Investorline Broker Miscalculates Interest And Tries To Keep It

Here is another tale of BMO incompetence and thievery:

I have a margin account with the Investorline brokerage through which I fooled around with daytrading for a little while.  One of my MOs was to sell short if I though a stock was going to fall in the near future.  To sell short I have to borrow stock I don't have from the brokerage, for which I am charged interest.  After I make the short sale, I immediately put in a buy order to cover at some lower price and wait for the stock to go down.

It so happens that one time the stock moved down the same day I bought it.  So for this example suppose I sold 100 shares at $50 and rebought at $45, thereby making $500 profit.  Investorline has a bug in their system that if you buy to cover a short sale on the same day their system gets confused and puts you into 2 positions simultaneously.  So at the end of the day my balance looked like this:

-100 shares @ $50 (a loan of $5000), and simultaneously 100 shares @ $45.

Their computer was still running the juice on the $5,000 even though I had covered in less than 8 hours!

One day maybe two months later I get around to reconciling my statements.  I notice that they charged me a big amount of interest, in the hundreds of dollars.  I knew that this was too high so I go back and calculate what I think I should have paid over the past two months.  The amount was something like $15.  I sighed and called the morons, prepared for an ordeal that only BMO can deliver.

• I tell the CSR that Investorline is charging me interest that I shouldn't be paying.
• The CSR I get says I'm paying interest on my short position.
• I tell him I covered.
• He says ok and makes an entry, telling me it's fixed.
• I ask him to fix the back interest too.
• He says no problem, he'll zero it back to the start of the month.
• I say nonononono.  You've been charging me for this month and two months prior.
• He says he can't tell what the interest should be adjusted to.  He says I should tabulate the transactions I made and send them by fax so he can fix it.

That last request makes me want to just kick someone's ass.  This is the bank: They're the ones who keep records.  Their best expertise should be to keep track of things.  And this pathetic loser had the gall to say that I should send him the figure he should reconcile to.  In the end I agree to send it to them because I'm too cowardly to unload on a CSR.  I use their own online system to list my transactions and make the calculation -- something they obviously could do on their own.

<wait a few days>

No call back.  So I call the idiots again:

• Me: "Yeah, how about that interest adjustment we talked about?"
• BMO loser: "I can't make an adjustment that far back, we'll have to get Vince my supervisor."
• Vince: "Hi, we aren't going to make any further adjustments.  The CSR already zeroed your interest for this month."
• Me: "Yeah Vince, except you owe me for this month plus two others in the past."
• Vince: "I don't know anything about that.  We did you a favour by zeroing your interest to the beginning of the month.  I think that's more than sufficient."
• Me:  "No it isn't sufficient.  You did me no favour, unless it's a favour to wrongfully take $200 and return $50 later."
• Vince: "How did we wrongfully take from you.  I don't see that."
• Me: "Your CSR asked me to prepare a reconcilliation, which I did.  Haven't you looked at that?"
• Vince:  "What does it say?"  He shuffles papers.  "This goes back 3 months.  You are expected to come to us within 30 days of an error.  This goes back too far."
• Me:  "Excuse me!  You steal from me and if I don't catch you right away then shame on me, you get to keep the money?  I'm not accepting that answer.  You have a reconciliation, which you should have produced by the way.  Look at the thing, compare it to your own records and you'll see plain as day that you overcharged me.  Just pay it back.  It's easy."

It goes on like that until finally he goes through the recon line by line with me on the phone.  We come to the number that I should have paid and he finally agrees to credit it back.  Then he has the balls to tell me that if I sell and cover in the same day I should call that in.  What a doof.  Maybe he should log the bug into his computing department so they can fix their software.

Moral is, as always, run don't walk from Bank of Montreal.