What is up with Nonexistent Customer Support?

[iboersma]

I signed up with NT last week with a lifetime license after demoing the great platform and reading/hearing about the "great" customer support that they offered as a "small company" vs. the big guys like IB, Tradestation, etc. However, while I still love the platform, I am unable to get any customer support at all - all my calls to them for the past 2 days have gone to voicemail and the emails I send go unanswered. For those long-term NT customers here in the Forum, is this normal for NT or just a recent change for them?

It's completely unacceptable for a futures broker to not have any reliable phone support and to let emails go unanswered for more than a day. If this lack of support is just a temporary blip for them, they should communicate that out to their customers. Unless things change on this front in short order, I am going to be requesting a refund of my lifetime license and will be looking to move my business to one of the "big guys".

[brucerobinson]

You’ll see a post by me after yours.
You asked for Feedback from Long Term Users of NT and Support. 2012, so I believe I am qualified to comment.
I cannot comment on NT Brokerage as I have never used them (I began using the platform before NT became a broker).
Support responsiveness has historically been good. The recent poor service, as reflected in the raft of complaints appearing here daily is the worst I have seen in that time.

There have been snippets of feedback as to why this may be (management change in Support handling etc), but whatever reason I think it fair to say handling of it has been dismal from a customer & in due course public relations standpoint as evidenced daily now here.

Re: quality of Support, now is not the time to ask me ;-(

[StealthM93]

Two quick comments, for whatever they're worth...

1. Ninja Trader, the company, has been under going significant changes and growth over the past year or more. Do a web search on Ninja Trader under news (not trading features/performance/how to code, etc.) You'll see that they have bought/merged with several companies in the past year or so. If you have ever been in this situation, you'll know that things can become chaotic. An example of this is the time duration between the last three NT8 updates - many months (like 6 instead of 2 to 4). Also, they bought their own futures brokerage and migrated all their customers over (including me). I'm sure this required resources that might have been in support, etc.

2. With the recent employment climate of the past year, finding good, qualified workers (and keeping them!) has been a real challenge for a lot of companies. This is especially true in technical industries like IT. In this case, for Ninja Trader this finding good developers who have an interest in trading.

To what degree either those apply here, I have no idea. But, something to consider.

Wishing you well,
Matt

[koganam]

Might it suffice to say that it is bad enough that after experiencing terrible support and arrogance from a clueless Team Leader, no less, I just kind of quit posting or asking for support. No I do not mean Jim, albeit he will probably send me an email castigating me for criticizing NT support personnel.

I signed up with NT last week with a lifetime license after demoing the great platform and reading/hearing about the "great" customer support that they offered as a "small company" vs. the big guys like IB, Tradestation, etc. However, while I still love the platform, I am unable to get any customer support at all - all my calls to them for the past 2 days have gone to voicemail and the emails I send go unanswered. For those long-term NT customers here in the Forum, is this normal for NT or just a recent change for them?

It's completely unacceptable for a futures broker to not have any reliable phone support and to let emails go unanswered for more than a day. If this lack of support is just a temporary blip for them, they should communicate that out to their customers. Unless things change on this front in short order, I am going to be requesting a refund of my lifetime license and will be looking to move my business to one of the "big guys".

[iboersma]

Thanks brucerobinson StealthM93 and koganam for your input here. I work in IT myself for a 1,500 person "start up" so I definitely understand about keeping good workers and the pains that come with acquisitions and mergers. However, what I don't understand is how Ninjatrader feels it is somehow "OK" to just leave their customers in the dark about the impact of these changes. Something simple like an email blast to their customers along with a banner pop-up on their website after logging in alerting folks to the fact that support response will be delayed would do wonders in terms of removing the "what the hell is going on" factor. Just seems like Customer Support 101 to me. I've let Matt Yukich know my frustrations and gave him the same suggestion to pass along to the powers that be at NT. I just hope they get their act together soon as this is certainly going to be a major liability for them to retain customers until it is fixed...

[StealthM93]

koganam and iboersma Points well made.

[bltdavid]

For those long-term NT customers here in the Forum, is this normal for NT or just a recent change for them?

I think it was Kate who commented that NT has implemented a new support
system for their support engineers -- and I think she was saying this nicely --
but I got the impression it has been a complete clusterfsck.

My sense was, the support folks don't read/respond to the forums via the
website, like mortal users do. I presume the support folks have a more
complete and deeply embedded set of forum tools built into their support
workflow.

Anyways, I think the migration to some new system has caused NT support
a tremendous amount of unexpected & unplanned headaches -- and it has
obviously become noticeable enough to hurt their reputation.

The real issue is: NT mgmt not taking full responsibility and issuing a public
explanation and apology for the grief this catastrophic upgrade has caused.

And, yes, IMHO, these last few weeks of supremely crappy and terrible
support response times is highly uncharacteristic for NinjaTrader.

Let's hope they can get it all straightened out real soon. Even so, once fixed,
there is gonna be a huge backlog for them to contend with.

But, like I said, I think NT mgmt silence is the real problem.

Just my 2˘.

[iboersma]

I think it was Kate who commented that NT has implemented a new support
system for their support engineers -- and I think she was saying this nicely --
but I got the impression it has been a complete clusterfsck.

My sense was, the support folks don't read/respond to the forums via the
website, like mortal users do. I presume the support folks have a more
complete and deeply embedded set of forum tools built into their support
workflow.

Anyways, I think the migration to some new system has caused NT support
a tremendous amount of unexpected & unplanned headaches -- and it has
obviously become noticeable enough to hurt their reputation.

The real issue is: NT mgmt not taking full responsibility and issuing a public
explanation and apology for the grief this catastrophic upgrade has caused.

And, yes, IMHO, these last few weeks of supremely crappy and terrible
support response times is highly uncharacteristic for NinjaTrader.

Let's hope they can get it all straightened out real soon. Even so, once fixed,
there is gonna be a huge backlog for them to contend with.

But, like I said, I think NT mgmt silence is the real problem.

Just my 2˘.

Amen on the deafening silence from NT management being the biggest issue, bltdavid. I think we collectively need to put the pressure on NT via email, phone, forum posts and critical Trustpilot posts to own up to this and provide some clarity on when we can expect the level of support to return to what it was before.