Forex Broker Scam, wow what a low company
Forex-Swiss.com found a new way to grab money from traders - Yesterday, 07:13 PM
Forex-Swiss.com found a new way to grab money from traders
Bucketshop brokers have all kinds of tricks to take money from traders. Once traders get sick of the usual games involving slippage and other broker tricks, most of them will at least let you withdraw your money, minus any fees listed on the broker's website and withdrawal forms. Forex-Swiss (aka FXCH, aka Foreign Exchange Clearing House Ltd.) doesn't seem to care that undocumented fees are charged. Forex Swiss doesn't even seem to care that their math makes no sense.
If you check the reviews for Forex-Swiss at the FPA, you'll they are one of the few brokers to have earned and maintained a 1 star rating for an extended period of time. FPA member Raimundas must have missed the reviews. He opened an account. After an incident of very bad slippage cost him a lot of money, he tried to close the account. Since slippage can be so hard to prove as deliberate or not, the FPA doesn't us it as a sole reason for a scam finding. Had Raimundas been paid back in a timely fashion, that would have been he end of the issue.. Instead, delays happened and then he was paid back less than he was owed.
We in Scam Investigations have always suspected that long delays in withdrawals serve 2 purposes. First, some people don't like to fight and will give up and go away quietly. This lets the broker keep all the money. The second is that some people are grateful to get any money back, so won't question unusual fees. We already know some brokers managed to skim $10 or $20 off of wire transfer fees, but Forex-Swiss came up with something different.
It appears that it is impossible to withdraw all of your money from an account at Forex-Swiss. You have to leave $50 in to keep the account active. This is clearly stated on their withdrawal form. We think it's a little harsh, but would not pursue a case based on this. If you want to close an account, they charge $80. We could not find that on their website anywhere or on their withdrawal forms. FPA Investigator Gerard asked, and was told it was on the form. It wasn't.
We have never heard of any other forex broker charging an account closing fee. We also consider it to be very strange that the fee is larger than the amount needed to keep the account open. That means it's cheaper to leave an account open forever than to close it. We wonder if there would be a surprise “inactivity fee” to grab that last $50 later if the account wasn't used. Since the closure fee is not documented on the withdrawal forms we could find on the website, we have no choice but to consider this to be theft.
Forex Swiss also charged him 4% for a credit card withdrawal in addition to the $80. We consider this to be excessive, but not a scam all by itself. The problem was that the amount deducted from Raimundas's account balance was over $100 above what would have been deducted even with both of these fees.
Raimundas asked for explanations and links to where these fees are listed. No one would answer those questions. Forex-Swiss's representatives kept insisting the amount paid was correct. Gerard asked and was also never given a serious answer. Instead, he was given what we would consider to be a nonsensical threat...
Quote:
Be advice every time as you have sent us email with requires and we spent our time to respond to you, 50 USD investigation fee will be charging from the clients accounts and/or will be charged from your side if the client do not have enough funds left in their accounts . The proper invoices will be sent to you in order to cover our expenses.
This means that Forex-Swiss not only won't recheck their own math for a client. They also threaten to take more money from clients or to bill the FPA for trying to help traders who are victimized by Forex-Swiss's accounting department.
Gerard wrote back and promised that the FPA willl process and pay any invoices that Forex-Swiss sends, as long as Forex-Swiss pays a 200% "potential scam company invoice processing fee". 50% of the fee would be fully refundable (less any banking fees and other costs the FPA incurs) if the issue is later resolved.
Gerard gave Forex-Swiss 48 hours to either pay the money still owed to Raimundas or to show were these fees were documented and to show how the calculations could come up with the amount Forex-Swiss paid. The alternative was that he would submit his final report to the FPA Scam Investigations Committee. They did neither.
Raimundas sent them a copy of the withdrawal from downloaded from the Forex Swiss website that showed no account closure fee. Their reply included this...
Quote:
For Bank wire transfer closure account fee is 20 usd.
For Credit card transfer closure account fee is 80 usd, because credit
card banks charge 4% for withdrawal.
This means that Forex-Swiss took out 4%, then charged $80 because they took out 4%, We still don't know why they took out even more. The bank wire withdrawal form makes no mention of an account closure fee.
And there was more...
Quote:
Be advice, you will be charged 50 usd investigation fee, per every
email sent to us from forexpeacearmy or other company, in order to
cover our legal expenses.
There are also 500 usd fine fee for publishing scam about our company.
We will ask Gerard to send a link to this article to Forex-Swiss. Raimundas has already placed a fraud watch on his credit card, so they won't be able to take any more of his money. We look forward to seeing their invoice.
We can reach no other conclusion but to consider Forex-Swiss to be a scam. We warn traders to not open accounts with this Forex-Swiss. If you have an account with them, we recommend you find the fastest, cheapest way to close it immediately.
FPA Scam Finding against Forex-Swiss.com
Raimundas' s original complaint
FPA Review Page for Forex Swiss
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