very frustrating.

I am extremely frustrated with TDWATERHOUSE ONLINE WEB BROKER, this company has been having constant problems with providing real time quotes, accounts are not up to date on daily bases, but that is not the only problem, there are no days or weeks that we do not have problem with this company logging in our accounts.

It is May 22 2013 all day I have tried to log in my account and I have not been able to do so, it has been on going problem for many years I do not know why I keep giving them chances, It is 45 mints and I am calling them trying to talk to someone to find out what is going on and yet no answer just hearing their goddamn on hold music. I have no idea how else I can express my frustration about TDWATER HOUSE ONLINE BROKAGE FIRM, My account number is 59j978 I am putting my account number to prove this is not a lie message, I am going to leave this message all over internet to make people aware of it, I am very close to jump of my roof because of TDWATERHOSUE, I have lost enough money in this market and tdwaterhouse has added grief and frustration to it, there have been days and I was quite sure that the market is going to be on rise and I can recover my money but when I came to log in I noticed problem logging in my accounts so I have lost many chances and I blame TDWATERHOUSE, I am a day trader in this volatile market so every second counts, so if you are looking for a online broker TDWATERHOUSE is very wrong one, you buy yourself so much problem, good luck

I’ve been with TD Waterhouse for some years(unfortunately), and finally decide to leave them without looking back. The original reason driving me nuts was their wash process, it’s really difficult to trace whether their currency conversion is correct or not. When I found mistakes and talk to their CSRs, they simply said it’s all done by program, and can’t be wrong, even not bother to look at the issue you are reporting , but funny thing is one of themselves admitted to me that it is big mess there.
One of my accounts lost the auto wash one day due a CSR’s mistake, but when I saw the issue later, and called in asking them to correct the error, the lady simply said she doesn’t see it was setup. How can you argue with this sort of crap when they don’t log their changes to client accounts.

The day they finally crossed the line was when I started transferring my accounts away… I did several trades during the period of transfer, and found out they transferred wrong stocks. I phoned them telling the mistakes they made, then they took weeks to move the stocks back and forth, but one thing they left in-resolved is the C$ cash from my stock sold. They are suppose to wash those cash to TD US Market before transfer, but they transferred C$ cash directly which means I’ll lose currency conversion spreads, twice, if I use these cach to buy US stocks again. Then I started long journey of trying to get my loss back, At first, they asked me to not worry and claimed that everything would be corrected as their transfer team is ‘professional’ (not sure if they believe what they were saying themselves). After tons of phone calls talking to different CSRs, finally a lady from TD Waterhouse told me, they won’t wash it as it’s too late and I shouldn’t have done trades during the transfer, I explained to her that they didn’t limit trades during any period and nobody from TDW ever used this excuse before (they use many others though). then she put me on hold, again, and came back with another excuse : “we don’t do wash if the trade is for transfer. “. I’m so amazed by the speed of TD Waterhouse building a creative excuse to piss off their customers.

What a big mistake it was to use TDW for some many years.

Don’t go to TD Waterhouse unless you want to add difficulties and challenges to your life.

TD waterhouse is good when things are good. But the second you have a problem, things get very slow, fast. If you mail in documents, they end up in a black hole. The people on the phone are very helpful, but their frustration with the black hole is obvious.
My worry is that when I close my account and transfer it. They will screw that up as well.

I just set up a TD Waterhouse account, and when I went online to look at GICs I wanted to invest in, TD only showed top bank ones, all with lesser rates than I’ve seen elsewhere (and were protected). Moreover, I get foreigners talking broken English when I call their line. It’s hard enough trying to figure this all out without that added stress. I’m going to cancel and go back to my regular banking.. even if it means less money.

“No hidden fees”??? I strongly beg to differ! I just got my April statement from TD Waterhouse – we had $292.00 in 5 shares of Tenneco Automotive. We’ve had those 5 shares for awhile. A couple of weeks ago we just got our statement, and we found that – while our account had inexplicably shrunk to $242.00 – there was no activity on OUR part, to justify that decrease!

The statement simply insists, that the brokerage had removed $50.00 worth of value from our shares, as a “cost basis” fee. (So much for “no hidden fees”!!)

There is – as previously noted – no activity on our part at all this past year. We didn’t buy anything and we CERTAINLY did not sell any shares. Just – ‘poof’ – @ 1/5 of our assets vanished into the ‘cost-basis’ thin air that seems to (among God only knows what OTHER hidden fees) inhabit TDWaterhouse.

My dilemma – if I transfer my shares to another company which (presumably) won’t rip off their customers quite so blatantly (all the while with the “NO HIDDEN FEES” promise) – what the HELL will TDWaterhouse charge me as a TRANSFER FEE? Half my holdings?

THIS inquiring mind, really wants to know!

OK, I don’t have much on account with them. Is that a reason for TD Waterhouse to (in my opinion) STEAL from their customers? Because, when the company swears in its advertising: “NO HIDDEN FEES” – there should be just that – no hidden fees.

This is important to me for more than our own account – we have grown children who were thinking of using TD Waterhouse as their own platform. All agree that “NO HIDDEN FEES” is a powerful incentive to deal with that company. In any case – this “Cost Basis” removal by TD Waterhouse, of 1/5 of our assets – certainly DOES amount to a “hidden fee”, at the very least!

My question – fee, for WHAT? What did TD Waterhouse DO, to be able to appropriate $50.00 on an account that had not been added to, nor subtracted from, in over a year?

At the very least, “cost basis” is just a scam to allow them to rob customers. I’d change to another company but, considering what TD Waterhouse just did to my account, for NOTHING – the Selling Fees that TD Waterhouse would charge, would likely wipe out my account in its entirety. I have to do SOMETHING (otherwise, my asset value will dwindle to nothing without my ever having done anything to my account, to justify losing it in this way)! I HAD (before this happened of course) been thinking of adding to this account, because all I was ever looking to pay was the known buying fee that they’d charge!

I seem to have no other option, though: as to consider this “cost basis” charge, however, as an unknown and therefore HIDDEN FEE by TD Waterhouse. Like I said in the beginning of this posting – “No Hidden Fees” by TD Waterhouse, is a total lie (at best, and in fact, a complete scam), any way they want to call it. Like the luckless individuals in the previous postings here – I definitely would NOT recommend TD Waterhouse for anything but an extremely creative way to take your money – all the while insisting: “NO HIDDEN FEES!”

You can remove my second post – I didn’t know that you didn’t like my first one, so I posted a shorter version. I prefer the first post that I sent, though.

as per my previous rant, i checked with nasdaq .com and webbroker had the right quote. the two free sites must have had wrong quotes. but i do not take back the 1999 basic remark.

it is most unreliable I have ever experienced. be prepared to have a lot of days service down or not avalible

Byers Beware
TD Waterhouse / TD Direct Investing have egregious business conduct and practices. Even if your accounts qualify for no fees they will always try and sneak fees through. They constantly make serious errors. They do not communicate with clients. Trying to correct their errors is exhausting.There is no recourse against them.
They make so may errors it is comical. They then even have the nerve to charge you fees when you leave because of all their errors.

Horrible service. I have been an option trader for 30 years, and have NEVER seen such poor service. First, being a US resident, trading a CDN RIF, I am forced to use their antiquated phone services. Today, I hung up the phone after waiting first, 27 minutes, then 22 minutes, then 21 minutes. This business operates as if they were selling lemonade on the street, rather than brokerage for worldwide equity.

What a horrible way to spend good money fixing a format that had the info at a glance instead of getting you to conform to this lousy new format. I have tried to be proactive by taking the time to respond thru the feedback button, phone calls, and also trying to respond to their emails re: the new webbbroker but find you cannot respond to their model of the world even though they are looking for feedback so I say to you forget it.

I have been a TD client for 30 years, and the item that attracted me to this brokerage was the availability of good research for investors. But, now they have just shattered that image, because they have stopped offering the splendid research that was given by Standard & Poor’s. They are offering, instead, Morning Star research which is pathetic by comparison to S&P research data. It is a disaster for me.

I opened an account with Td webbroker 2 years ago. With 2017 being one of the best years in recent memory(almost 22%), I managed to break even at best. Fortunately, I got most of my money out of the market before September of 2018. I blamed myself for the reason why I never made a dime in 2017, but now I’m re-thinking where the blame lies. I had the fangs, and a lot of other good stocks too. I did not invest much, only about 15k, but at an average return of 22% I should have made well over $3,000. Lets go low and say $3,000. I made a lot of trades, so fees were probably in the neighborhood of $1500(150 trades)…..Not sure what happened to the remaining $1500 in profit, but it evaporated.

It left me scratching my head, thinking I blew it all on commission fees. But over the past while I’ve watched stocks closely. On days where I should be up $200, I would see my balance up only half of that. I broke down every stock, pro-rated the gains/losses down to the penny, subtracted for any commission fees(if there were any that day), accounted for Canadian/US dollar changes. There were at least a handful of times I noticed this. I would call customer service, they would always say, “everything looks right on our end”…(of course). I always ask for them to have a manager call me back, as usual, that never happened.

So yes, the “no hidden fee”, false advertising(in my opinion), is a pile of bulls__t (in my opinion). That’s OK, if they don’t give me an explanation of the discrepancies soon, I’ll have my account investigated, and sue them, if need be. I plan on investing a lot more than 15k in the very near future. I want to at least know, if I’m goin to take it up the a__, I would at least appreciate a shoulder tap as a warning.

TD Waterhouse is not what it used to be. The system is down on a regular basis. I have been on the phone for one hour from 6 pm to 7 pm and still no one picked up the phone . I will not recommend it to any one and I am investigating other brokers.