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4/9/19: Applied for AMP account
One of my last questions was about trading experience. I checked "None".
Reply from AMP: "Thank you for registering with the AMP Trader Portal. A representative will be contacting you regarding your account soon."
4/16/19: Received phone call from Johnny at AMP asking how my trial with MultiCharts was going. I let him know that it was going OK but I was still waiting for AMP to get back to me. He said he would have somebody get back to me.
4/17/10 from AMP New Accounts Manager: "Hello, Thank you for the inquiry.
- Please reply back to this email in details, What type of consulting is your business, What you do exactly? ( send email: [email protected])"
I explained and got this reply a few minutes later: "Hello, Thank you for the email.
Please answer to the questions below:
- Please reply back to this email, who has access to email address [[email protected] ]? Is there anyone else also who can access this email?"
My reply 2 minutes later: "It is possible for my wife to access this email address, but she rarely, if ever, does."
More than a week after my initial application and my MultiCharts trial started, I finally get my review from AMP and find out I have to now apply for a joint account. I did the application the next morning.
4/22/19: Finally, I get this: "Account is opened for Jeff O'Neal (xxxxxx)
Simply follow the funding instruction provided in the link below." At the link, 3 options are given: Wire, ACH, Check
This is the explanation for "Wire": "Wire transfer is the fastest way of funding your AMP trading account. For (Non-USD) Wires the Correspondent Bank charges an Intermediary Fee ranging from 10.00 – 20.00. This is not an AMP fee, 100% no benefit to AMP for this Intermediary Fee. This is charged by the Correspondent Bank before your deposit reaches the AMP account. AMP will deposit the final amount received into your AMP Trading Account."
The ACH is not what you get from other institutions and agencies. AMP does not facilitate the ACH. Rather they provide this info for you to work it out:
"ACH details: AMP Global Clearing, LLC Customer Segregated Funds via ACH.
AMP Global Clearing, LLC Customer Segregated Funds
221 N. LaSalle St.
25th Floor
Chicago, IL 60601
*ACH deposits will be made available in 3-5 business days after an ACH is received."
...and for checks:
"We only accept checks drawn from U.S. Banks
We accept personal checks
All personal checks will be held 5 business days to clear
We do not accept cashier’s checks, money orders, third party, or traveler’s checks
Include your AMP trading account number in the Memo Section of the Check"
I'm in no hurry to start trading as I am taking the Earn2Trade and Jigsaw Trading courses, so when given funding choices that involve spending $10 to $20 for wire transfer and no charge for the other methods, the choice seems like a no-brainer.
I contacted my credit union about the ACH and this was their reply: "You can do an electronic transfer through Bill Pay, but usually unless it sends it directly to a financial institution or merchant (such as PGE, Comcast, etc) it will actually mail out a check. This is still a good option because everything is scheduled by you online and you would have full record of the transaction. When you enter the information through Bill Pay, you would enter the numbers provided by them on their ACH field.
We can do an ACH internally, but only to other financial institutions, not to merchants. The ACH option is typically something companies themselves have enabled through their websites, and where can pay them directly using card or banking information."
In the past, my Billpayer service has recognized vendors that are capable of receiving electronic payments and my payments are completed in 3 days or less. So I set up a payment to AMP on 4/22/19.
5/1/19: I noticed I had no data feed from AMP and sent them a message asking about it. This was their reply: "Once live account is funded with minimum of $100 – you will get streaming, continual access to both live and demo.
Here is the link to the funding instructions:"
5/13/19: Still waiting for AMP to accept the funding payment they likely have had in their possession for at least a week.
I'm still in no hurry since Earn2Trade has provided me a data feed, I have accounts with Schwwab and Ameritrade, and I am still learning and practicing. But my disenchantment with AMP grows by the day.
Jeff, since you opened your account utilizing Optimus Futures as your IB, I feel a sense of responsibility as far as your experience.
Let me start by saying that for the last 48 hours I have been in touch with AMP's Treasury, and sadly there was never a deposit from your organization through the method you chose to deposit.
Just like all regulated FCMs, AMP would process any customer funds deposit the same business day received. Even a bill paycheck, would be submitted for processing the same business day it is received. AMP offers three types of funding methods, Bank Wire Transfer, ACH, and Check. Depending on your desired speed of access to these funds in your trading account is your choice.
Second, all the procedures you had to go through as far as account opening is due to regulations, and the effort to protect your account. Any additional information where clarification is necessary may add extra time to the account opening.
I was hoping that our phone conversation would shed some light on the process that FCMs have to go through and an entire team reached out to help you out.
To resolve this, I would be more than happy to make a conference call with your financial institution that debited your account. I am here to assist you with the procedure.
Thank you,
Matt Z
Optimus Futures
There is a substantial risk of loss in futures trading. Past performance is not indicative of future results.
Trading futures and options involves substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for all investors. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results. You may lose more than your initial investment. All posts are opinions and do not claim to be facts. Please conduct your own due diligence. Use only Risk capital when trading Futures.
1 800 771 6748 local 561 367 8686 email [email protected]
Matt, you have been great to deal with throughout this experience with AMP. I appreciate all the time you have spent working with me on this and guiding me through the process. I recommend Optimus very highly.
I appreciate your offer but as I indicated in my email to you and AMP, I called my Billpayer service yesterday morning. They verified the check was sent and should have been there around the 1st of May, but their records do not show that the check has been deposited. They said they would contact AMP to try to locate my payment and to work with AMP to set up electronic payments. They told me this may take up to two days.
In going back over this transaction, I now understand several things I had no clue about on the initial pass. The funding link for AMP comes up with an account number. Thinking that account number was unique to me, that is the account number I entered on my Billpayer service. But that number that AMP labels an "account number" would more properly be considered a routing number. The account number unique to me was certainly not on the check sent to AMP.
But in this is another illustration of the concerns I have with the handling of matters like this. I sent an email to AMP describing this issue of the "account numbers". In that email I gave the two account numbers (their funding account number and my individual account number) to AMP. The next morning I received an email reply to my prior email to AMP and in their reply they asked for my account number. Since I cc'd you and I applied to AMP through Optimus, you were able to provide the account number I had emailed to AMP yesterday. Wait a minute, I thought I was supposed to be the old forgetful guy!
You do have a unique account number, and when funds arrive at AMP, they get allocated directly to your account.
In your case, I am not familiar with BillPayer and how they issue the check. However, first it has to come to AMP, and then they allocate the funds by name. So somewhere details were filled out with Billpayer could cause this delay.
In an attempt to save the small wire fee where your funds could be applied the same day and platform and data feed received, here we are chasing a check that AMP did not receive, and we focused on details that are just time-consuming. Again, if you wish to get your rep from Billpayer on the phone, I would like to resolve this. Please PM me or email me, we captured enough real estate about this issue :-)
Matt Z
Optimus Futures
There is a substantial risk of loss in futures trading. Past performance is not indicative of future results.
Trading futures and options involves substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for all investors. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results. You may lose more than your initial investment. All posts are opinions and do not claim to be facts. Please conduct your own due diligence. Use only Risk capital when trading Futures.
1 800 771 6748 local 561 367 8686 email [email protected]
I appreciate your straight-shooting manner and I hope you can appreciate that in me. I am posting this info to hopefully help others that are new to trading like I am. So I am continuing the thread despite your trying to take it offline.
I have attached a snapshot of the electronic payment online form I can use to pay for my Internet and CATV service. I can pay many other vendors in one or two days this way. This is my understanding about how ACH is supposed to work. How hard would it be for somebody like AMP, in the financial industry, to come up with something like this? Instead, AMP provides ACH info for their clients to devise their own way to send money to AMP this way.
You and I have had this conversation. AMP gave me 3 choices. I am in no hurry to start trading. One choice costs at least $10 to $20 and the other two are free. My credit union advised me to use the Billpayer route. That seems like a no-brainer to me.
I did not know that after AMP dropping the ball on my application, they would be right on time with stopping my data feed due to the delay in payment processing. But I now have a data feed from another source, so I am in no hurry to start paying for AMP's data feed.
Now, my concern is where is the $1,000 I sent to AMP over 3 weeks ago? You are concerned about things that are "time-consuming", but you want to go back over ground I have already covered by calling my Billpayer service again. They are researching the payment and told me it would be up to two days before they have an answer. If I call them with you on the phone, I can only imagine we would be told the same thing.
I can wait a couple of days now that I have alerted Billpayer and AMP about the check and the account number issue. And maybe my experience will help somebody else. I trust your assertions that AMP is a good clearing house but they could do a better job in this early going, unless one-off characters like me are just not worth much extra effort. And if that is the case, I understand.
This post is not really to answer your question since yours is an old post. I was trying to repose to a post saying something to imply there is problem with AMP withdrawal process but now I couldn't find it. Since I just make a withdrawal from AMP I want to point out it takes one day for the fund to show up not instantaneously like PayPal
One day is reasonable because they have to check across risk, CME fees, platforms fees, etc.
Matt Z
Optimus Futures
There is a substantial risk of loss in futures trading. Past performance is not indicative of future results.
Trading futures and options involves substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for all investors. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results. You may lose more than your initial investment. All posts are opinions and do not claim to be facts. Please conduct your own due diligence. Use only Risk capital when trading Futures.
1 800 771 6748 local 561 367 8686 email [email protected]
Kiwi: "Avail yourself of support as something went seriously wrong betwixt account & bank & bank & account."
I got an email notification of a post by Kiwi, but I do not find it here.
Hopefully, I can bring this thread around to a lesson for somebody who has not yet run the AMP gauntlet. I'll give my take-aways up front for those who only read a few lines.
AMP and Billpayer are big, faceless firms focused on efficiency to extract profits from lean, focused services. They are not set up to handle glitches or anomalies like a $1,000 check without the particular identifying info on it they need to easily route it and credit it to an account.
AMP formally offers ACH but does not functionally facilitate it -- forget ACH unless you have a slam-bang way of facilitating it from your end. Write a check or wire transfer funds if the cost is justified in your situation.
Their disclaimer is their philosophy -- AMP will not take responsibility for or accommodate balls that are dropped by you or by them. If they drop the ball and delay the processing of your account application, it is up to you to hurry up and get funds to them if you want to use their data feed. A corollary to this is that AMP presents a façade of "AMP can do no wrong". If this sounds extreme or erroneous, do some research on this and Big Mike Trading forums. Use the keyword "lawsuit". I found this out AFTER I started this thread.
The perspective of some is $10 to $20 to wire transfer funds is chump change but $15 for a monthly data feed is an insurmountable mountain that only cash in AMP's hands will scale.
Many want to speak to this issue from experience and/or hindsight. They are not able to appreciate the perspective of the fellow who is new to this business. I did not have the benefit of knowing the nuances of how AMP does business and the pitfalls to avoid. Now I know a little more and I am flying it through the flak.
In the time I have been dinking around with AMP, trying to get an account approved and funded, I have started two different accounts with TD Ameritrade, rolled over an IRA, funded the other trading account, and I have been trading for several weeks. As to the notion of paying more for handholding, with TDA, I got a data feed and top notch software (not pared-down) when I opened my account, after reading posts on futures.io, I negotiated lower commissions on trades, and TDA was no bed of roses. TDA is just more forgiving to somebody new to this industry.
You might ask why bother with AMP, then? Good question. I use the Jigsaw DOM and I have to pay somebody for data to use Jigsaw. With AMP, I can use the data and trade right on the DOM. It is a marriage of convenience. I'm sleeping on the couch.
Based on what I now realize about AMP, I definitely would not attempt ACH for funding my account. But I would not wire transfer funds either. I would write a check with the info AMP requires to be put on the check, I would staple the check to a sheet of paper with my AMP account number written in big, bold letters, and I would mail it. I would only wire transfer funds if I had a compelling reason to justify the expense.
Seriously folks, how many $1,000 checks does AMP receive that are unaccounted for? If it is a lot, they should have figured out how to deal with it. Just telling me up front that lost checks are shredded -- try again, would be more efficient than trying to get AMP and Billpayer to talk to each other and figure it out. It would have saved me $25, too. If this is an unusual circumstance, then a single unaccounted for $1,000 check should stick out like a sore thumb.
After trying to get the AMP and Billpayer cats herded, to no avail, I finally had to spend $25 to cancel the lost check. $10 to $20 proved to be the cheaper and much faster route, but still not the wise choice for me. It was a cheap lesson I am sharing with futures.io -- forewarned is fore-armed.
After cancelling the check, I am still in no hurry to start trading, and I now have three other data providers, so I am in no hurry for the AMP data either. I wrote a $500 check, stapled it to 4 pages of emails with my account number handwritten in big bold red letters. I sent the check Friday, 5/17/19. Monday AMP emailed saying they had not received my check. Tuesday, AMP emailed saying they had received my check and it would be held for clearing for 5 - 7 business days. Waiting on AMP -- sounds like a theme for a song. I'll suggest it to Brad Paisley.
I also scheduled a Billpayer payment of $250. If/when it clears, I plan to trickle in small Billlpayer amounts every week or so to see if I can get Billpayer funding to go electronic.
I have been with AMP now for about 4-5 years, and we never had a customer who's funding was lost. Further, we dealt with customers who placed two digit funds on testing the wires or six figures, and all accounts and funds have been accounted and placed in customer's accounts. The customer above accuses AMP when the check from his company has never shown up. We did reach out his institution, and the one email provided bounced, and the other has yet to get back to me to resolve this. We suggested canceling the check to alleviate the customer from any potential loss of funds.
It is rare that I would come to the defense of any FCM in such an aggressive manner, but considering that Optimus Futures is the choice of IB, I followed this with AMP staff as well and aware of their efforts. The treasury of AMP has gone above and beyond to resolve this, and I genuinely feel bad that people who assisted in this specific case, are reflected here in rather a negative light.
I thought that once we receive the second check and treasury will inform him, all issues will be resolved. Instead, I see comments on waiting when all checks need time to clear as oppose to wires where a customer could be set up the same then it is received.
Sadly, Optimus Futures will have to remove itself from the equation at this point. Despite all my efforts to resolve this whether, by timely emails, phone calls, or any other means, our efforts come back to AMP in the form of accusations.
At Optimus Futures, we are privileged for every customer that comes to us. Customers face many choices, and this is why we appreciate it when they choose us. In return, we do our best to service customers fast and efficiently while always providing objective advice. But, I am also conscious of my staff's time, and I do not want to be in a situation where certain circumstances could take me away from my time, dedication and the focus I need to maintain for the sake of our trading and loyal customers, and the onboarding of new customers.
I appreciate everyone's understanding of this specific situation. Also, I want to wish the customer all the best in his trading journey, and let everyone know that he was a very cordial guy during our phone communications.
Thank you,
Matt Zimberg
CEO
Optimus Futures
Trading futures and options involves substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for all investors. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results. You may lose more than your initial investment. All posts are opinions and do not claim to be facts. Please conduct your own due diligence. Use only Risk capital when trading Futures.
1 800 771 6748 local 561 367 8686 email [email protected]
I have never had an issue transferring money to or from AMP. (Of course my transfers each way are Wire as ACH not available from/to NZ - but still never had an issue or delay).
My 2cents for some balance to the reviews/discussion.
Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future - Niels Bohr, Danish Physicist
