Firstrade Reviews 

My overall experience was medium. Several times they ignored my emails or answered answers that have nothing to do with what I wrote.
When I talked to them about Withdrawal I saw that they start asking for all kinds of illogical things and become unpleasant. So I realized I wasn't going to stay with them. In the end transfer was fine.
Most of their representatives are very professional and kind I must say, the problem in my opinion is in the "back office". They must improve their service there. They must immediately allow those who want to withdraw their money without asking questions and without asking for anything (it didn't happen to me, but I read too many negative comments on this subject).
I personally did not feel at ease that my money would be with them so I decided to move
Hope they improve in the future

Support is useless. Service is fine as long as you have no problems. When you have a problem basically you get a response along the lines of

Nothing we can do about it.
Thank you for choosing Firstrade as your online broker.

Well I'm moving my trades to another online broker.

They blocked my money more than 6 years now!!!! The worst company I ever seen. I sent all documents they asked a couple of times and still nothing. The best way to make trading impossible. As I'm NHS trust member no trust from this people. Luckily there is other platforms easy to verify your account. I using CMC market, IG and eToro.

This company does not pay out. After saving with them for over a year, and it was time for me to draw my investment out. That's when all the problem began. I lost over $68,000. They left me in the bad way, and broke. Stay away from this company if you can..

They are a small company run by a family, and none of the main people live in the United States. They have business in China, but they have no license and evade financial supervision. They urge Chinese customers to remit money to the United States, but they can’t get it out. This is a very risky fraudulent company,
Advise everyone not to be fooled.

Worst service in the industry. Can not get $ transferred out of IRA. 25 days and counting. On hold now. 4+ hours on hold for 10 days. Next step is NY Attorney General. Beware.

I have been using firstrade for 3 years and I have to close account due to compliance reason of my new job.

I wired out all my fund and some of it is missing. My bank have no fees charged for remittance and firstrade denied any responsibility from their side. I'm now missing some of my funds. Never going back to Firstrade.

Have used the broker more than a year as a international costumer, almost never had issues. Very professional and good broker. Did withdraw money 2 times without any issues, did receive my Money within 2 days. That’s better than my local broker. Highly recommend. Don’t understand all these negative reviews!

I send all the requested documentation, send the documentation again, and they won't let me withdraw my funds.

I moved into a new home, provided the documentation as requested, and they deny my address change.

I send more documentation, speak to the same customer rep twice, Mr. C, regarding the matter and was told the docs were not enough.

SEC, here I come!

Today, 27 Jan 2022, at about 02:40 pm US Eastern, the Positions page of Firstrade stopped updating. As a result it is not possible to see the current value of any of the positions. As you can imagine this is an important factor when deciding whether or not to buy or sell shares.

Any broker has these basic functions it has to get right:
1. Show the current and correct value of the cash position, any other open position and the total value
2. During trading hours show the above using updated market quotes.

This has now been going on for over 30 minutes without Firstrade acknowledging it on their web site. I sent several emails marked as "URGENT - BUT" in the subject line and included screenshots to illustrate the problem. The only response I have is an automated reply stating the actual reply will take 1 or 2 business days.

This is the first time in 4 years this has happened. As other reviewers noted, a few days ago the cash balance was not correct on that day. Firstrade acknowledged that in the form of a notice on the web site. The issue was resolved the next day.

It looks as if software updates are rolled out without sufficient quality practices in place.

In summary: Firstrade is certainly suitable for investments where it is not important to have continously updated quotes, i.e., long-term investments where it doesn't really matter whether you check positions frequently. However, Firstrade is not suitable for other investments or trades such as leveraged ETFs, options or future. I'd judge the risk being too high because of the quality issues in their systems.

My account is missing money this morning. They claimed having technical issues, I want to wait till tomorrow to see if they fix the problem. Company of this kind cannot be trusted.

My funds are being locked for the whole day since pre-market hour as this company claims they are encountering issue to display the actual account value of some customers correctly. But the fact is the money in my account has currently disappeared and I have been unable to invest anything the whole day! I doubt where this company has taken their customers' funds to...
No action is done so far and no response from their CS.
Traders shouldn't use this company anymore. Imagine you can't sell or buy when you need / want to!

So far i have had very few issues . I have not tried to withdraw funds but every question i have asked has been answered right away. I dont agree with all their policies but they have been very honest and forthcoming with documentation. Site seems easy to use

I initiated ACAT out to transfer my positions to IKBR. They have rejected twice in 2 weeks. First rejection was about tax id mismatch between Firstrade and IBKR. I told that I am a nonresident international investor and do not have a US tax id. How could tax ids mismatch while I am not having one? That's ridiculous. The second rejection had no reason at all. I have filed a complaint with both SEC and FINRA.

I wanted to open a small account and practice a new options strategy w/o incurring a bunch of fees. That is what started me on Firstrade. I was willing to learn a new UI to do this. After opening and easily funding my account, I ran into the issue of not being cleared for the strategy (credit spreads). I called their customer service to find out why, because my TDA account lets me sell credit spreads. While the customer rep wasn’t outright rude, he was very abrupt and sounded angry. It was an easily solved issue (they did eventually approve me) but their customer service felt so off, I just decided to do this strategy in my TDA account. I initiated an ACH request to get my funds transferred back to my bank account. I figured it would take 5-10 business days and kinda forgot about it. Well, 3 weeks later I realized they hadn’t transferred my money and actually rejected the ACH. Why? Because they wanted a copy of my identification AND bank statement to release my money. The same bank account that the funds came from. They didn’t need these items to take my money, but they need them to give me my money back?? After talking to their customer service, and being told someone would contact me, I just decided to send them these things to get my money. Now, yes I sent them my ID and only the front page of my bank statement but I was told by their customer service rep that that would be fine. Apparently not. They need to see my whole bank statement to send me MY money. Ridiculous. It’s been 2 months and I’m still trying to get my money transferred back. This company is a scam.

Wire funds back is $35 and they said can not send money back to my 3rd country account. awful customer sevice

Dont recommend, terrible customer service . Get no help when it come to international accounts

Excellent and I have 3 brokers FT is my favorite one been customer for 10 years

Absoluty worthless. Can't trade anything low, can't transfer out, can't close your account. What good is this crap! And their fees are not cheap like they claim. Also they like to change their rules on trading fairly frequently.
I'll never use then again and wouldn't suggest them to my worst enemy. JUNK

If I could give zero stars I would. Firstrade locked my account and I have been trying for weeks to transfer to another brokerage due to their poor service. The transfer keeps being rejected and they can't tell me why. I have spent numerous hours on the phone to no avail. Eventually I got my other brokerage firm to help me out with the transfer. AVOID FIRSTRADE LIKE THE PLAGUE. THESE PEOPLE ARE UNPROFESSIONAL AND CLUELESS. You'd swear that it is a Mom and Pop business that they're running.