Complaints

Making a complaint

In the event that you are dissatisfied with any aspect of the service provided to you by Alpari (UK), you should contact our Client Services Department as soon as possible on +44 (0)20 7426 2900 or via email to support@alpari.co.uk. They will be happy to help you and most complaints can be resolved at this stage. We have a dedicated complaints handling procedure to ensure your complaint is thoroughly investigated and that you receive a fair outcome. A copy of this procedure is available on request. If you have a trading dispute please provide as much information as possible. We will require your account number (login in MT) and ticket number of the order in question. Before you go ahead and lodge a dispute, please take a look at our 3 most common mistakes listed below and see if any of them apply to you. Please note all trading disputes must be lodged within 2 business days after the grievance has arisen.

Should you remain dissatisfied with Client Services’ response you can escalate your complaint to the Compliance department who will investigate your complaint independently and impartially. You should either ask Client Services to escalate the complaint to Compliance or contact Compliance directly either by email to complaints@alpari.co.uk or on +44 (0) 20 7426 2820. You should include as much detail as possible to ensure we are able to send a timely, final response to you.

If the complaint is still not resolved then at this stage the Compliance Department will provide you with details of the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS), who is the official independent expert in settling complaints between consumers and businesses providing financial services. They can be contacted on complaint.info@financial-ombudsman.org.uk.

Three common Mistakes:

1: Bid / Ask prices.

Every currency pair quote always has 2 prices; a BID price and an ASK price. When buying a currency pair you will pay the ASK price and when you are selling a currency pair you will pay the BID price. If it seems like your stop loss or take profit order has been executed too late or too early or has not triggered at all, please confirm whether you were trying to buy or sell at the time. The charts in MetaTrader 4 show BID prices only so if you were trying to buy a currency pair then you must adjust the price you see on the chart by adding in the spread.
For example, you are short in GBP/USD at 1.8545 with a take profit order at 1.8500. On the chart you can see a low of 1.8498 but your take profit order has not been executed. A quote of 1.8498 should be viewed as 1.8498 BID / 1.8501 ASK which means your take profit (1.8500) order was one pip away from being executed.

2: Market gaps/slippage.

Orders are sometimes filled away from your desired price due to gaps in the market. This occurs because currency prices can sometimes be very volatile or liquidity can be thin, especially during news announcements. During these times orders cannot always be filled at the exact price if there is poor liquidity in the market. Orders are never guaranteed because if volatility is high, prices can be missed and we may not be able to obtain a quote for you at the price you requested. This is usually due to a consensual widening of spreads by all the leading financial firms. When attempting an instant execution order you may be re-quoted within a few seconds and in the case of a pending order you may experience slippage. Stop loss and take profit orders are not guaranteed and may also be affected although we will always provide the best possible price considering market conditions at the time. Our official policy on order execution can be seen in our Terms of Business, clauses 5.23-5.29.

3: Unauthorised Access.

If you believe that certain trades were carried out by unauthorized parties, you should check the PC from where the trades originated. You can do this from your own platform by clicking on the “Journal Tab” in the “Terminal” window and then right clicking within the “Journal” window and selecting “Open”. From there you should be able to view all daily log files that record all actions done on the account with all the relevant details included. If you use MetaTrader 4 on more than 1 PC you must remember to retrieve log files from each PC to have a complete record.

4: Re-quotes.

You may be re-quoted if the current quote changes whilst a Dealer processes your request. Re-quotes can be reduced if in the order window you place a tick in the “Enable maximum deviation from quoted price” tick box and select an appropriate value in the maximum deviation field. If you do not press the “ok” button within 3 seconds, the quote will become invalid.

5: Error Message “Trade Context Busy”.

The error message “Trade Context Busy” will occur if you have given MetaTrader an additional instruction before it has completed an earlier task. Usually this is because of multiple mouse clicks or a hyperactive EA; restarting MetaTrader should resolve the issue.

We treat all our customers fairly and try to settle all disputes ourselves. If you feel you would like to take your complaint further, you have a right to pass the complaint onto the Financial Ombudsman Service if:

If Alpari (UK) has sent you a letter and you are not happy with the final response to your complaint
If it has been eight weeks since you registered your complaint with Alpari (UK) and you have not received a final response.

Here is a link to the FOS.