An Unfortunate Experience With Samco

[NJ78]

Now we know atleast how some of these people make a living. Trading against clients.
And they're asking to refer my friends and acquaintances.

Samco probably has a proprietary trading desk. This highlighted line in their T&C page points to some telling clues.

 

[SAMCO]

Dear Sir,

We are very sorry that you had an experience like this and we sincerely apologize for the same.

However, this is a singular event. On the day of 2nd August, there was a genuine margin shortfall of funds in your account, because of which trades weren't getting executed. The order rejection was clearly for the shortfall of margin and the mobile app would've recommended to bring in additional capital for order.

And the observation that you weren't able to buy the long CrudeOilMini of Sept. expiry on 2nd August was because you had already short one CrudeOilMini of Sept. and you were taking the long position of the same, so was going to be a square-off.

As for the order of Friday night i.e. 3rd August, thousands of customers were logged in and we received no complaint and there was no downtime reported at 11 pm. If such an issue would've occurred, we usually recommend clients to jump on to the call & trade facility that we provide till 11.30pm, so that our clients may never have to face such a problem due to technical issues. And we have adequate staff available to respond to the calls, and the wait time on our call & trade service is less than 30seconds.

As for the complaint on the email, we had checked the call logs and while on the call with our executive, you too confirmed that you weren't facing such issues in the live environment. And our executive suggested you to kindly call us up, if & when you faced this issue in live situations, so that we may troubleshoot if it was a device specific issue.

We attempt to maintain very high standards of service & we would like to sincerely apologize for all the inconvenience. Our intent is to always provide our clients with world-class service, both from a product & customer support perspective.

 

[newtrader101]

In response to your points:

1.

On the day of 2nd August, there was a genuine margin shortfall of funds in your account, because of which trades weren't getting executed. The order rejection was clearly for the shortfall of margin and the mobile app would've recommended to bring in additional capital for order.

And the observation that you weren't able to buy the long CrudeOilMini of Sept. expiry on 2nd August was because you had already short one CrudeOilMini of Sept. and you were taking the long position of the same, so was going to be a square-off.

I was short on CRUDEOILM AUG FUT, (not SEP), and was trying to buy CRUDEOILM SEP FUT. The cash available and the the margin required can be seen in the picture above.
Actually when the funds were required, I transferred 6.5 K from the bank and then all this happened. The screenshots were taken after the transfer.

I hadn't revealed this fact yet (below):
After calling your customer care about the margin issue, he disconnected the phone w/o answering my queries as to why you did not execute orders even with sufficient margin. Then I emailed your support--the same email which had earlier responded to my emails. Surprisingly, my mails bounced this time. See screen shot of email below:

2.

As for the order of Friday night i.e. 3rd August, thousands of customers were logged in and we received no complaint and there was no downtime reported at 11 pm. If such an issue would've occurred, we usually recommend clients to jump on to the call & trade facility that we provide till 11.30pm, so that our clients may never have to face such a problem due to technical issues. And we have adequate staff available to respond to the calls, and the wait time on our call & trade service is less than 30seconds.

As for the complaint on the email, we had checked the call logs and while on the call with our executive, you too confirmed that you weren't facing such issues in the live environment. And our executive suggested you to kindly call us up, if & when you faced this issue in live situations, so that we may troubleshoot if it was a device specific issue..

Fortunately the call with your support when they disconnected the call has been recorded. And I made three calls on 02/08/18, at the end of which he disconnected abruptly (w/o resolving the issue). Would you expect me to call you again, after this kind of treatment? On Friday night (03/08), the market was about to close, I was frustrated with the previous day's experience and anxious that it was a weekend and the crude prices could reverse. I tried many times to place the order through Stock Notes, each time it stalled at this screen:

I kept clicking on SQUARE OFF but nothing happened.
I went back and tried again. Same result.
I tried on both the lots AUG and SEP --same result.
All other functionalities of the app were working.

NOTE: If you insist, there are ways to check the record of my attempts to square off. Each attempt would have sent certain packets of data to your server. But need we go into that now?

 

[SAMCO]

View attachment 27304 View attachment 27301
I was short on CRUDEOILM AUG FUT, (not SEP), and was trying to buy CRUDEOILM SEP FUT. The cash available and the the margin required can be seen in the picture above.
Actually when the funds were required, I transferred 6.5 K from the bank and then all this happened. The screenshots were taken after the transfer.
I hadn't revealed this fact earlier.:
After calling your customer care about the margin issue, he disconnected the phone w/o answering my queries as to why you did not execute orders even with sufficient margin. Then I emailed your support. The same email which had earlier responded to my emails. Surprisingly, my mails bounced this time. See screen shot of email below:
View attachment 27305



Fortunately the call with your support when they disconnected the call has been recorded. And I made three calls on 02/08/18, at the end of which he disconnected. Would you expect me to me to call you again, after this kind of treatment? On Friday night 03/08, the market was about to close, I was frustrated with the previous day's experience and anxious that it was a weekend and the crude prices could reverse, and it happened.

Dear Sir,

As you can see in the screenshot, the amount of Rs.5507.96 is the amount which was available in your account on the 1st of August 2018. It wasn't the updated value of that day (even if you transferred the amount). The actual amount in your balance is displayed by pressing the quick stats (five lines on the top right-hand corner of the screen).
So, if the order was rejected due to margin shortfall, you cannot consider the amount visible in the Assets. And you confirmed it yourself that you transferred the additional funds, required for the order, after the order rejection.
And the executive who spoke to you on that day, we have his recordings too and we couldn't find any action of misconduct with the call.

In case you have any questions or need any help, please do contact us; we're happy to help you. Thank you for your time.

 

[newtrader101]

Dear Sir,

As you can see in the screenshot, the amount of Rs.5507.96 is the amount which was available in your account on the 1st of August 2018. It wasn't the updated value of that day (even if you transferred the amount). The actual amount in your balance is displayed by pressing the quick stats (five lines on the top right-hand corner of the screen).
So, if the order was rejected due to margin shortfall, you cannot consider the amount visible in the Assets. And you confirmed it yourself that you transferred the additional funds, required for the order, after the order rejection.
And the executive who spoke to you on that day, we have his recordings too and we couldn't find any action of misconduct with the call.

In case you have any questions or need any help, please do contact us; we're happy to help you. Thank you for your time.

• Of course I transferred the fund because the margin was insufficient. The order rejection that is the issue here happened after I transferred the fund. The bank records will show the time of transfer. I called your executive after this. I didn't call your executive before the transfer. It was an express transfer from within your site.
• In one instance you say that it takes 24 hours to update the fund records of transfer. But finally your system allowed me to place the order that day itself (020818), after repeated mails. Isn't this contradictory? (In fact, in my last email to you that day, I wrote that I'd publish this incident on Traderji).
• I can provide the phone recording where it was abruptly ended.
• What about the rejection of the email?

Your mobile app Stock Notes is said to be one of the best. Which means the chances of it being a technical malfunction are very rare. Which raises a lot of unpleasant questions. After this incident, I'm very apprehensive about placing bigger orders on Samco. At the very least, you'll have to do something urgently to address this concern.

 

[newtrader101]

• Of course I transferred the fund because the margin was insufficient. The order rejection that is the issue here happened after I transferred the fund. The bank records will show the time of transfer. I called your executive after this. I didn't call your executive before the transfer. It was an express transfer from within your site.
• In one instance you say that it takes 24 hours to update the fund records of transfer. But finally your system allowed me to place the order that day itself (020818), after repeated mails. Isn't this contradictory? (In fact, in my last email to you that day, I wrote that I'd publish this incident on Traderji).
• I can provide the phone recording where it was abruptly ended.
• What about the rejection of the email?

Your mobile app Stock Notes is said to be one of the best. Which means the chances of it being a technical malfunction are very rare. Which raises a lot of unpleasant questions. After this incident, I'm very apprehensive about placing bigger orders on Samco. At the very least, you'll have to do something urgently to address this concern.

Because I've more urgent matters to attend right now, I'm not pursuing justice on this at the moment. That is not to say this will be forgotten. Somebody is accountable for the loss of my money- the only question is whether it was a deliberate appropriation or negligence.
Through out my life, I've always tried to be truthful, even at severe cost. I know how many times I pressed that square-off button. If it is a negligence, the person responsible must come forward and apologise. If it is the former (appropriation), the person responsible will get what he deserves.