NexusFi: Find Your Edge


Home Menu

 





Topstep's Nick Dolby (Social Media and Community Coordinator) - Ask me Anything (AMA)


Discussion in Trading Reviews and Vendors

Updated
      Top Posters
    1. looks_one Topstep with 258 posts (612 thanks)
    2. looks_two bobwest with 121 posts (306 thanks)
    3. looks_3 Big Mike with 49 posts (167 thanks)
    4. looks_4 emini2000 with 36 posts (16 thanks)
      Best Posters
    1. looks_one Big Mike with 3.4 thanks per post
    2. looks_two DarkPoolTrading with 2.8 thanks per post
    3. looks_3 bobwest with 2.5 thanks per post
    4. looks_4 Topstep with 2.4 thanks per post
    1. trending_up 491,188 views
    2. thumb_up 2,123 thanks given
    3. group 387 followers
    1. forum 1,296 posts
    2. attach_file 44 attachments




Closed Thread
 
Search this Thread

Topstep's Nick Dolby (Social Media and Community Coordinator) - Ask me Anything (AMA)

  #1241 (permalink)
 
bobwest's Avatar
 bobwest 
Western Florida
Site Moderator
 
Experience: Advanced
Platform: Sierra Chart
Trading: ES, YM
Frequency: Several times daily
Duration: Minutes
Posts: 8,162 since Jan 2013
Thanks Given: 57,337
Thanks Received: 26,267


sharmas View Post
@Topstep is a great product for Traders to evaluate and work through their strategies

However what they lack and suffer from are their front line staff...

Moderator Notice
Moderator Notice


When one door closes, another opens.
-- Cervantes, Don Quixote

Can you help answer these questions
from other members on NexusFi?
ZombieSqueeze
Platforms and Indicators
Are there any eval firms that allow you to sink to your …
Traders Hideout
Deepmoney LLM
Elite Quantitative GenAI/LLM
Exit Strategy
NinjaTrader
NexusFi Journal Challenge - April 2024
Feedback and Announcements
 
Best Threads (Most Thanked)
in the last 7 days on NexusFi
Get funded firms 2023/2024 - Any recommendations or word …
61 thanks
Funded Trader platforms
39 thanks
NexusFi site changelog and issues/problem reporting
24 thanks
Battlestations: Show us your trading desks!
24 thanks
The Program
17 thanks
  #1242 (permalink)
 sharmas 
Auckland
 
Experience: Advanced
Platform: Ninja Trader
Broker: Zen-Fire
Trading: CL and ES
Posts: 778 since Apr 2010
Thanks Given: 3,822
Thanks Received: 750

thanks and doesnt surprise me at all


bobwest View Post
Moderator Notice
Moderator Notice



Visit my NexusFi Trade Journal
  #1243 (permalink)
 
SBtrader82's Avatar
 SBtrader82   is a Vendor
 
Posts: 587 since Feb 2018
Thanks Given: 222
Thanks Received: 1,333


I have been trading with TopStep since 2019, I have been funded a couple of times and always paid religiously 375 USD per month, plus many resets.
Last month I decided to simply stop trading with them this is why:
1) I wasn't informed that SierraChart was available again though I was a previous user of Sierra, it was enough to send an email but they didn't send any information. This cost me around 40USD per month to use MotiveWave on top of Sierra.

2) in their website they offered discounts to new users, so basically someone who was just starting out with TST would pay half my monthly price

it was a no brainer, I let them go.
However the thing that hurt me the most, was that nobody reached out to ask why I stopped paying after 3+ years. I have always talked good things about this company, and though we are miles away they were part of my project to become a trader.
I felt completely forgotten by this company, they just collected the fees everymonth.

I didn't expect anything, but it would have been polite to just ask "why are you leaving?".

Follow me on Twitter Visit my NexusFi Trade Journal
Thanked by:
  #1244 (permalink)
 sharmas 
Auckland
 
Experience: Advanced
Platform: Ninja Trader
Broker: Zen-Fire
Trading: CL and ES
Posts: 778 since Apr 2010
Thanks Given: 3,822
Thanks Received: 750


SBtrader82 View Post
I have been trading with TopStep since 2019, I have been funded a couple of times and always paid religiously 375 USD per month, plus many resets.
Last month I decided to simply stop trading with them this is why:

I didn't expect anything, but it would have been polite to just ask "why are you leaving?".

It has great intentions but always let down by their sub standard customer care agents. An orgainsation is a collective people who work towards the aims and objective of the orgainsation.

Looks like @Topstep has let some of its people believe they are bigger than the orgainsation itself, hence customer care is alien to them. They seem not care about the customers but grab new customers to make money by giving discounts.

Time has come for them to conduct a review and become a more customer friendly company. No matter how great a product is but if it has poor support and ZERO customer care, orgainsations don't last. People make or break Orgainsation. People will jump ships and leave the orgainsation in ruins.

Major training must be given to support and look after customers and especially long term customers who have been loyal to Topstep for years.

sharmas

Visit my NexusFi Trade Journal
Thanked by:
  #1245 (permalink)
 
SBtrader82's Avatar
 SBtrader82   is a Vendor
 
Posts: 587 since Feb 2018
Thanks Given: 222
Thanks Received: 1,333


sharmas View Post
It has great intentions but always let down by their sub standard customer care agents. An orgainsation is a collective people who work towards the aims and objective of the orgainsation.

Looks like @Topstep has let some of its people believe they are bigger than the orgainsation itself, hence customer care is alien to them. They seem not care about the customers but grab new customers to make money by giving discounts.

Time has come for them to conduct a review and become a more customer friendly company. No matter how great a product is but if it has poor support and ZERO customer care, orgainsations don't last. People make or break Orgainsation. People will jump ships and leave the orgainsation in ruins.

Major training must be given to support and look after customers and especially long term customers who have been loyal to Topstep for years.

sharmas

I think that their business model is now copied by hundreds of other companies, so market competition will bring prices down and unless they stand out for other reason people will just leave them.

Follow me on Twitter Visit my NexusFi Trade Journal
Thanked by:
  #1246 (permalink)
 
bobwest's Avatar
 bobwest 
Western Florida
Site Moderator
 
Experience: Advanced
Platform: Sierra Chart
Trading: ES, YM
Frequency: Several times daily
Duration: Minutes
Posts: 8,162 since Jan 2013
Thanks Given: 57,337
Thanks Received: 26,267


SBtrader82 View Post
I have been trading with TopStep since 2019, I have been funded a couple of times and always paid religiously 375 USD per month, plus many resets.
Last month I decided to simply stop trading with them this is why:
1) I wasn't informed that SierraChart was available again though I was a previous user of Sierra, it was enough to send an email but they didn't send any information. This cost me around 40USD per month to use MotiveWave on top of Sierra.

2) in their website they offered discounts to new users, so basically someone who was just starting out with TST would pay half my monthly price

it was a no brainer, I let them go.
However the thing that hurt me the most, was that nobody reached out to ask why I stopped paying after 3+ years. I have always talked good things about this company, and though we are miles away they were part of my project to become a trader.
I felt completely forgotten by this company, they just collected the fees everymonth.

I didn't expect anything, but it would have been polite to just ask "why are you leaving?".

I can understand your disappointment, but let me offer a different perspective.

I just went through the posts in this thread that kept track of the developing situation between Sierra Chart, Rithmic and TopStep. The posts on the subject began in Feb of 2021. TopStep was projecting at that point a likely adoption target in the second half of 2021 (which is when it actually did occur, by the way). I was interested, and so I followed things as they developed. TopStep did not do a good job of keeping people up to date, but someone following this thread would have known what was happening, and would have found out in November of 2021 that they were offering it again, which is in the late part of their projected timeframe. (This was from a post by a user, not by TopStep.)

So while I agree that TopStep could and really should have been proactive in reaching out to their customers and to customers who had been users of Sierra Chart, it was possible for someone with a strong reason to be interested to have kept themselves up to date, and to not have been taken totally by surprise. It is also a trader's responsibility to know about the things that affect him and to be informed of what is happening with them.

As to how you feel now about TopStep, that is for you to say, of course. In your shoes I might well agree, because it would have been easy -- and good business -- to simply send out an email to former Sierra Chart users to let them know that it was coming, and to notify them when it had come. But that is also not for me to say, either way. I am simply making the point that developments were being tracked and were available in this thread and a person could have been prepared for the change, when it came.

I hope you are doing well. I miss your posts on your trading, which were interesting and informative.

Bob.

When one door closes, another opens.
-- Cervantes, Don Quixote
Thanked by:
  #1247 (permalink)
 sharmas 
Auckland
 
Experience: Advanced
Platform: Ninja Trader
Broker: Zen-Fire
Trading: CL and ES
Posts: 778 since Apr 2010
Thanks Given: 3,822
Thanks Received: 750

Thank you @SBtrader82 and sometimes one believes in loyalty towards a company and stick with them.

However it is very much evident that @Topstep has no value towards loyalty or customer care. This is a clear sign of when a company shows how arrogant they have become as they feel they are market leaders and they can treat their customers like ATM machines.

Time to say goodbye @Topstep and go to LeeLoo.https://www.leelootrading.com/.

All because the customer care agents have no respect and ZERO customer care. Michael Patak might not even know how badly his people are treating his customers and all the negative feedback.



Sharmas


SBtrader82 View Post
I think that their business model is now copied by hundreds of other companies, so market competition will bring prices down and unless they stand out for other reason people will just leave them.


Visit my NexusFi Trade Journal
  #1248 (permalink)
 
matthew28's Avatar
 matthew28 
United Kingdom
 
Experience: Beginner
Platform: Bookmap
Broker: Stage 5, Rithmic
Trading: US Equity Index Futures
Posts: 1,250 since Sep 2013
Thanks Given: 3,500
Thanks Received: 2,532


sharmas View Post
All because the customer care agents have no respect and ZERO customer care. Michael Patak might not even know how badly his people are treating his customers and all the negative feedback.

I'm currently in a Pro account. Last week I received an email saying I had broken a rule exceeding the maximum number of contracts and the account had been closed. I knew I hadn't as I print a trade list in my journal each day that includes the maximum position size I had on for each of the trades during the session.
As I live in the UK I sent that in early in the morning then received an email back in the afternoon apologising as it was a problem that had affected CQG feeds or TSTrader accounts.
I missed that day of trading, but as I am not paying any fees anyway, no big deal, and the original account was reinstated by the end of the day.

That was Nick A. who I know has dealt with various customer service requests of mine during my time with Topstep. Like all my previous dealings with Topstep support agents, I have always found them courteous, professional and quick to sort out any issue. I have often said the same in the feedback form I receive after they solve and close the issue. I did that last week and even got a quick thank you reply back from Nick.

I was going to comment last week with your original post, but then thought I wouldn't bother as Topstep had my feedback, but this time I will just to put up a different opinion.

My impression is that trading related companies have had a 'very good pandemic', with lots of people looking to supplement their incomes over the last year or so, as trading provides the obvious attraction of allowing a person to potentially make money sat at home. So companies have seen their customer demands grow at the same time as frequently being required to send their staff home from the office. Support, services and speed of response are bound to suffer. Even once everybody is back in the office there is probably a lot more customer demand and higher workload now than there was before which might require an increase in staff hiring and training.
Clearly you are not happy with the support you have received but that doesn't mean all the other customers are unhappy too. You'll know as well as I do that in most cases on the internet people who are complaining are a lot more active and visible in making sure they post about it and telling people compared to the often much larger majority of others who are quite happy just quietly getting along fine.
Just my opposite experience for counter balance.

( I will say though, it is a shame that Topstep no longer replies here anymore. They replied quite frequently up until March last year then only one post since then. (Same with the Jigsaw AMA thread, frequent replies up until June 2020, one-and-a-half years ago, and one post since then, but in both cases mostly just the sound of crickets)).

You do not win as a trader, you just get to play again the next day. If that game doesn’t appeal to you then you should not trade. Gary Norden
  #1249 (permalink)
 sharmas 
Auckland
 
Experience: Advanced
Platform: Ninja Trader
Broker: Zen-Fire
Trading: CL and ES
Posts: 778 since Apr 2010
Thanks Given: 3,822
Thanks Received: 750


matthew28 View Post
As I live in the UK I sent that in early in the morning then received an email back in the afternoon apologising as it was a problem that had affected CQG feeds or TSTrader accounts.
I missed that day of trading, but as I am not paying any fees anyway, no big deal, and the original account was reinstated by the end of the day.

That was Nick A. who I know has dealt with various customer service requests of mine during my time with Topstep.


And one shouldnt be surprised as the error was at @Topstep 's side and thats the least they could and should have done.

being robotic and dogmatic about the issues is where its run by robots with no human values.

Visit my NexusFi Trade Journal
Thanked by:
  #1250 (permalink)
 
Tymbeline's Avatar
 Tymbeline 
Leeds UK
Market Wizard
 
Experience: Intermediate
Platform: Tradovate
Broker: Tradovate
Trading: MES, MNQ
Frequency: Several times daily
Duration: Minutes
Posts: 644 since Apr 2015
Thanks Given: 2,342
Thanks Received: 1,054



matthew28 View Post
I will say though, it is a shame that Topstep no longer replies here anymore.


I take all your other (customarily articulate, well-informed and fair) points above, too, but have to say that I also agree with this one. I suspect it's costing them some potential customers, too. I find it very hard to understand.

Thanked by:

Closed Thread



Last Updated on January 31, 2023


© 2024 NexusFi™, s.a., All Rights Reserved.
Av Ricardo J. Alfaro, Century Tower, Panama City, Panama, Ph: +507 833-9432 (Panama and Intl), +1 888-312-3001 (USA and Canada)
All information is for educational use only and is not investment advice. There is a substantial risk of loss in trading commodity futures, stocks, options and foreign exchange products. Past performance is not indicative of future results.
About Us - Contact Us - Site Rules, Acceptable Use, and Terms and Conditions - Privacy Policy - Downloads - Top
no new posts