Robinhood
reviews and complaints

After you've been validated with another verification, which was supposed to take "a couple days" but has taken weeks and now months, they will lock up your funds for months. I contacted their customer service, who closed my cases without resolving the problem. I can't believe what I'm hearing. I've never delt with such a company, they just will not recognize their responsibility and do not offer any solution.

I've been using this app for a few months now, so I'm of the belief that I can offer a fairly comprehensive review.

Overall, this is a fairly good app for new traders and investors, as well as longer term investors who don't require the quick executions and other things necessary for day traders. There have been times where I have submitted sell orders when the market was moving fairly quickly, and Robinhood would show a message that the order could not be submitted at the time, for whatever reason. This is fairly rare, I'd say it might've happened once it twice for each 100 orders I've submitted, but this is something that you must take into account, because when you're in a big position and the market is moving against you, you want out NOW, and sometimes you may not get it. For active day traders, though this app may cut commission fees, there are definitely some things that it is clearly missing that are vital for day traders.

Nevertheless, I enjoy this app quite a bit. It has a fairly simple interface, which I think is great for newer traders, as many other platforms tend to have too much going on, leaving beginners completely confused. With this app, it is very simple to place limit buys, market buys, limit sells, and market sells, stop losses, and stop limits. The app does not offer trailing stops.

It is clear to see that the app was not designed with day traders, let alone scalpers, in mind. One big issue I have with this app is that you can't enter a stop loss order at the same time that you are filling out a purchase order, so if a stock quickly moves against you immediately upon entering a trade, you could incur a fairly significant loss. This is not as much of an issue for those trading blue chip companies, but for those who decide to dip into penny stocks for potentially larger percentage gains, this is an issue you must consider as these stocks have a tendency to move very quickly.

Secondly, this app does not allow you to have both a stop loss order and a limit sell order at the same time. If you try to create a limit sell order while a stop loss is going, the screen will say that you already have all of your shares marked for sell. This is a major issue, because it is vital for trading apps to be able to protect your downside with stop losses, while also allowing you to lock in gains on the upside with limit sell orders simultaneously. If this issue alone was fixed, this would immediately become a 5-star app.

Lastly, it would be great if this app offered price alerts, so that if when a stock on your watchlist reached a certain price point that you'd chosen, you'd get a notification or sound alert. This would be very useful, as the app currently offers nothing of the sort.

In conclusion, the app is fairly good, but it has lots of room for improvement. It would be great if (1) the app offered the option to enter a stop loss on the same screen where you initially purchase a stock (2) allowed you to have both a stop loss and a limit sell order going simultaneously (3) offered price alerts. The third suggestion is not nearly as vital as the first two, but until the first two suggestions are taken care of, this app will be fairly ineffective for day traders. It's not bad for swing traders and positions traders, as long as they have other tools in place for doing more in-depth charting and analysis.

I got into Robinhood and investing because of the promise to stay commission free. I studied and watched for a few years with low amounts to get a grasp, paying attention to percentages opposed to actual dollar gains and losses. Then came the fractional share which took that approach to a new level. I got more confidence over the last few years because of that and started investing a more substantial amount. The debit card came around that same time which I hadn’t been able to use much with my banking approach but I liked having the option. The phone support was an amazing addition giving a general calm in times of concern.

The beta crypto wallets really caught my attention because I could put the coins on my private wallet after a commission free purchase. Robinhood only offered the mainstream coins so I still find myself using Coinbase, Binance.US, and Uphold for alt coins. However I’m super excited that they just started offering 4 alt coins. This leads me to believe they will start rolling out new coins as they get thoroughly vetted for potential risks.

Now they just recently split cash management from the brokerage account into its own insured account with a rewards program giving me more incentive to run my income through Robinhood. I get paid with real-times payments and Robinhood spend is naturally compatible with that. So now I can get paid instantly, transfer a percentage to my brokerage/crypto account send my bill money to my bank with zelle and use the leftovers to pay for food and transportation with the rewards card. They let me round up my purchases and at the end of the week they match them with a random percentage ranging from 10-100%. Then they take that money and buy the asset of your choosing letting you slowly build wealth without noticing. This comes in handy when times get tight. Even though you don’t consciously invest your still investing something and better yet Robinhood is rewarding your efforts with a match.

They still have some things to improve on but I’m excited for what the future holds for us. While the GameStop fiasco broke our trust they have been working hard to never let that happen again with promises to increase their cash on hand (which it seems they have) to cover us fringe investors when our ideas work out and volatility ensues. Hopefully they do more to decrease their reliance on other mega players in the investment world.

The things I’d like to see for improvement are because the college kids you got into investing are growing older and it would be nice if Robinhood grew with us as we make families and pursue our careers. That being said joint accounts and beneficiaries are a must. This could make me close my fidelity account which currently has the majority of my investments. I can’t leave my family in a bind if I pass suddenly. I’d also like access to a discounted cash flow calculator on each investment’s detail screen. We should be able to choose different formulas and they should provide hints to which one works with which industry while still allowing you to break norms using an unconventional formula. I’d also like to see instant settlement on stock purchase and sale but that might take an industry wide participation. I’d like to see more things added to the Robinhood Gold. Perhaps better debit card rewards, maybe discounts at various shops and restaurants, could create a breaking news subscription. Maybe even look to Amazon prime for ideas on bringing more value to Robinhood Gold.

Never trust the graph that shows stock prices. It’s wacky and I think they intentionally made it like that. Don’t ever hit “limit sell” and use the number they display. Suppose a stock is selling for $50. You must put limit sell, because if you put market sell, it will ALWAYS sell less than true value 100% of the time so that Robinhood can steal Pennie’s from the poor. So you hit “limit sell”. After doing so, the suggested price you sell for will ALWAYS be less than true value, so you must erase the number they suggest and put the true value you want to sell at, or else youll end up selling a $50 stock for $49 etc. the same goes for buying. If you can buy for $50 per share and do a market buy, Robinhood will work hard to make sure that you pay $51 for the share. If you put limit buy, then you might assume that Robinhood will be honest and populate the limit buy price with the true stock value at $50, but no, they will always suggest you buy it for more than $50 so they can steal some Pennie’s. At the end of the day, you have to be SUPER careful using this app. It’s super shady. And their main priority is to take money from the poor people to give it to the rich companies who are their “true customers” in their eyes. We as users are just ponds like in FB, but except here, we constantly give money and Robinhood works hard to make sure they steal something from you at every chance they get. Another example is the graph of premarket prices. For example today, DQ was at -2% premarket and I put a limit sell to try and sell it at 0% change from previous day. It immediately executed the sell, and IMMEDIATELY afterwards, the premarket price of DQ suddenly displayed +2%. This is because the graph that Robinhood shows was made to deceive you into making choices that will lead to Robinhood stealing Pennie’s from the poor. For example, this morning, the price showed $50.26, I put a limit sell at $50.93 from previous day then price showed $51.45. Why? Because Robinhood wanted to scare me to sell at $50.26 (thank god I didn’t), and they went to their rich customers that buy these orders, sold it to them for like $50.30 or so, so that the rich customer bought the share for cheap AND Robinhood pockets like 15 cents. That’s what they do. They are all about deceptions to make sure that they can steal from poor people and give better deals to rich people. Whoever made Robinhood should die. The world is better off without such shady people. Unfortunately, it’s a trap too. Because they’ll work hard to make sure you lose, and once you lose, you’ll want to keep your money inside the app so that you can make your losses back and walk away after breaking even. So they keep people trapped. I can pull out my cash and take to another app. But I just want to make my money back first, because if you make money, Robinhood doesn’t, and I don’t want to let Robinhood win. The evil people in the world shouldn’t always win. After I make my money back, I’ll search for another app that’s more honest. I rather pay a transaction fee and purchase the services of an honest and transparent company that is indifferent to whether I win or lose. Robinhood needs me to lose. It’s the only way it can stay in business.

Robinhood must have hated the Covid crises as users made some money. It must have loved the last few months as people lost money and it probably made a lot. Bottom line, I tried to leave 0 stars but the App Store didn’t let me. Robinhood does not deserve the one star that I put on this review.

If I could give less than a star I would. I started several accounts at same time with same investments. Because of the way Robinhood conducts business platform, this is my lowest account. It’s easy to use and then if anything goes wrong they lock up your investments, have no phone number available, and you just hang out losing money all the while because you can’t even execute a sell to recoup. I DO NOT RECOMMEND IF YOU REALLY WANT TO GROW INVESTMENTS. For the record, I do not have the free version. I paid for the service to be treated like this. Now considering attorney involvement.

So, this was review was less than 7 days ago when Robinhood was attempting to leverage $1628.00 from me in which there was no basis for such a request. Eventually, they did admit error. However, a very similar recurrent scenario this very day. Again locking up my account including purchases with my own funds already inside the account, forcing me additional loss as I’m stuck when stock is declining, rather than allowing for position change, almost as though someone behind the scenes is utilizing my capita for their own temporary funding. However, in light of the fact that you can not actually speak to a person and there are no “real” contacts, I really feel there is enough skepticism here to warrant both class action legality based on other reviews I have read as well as this crew has enough shade to warrant escalated SEC review/investigation. Use caution - they attempt to sound wonderful but the person they are ‘Robbin’ is the people and the ‘Hood’ in delight is like the great wizard of oz - we don’t know if real equitable and educated professionals even exist behind the curtain. Plan to file with SEC today.

Updating occurrences: I thought Robinhood had made things better and I became busy not paying attention, failed to follow up with SEC. However, I fo plan on doing so with haste. Since the above issues, Robinhood has initiated transfers without my consent, restricted and penalized me for cancelling transfers. Of course they charge $9 for every uncollected transfer. So to initiate without my consent, placed at me such risk. Then they penalize my deposit status because I cancelled THE FRAUDULENT TRANSFER.

NOW HERE IS WHERE IT GETS INTERESTING: Account value $1850 in a margin status. I looked and no funding was being used from margins. So in order to achieve the margin status, my account only required an additional $150 BUT RONINHOOD MADE ME PAY $450 without explanation in any detail that I could find.
ARE THEY EMBEZZELING? YOU CERTAINLY CANT SPEAK TO A LIVE PERSON?

I paid for gold edition, never received live data, could not create my assorted watch list, and essentially GOLD WAS USELESS AND JUST A WAY FOR THEM TO CONTINUE TAKING FROM PEOPLE GIVING NOTHING BACK. I sent emails requesting repair - NOTHING / NO REPAIR NO RESPONSE NO FUNCTION WORTH CALLING AN UPGRADE.

THIS SIGHT COULD BE NUMBER ONE BUT ITS THE CROOKS ON THE OTHERSIDE OF THE APP THAT NEED A MAKEOVER. I have recommended to others and know I influenced the choices including gold sign up, but I’m about to apologize to each and every one, show them my “Robinhood specials” and hopefully no one else can be so scammed. Good luck - what your money close - they are stealing when you least expect it and will try to make you feel like the guilty one.

And here we go again - now they claim they can keep deposits for some deficit. BUT THEY WILL NOT EXPLAIN DEFICITS, THEY WILL NOT PROVE THEY ARE OWED SOMETHING, THEY WILL ONLY CONTINUE TO POACH MY ACCOUNT. I THOUGHT THEY TOOK CARE OF THEIR RIFF RAFF BUT NOT SO - they continue to scam accounts and this is not the only one. I know of 3 others. That makes 4 of us with proof to move forward.

To the reviewer who complained about the app saying “ages 4+” but requiring 18+: Do you really think that it would be smart to let children, that are not legally allowed to enter any contract, let alone a contract to buy & sell shares of public companies? To mess around with government bonds? Obviously, the app is not recommended for anyone under 18.
UPDATE7/09/22: I haven’t been able to invest since the pandemic, but now am have regained the financial stability and cannot WAIT to start using all the new features. I’m especially excited to request Robinhood IPO shares! This app thought me how to trade, I started with TD Ameritrade, and Penny Stocks like most newbies. Until I discovered Options. I was able to paper trade without TD’s paper trading platform by using the old, actual ‘Pen and Paper’ method.
Once I felt confident enough, I was able to purchase contracts and buy & sell for the premium and turn my profits into actual money. I brought my account from $50 to thousands! Unfortunately I had to liquidate my positions to pay for an emergency dental surgery. But I’m grateful because I would not have had the money if not for Robinhood! I would have had dentures instead of implants at 30 years old, ugh! Anyway I am excited for all the new features and to get back into trading even though Reddit has brought so many more inexperienced traders to the platform. I believe that’s a good thing because it allows the average person to be able to enter the market and learn and gives regular people an advantage that they didn’t have before. When Robinhood first came out, I was wondering what the effect it would have on the market as a whole, because with free trades it would obviously (like I said) bring regular people into the market, people who did not know how to invest. And although that may have had an affect on the market it was minimal. But what Robinhood did do, is force all of the other trading BIG, expensive platforms to reduce or completely eliminate their trading fees. Which is amazing and game changing.
So when this IPO comes out I definitely want to be a part of it; which usually is reserved for accredited investors and I’m hoping that’s not the case here. A lot of people used to make fun of this app for being for amateurs and I’m not afraid to admit that I am an amateur but thanks to RH, I will not be an amateur forever and what I cannot learn on here I can learn on Investopedia and through many of the free information out there. So I want to say to the developers and the creators of Robinhood thank you for leveling the playing field for us regular people.
Institutional investors obviously have an advantage over retail investors and those of us just dipping our toes into the investing pool, but they have given us the opportunity that we did not have before and completely changed the game. Sure, there were other trading platforms out there that had lower fees but they still had fees. They did not have an ounce of the impact that RH and their free trading platform influenced big banks and big investment firms like Merrill Lynch, TD Ameritrade and all of the other platforms that have eliminated the need for expensive brokers for those of us living on the poverty line or just above it maybe even below it. Robinhood has given so many people the chance to enter the market when they would not have before and the chance to rise above the poverty line and bring more transparency the Market.
Thank you RH, you’ve given me the platform, the information and the fire I was searching for: I never would have down how much I enjoy watching my positions and learning how the market works if not for Robin Hood. I thought that this part of the world was closed off to people like me and you’ve shown me that it is wide open. I have discovered a passion that I never knew I had.

I like the app. It is simple and easy to use, effective. It is very good for young people. The part that completely ruined it for me was the “customer service” people that are hired to “help” you when something goes wrong. I have conversed with 4 customer service representatives over my 6 month lifeline with this app. At first, everything was good. I was investing and didn’t have an issue, however I did hear how bad the customer service was from various people. My account was compromised through my email on November 12th. The hacker started by selling all of my shares and then attempting to withdraw the money out of an ATM using the debit card which I never signed up for (TIP: SIGN UP FOR THE DEBIT CARD EVEN IF YOU DONT USE IT, IT MAY SAVE YOUR MONEY). Luckily, I realized that someone was attempting to take money out of my account and froze withdrawals, changed my password and immediately looked for a phone number to contact for help. THERE IS NO IMMEDIATE PHONE NUMBER FOR THIS COMPANY THAT WILL HELP YOU WHEN YOU NEED IT. You can only email. I sent about 10 emails asking for help with my account because at this point I got locked out through my email and the hacker took $270. A day or two passes and I am able to reset my password and enter my account so that I can see this. I saw the information in my transaction history of where the ATM was located, how the money was extracted, when, and how much. A representative emailed me back eventually and started an investigation for me. I gave all the proper identification and timeline for what happened. When the investigation was concluded, the representative attempted to call me on two separate days at the same time so that he can explain to me what occurred, however I was not able to pick up the call. I emailed him saying that I am not available at those times and to let me know if he can call me another time in the day, which he agreed to. THE CALL NEVER CAME. On top of this, he sent me a lousy email saying that the investigation concluded that my account was never compromised. This led me to believe he didn’t even do anything, because all he had to do was take a look into my transaction history and see that I live nowhere near where the money was extracted from (I live in the US and the ATM was in Poland). Immediately, I requested that they recheck the investigation and got hold of another rep. This rep was very helpful, as his investigation concluded that my account did indeed get compromised, and thankfully my money was returned to me. After everything was said and done, I wanted to deactivate my original account because it was compromised and I wanted to make a new one that I knew was safe. I contacted a rep on my original account to deactivate the account which was fairly easy and my reasoning was because I would never use it again. I created a new account after a few days, and apparently a fourth rep told me that my application to activate my new account cannot be approved because SOMEHOW I have two accounts open. Either the rep that I contacted to deactivate my account did not deactivate it, or the Robinhood app is having issues. Either way, the fourth rep who told me that I cannot activate my new account asked me for some information to verify I was myself and to tell me which account I would like her to activate and deactivate. I sent all of this information back, and it has been over a week and I have not received any response. I sent the activation request twice more, and got the same exact automated email back from the same representative saying that she needs me to send her the information that I already sent her originally. I officially gave up on this app and will probably never use it again, or until the customer service gets better or a hotline is created for Robinhood. Thanks for reading and I hope this review helps beware the consumer, and shows Robinhood what needs to be changed about their service.

Robinhood app is USELESS. Robinhood desktop works but is pointless if your on the go and just need an app to trade while going about your day. Robinhood App delays current pricing and displays inaccurate charts, every hour, EVERY TIME.
We lost $1,500.00 because Robinhood app does not display correct stocks, the app will buy or sell at wrong times not selected and not to your advantage for some reason, and at least a few times per day will open up a completely different stock than the one you clicked on to open over and over so often that you can not even trade stock because it opens some other company profile than your stock you bought and click on, often resetting the app doesn’t help and you just have to watch you losses go down the drain with out being able to do anything about it. I reset this app about 5-10 times per day just to get it to update or display anything at all. At least 10 times per day I get the daily errors message that my stocks can’t be displayed, or my investment page has Robinhood errors or I can’t trade currently for unknown Robinhood reasons or can’t access thousands in my funds to make transfers, and today it won’t even let me get back $6,500.00 to my bank from selling some stocks. Pointless App! Often you try to buy or sell but Robinhood delays your transactions so your buy or sale of stock may not go through for several minutes of the app being locked up, then when it goes through you end up with the current wrong price, not the price you requested minutes or hours before the app locked up or delayed again, which only happened when it’s a loss for you most of the time, seems fishy. I have also bought a lot of stock at one price listed then was charged more than the listed price, but then told its because of Robinhood delays, for st seem fair. Very frustrating when you trade in such a way that you should have earned about $13,000.00 profit on stocks you attempted to buy but you lose actually lose $1,500 because Robinhood constant errors and delays everyday. This does not happen on desktops, only on the app, but on desktop browsers you can not get candle stick charts and using desktop defeats the purpose of trading on the go with an app because no one would use the limited features of Robinhood desktop when you can use free scanners and free charts online that are a million times more accurate and free. To use Robinhood effectively you need a mobile app and a desktop browser open at the same time with a 3rd laptop showing live charts because Robinhood delays everything and because the app is never current and never works properly and is only good for occasional monitoring of the stock market on the app old stock pricing more than a few minutes ago, it is rarely current information so defeats the purpose of using the app at all. If you click on a company charts day chart, then select week or month or year it will take anywhere from 1-5 minutes to get you current information and pricing and charts otherwise your only looking at yesterday’s info. By the time Robinhood app starts working it could take you 10 minutes just to look at the changing price of 10 stocks when you can do that on a desktop instantly in 1 second with current information. Very frustrating. Robinhood app appears to place bias Analysts reports for companies and only included out to a dozen or only a few reports per company often no reports at all for other companies too, strange... Nearly all 100% recommended to buy stocks to buy are stocks that fail too, why would Robinhood do that by only placing positive reports about failing companies unless Robinhood gets kickbacks for doing so? I lost over $1,200.00 on Robinhood and all of it was due to Robinhood app delays and app errors and Robinhood app showing inaccurate information or Robinhood selling or buying the wrong stocks I did not select to buy or sell due to app delays not updating until several minutes after my request to buy or sell stocks. Not a safe app!

This is really a poor trading platform. Truly the only good thing I can say about is that it’s nice to have no commission fees. But otherwise it’s pretty bad, particularly for Options.

There are no stop loss features on options trades, making it more difficult to manage your trades and far more time consuming. It’s very easy to lose way more money trading with robinhood than many other brokerages due to this factor alone.

The profitability calculator is not anywhere near as capable as what you’d get on any other platform; the calculator doesn’t really exist it just gives you one number and you cannot alter things easily to see profits and it only uses one method. You also cannot set up multi-leg trades (including something as simple as a straddle) without manually buying each option separately. This makes the profit calculator nearly useless for anything but calls and puts with zero hedge and one step.

There is absolutely no research or analysis features whatsoever. The charts are as simple as it could possibly get and not suitable for more serious traders at all. Clearly, there is no backtesting or indicators features and no options Greeks calculator built in.

In order to use robinhood effectively, you’d have to have supplementary analytic and research tools that’s you’d likely pay for, whereas many (most) other brokerages offer something that will be more efficient and simply better regardless of the brokerage you go to.

You’ll end up needing a lot of apps and tools. The more external apps you need to make trading decisions - the more difficult it is to have a manageable and productive workflow. The desktop web version (which was previously entirely non existent) is equally as poor.

Further issues/drawbacks compared to (almost) the entire industry:
Margin pricing is actually quite expensive. There is no pre-market or after hours trading. International markets are basically non existent. Watchlist is one simple watchlist. You cannot make more than one, nor can you set up alerts.
Order types are limited and you cannot simply sell short any stock.

It seems to be a click-bait effort to push beginners into options trading without really knowing much (the “education” is simple and easily found elsewhere), in order to maximize Robinhood’s profits.

In summary:

It’s incredibly easy to lose money trading options on Robinhood due to the lack of stop loss orders. I’m an experienced, professional trader with a strong professional and personal background in the industry. Even for beginners, unless all you’re going to trade are stocks, you’d probably have better returns with a brokerage that has more features. No commission but a lot of hassle and truly a much more difficult time making decisions. The profit calculations only account for one leg of a trade and are thereby always low. You simply cannot set up a high probability trade with this platform (well, at least not in a streamlined manner.)

I work in finance as a trader for a bulge bracket investment bank and I have a masters degree in economics, as well as various necessary licenses and certifications for my job. Personally, I mostly trade options. On all other brokerages I’ve tried, I’ve usually gotten positive returns over a year (with the exception of 1 in a 7 year career) on my personal accounts. I’ve traded on robinhood as an experiment for the past year and it’s simply too difficulty to set up trades in a streamlined, efficient manner that saving on commission is not worth it for pretty much any options trader at any level.

UPDATE 12/14:

I am leaving the platform as they had an outage on their options trading system in which I took substantial material loss because I was unable to exercise / sell options contracts. I wrote to them nicely, and appreciate the apology but every single trader who experienced financial loss at the result of Robinhood’s malfunction DESERVES reimbursement.

I would lower this to 0 star for poor customer service if I could.

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Free GameStop! Free GameStop! Free GameStop!

I’ve been using Robinhood since 2017 and for the most part they have been fine. They have a good user interface and make everything very simple. However, they have repeatedly proven why they are the worst brokerage recently. I’m just the last year, there have been over 5 times where the robinhood system completely shuts down and you can’t even view the prices of stocks, let alone buy/sell them or options of them. This always happens at the most volatile times too, likely when you want to be trading. Even if you had a limit order set before it won’t go through. The worst part is that if you contact Robinhood’s support team you will either A) Not get a response back for multiple weeks or B) be told that there is no problem and to stop wasting their time. Personally I’ve lost thousands because of their service shutdowns and I know many more people have lost much more money.

Next we get to their security issues. Robinhood really tried hard to cover these stories up so it’s likely you never heard about it, but many people lost their entire account amount due to a very simple and unsophisticated hack on their robinhood account. Robinhood has done absolutely nothing to deal with this or mitigate the future risk of hackers targeting Robinhood’s poor security. Instead they have outright blamed the people who lost money saying that those people dug their own grave and can therefore figure out how to deal with the lost money themselves (Example number 2 of Robinhood blaming its users for their own companies major downfalls). Most people put a large percentage of their savings into a brokerage account and at the very minimum should be able to feel safe that they won’t lose it because of an incompetent brokerage service’s security.

I looked past all of these major shortcomings and still remained a loyal Robinhood user but this was the last straw. During the crazy situation with GameStop’s stock and many other heavily shorted stocks being squeezed and having their prices skyrocket, Robinhood openly engaged in market manipulation. Now there’s a more than decent chance this review will never even be seen by anyone because nobody reads reviews on the App Store, but there’s an even higher chance that this review will never be seen due to the SEC taking away their Brokerage status and dismantling the company. Let me explain how Robinhood openly engaged in market manipulation. So as these heavily shorted stocks were having their prices soar due to very heavy buying action, Robinhood disabled the ability for any of its users to buy into these couple specific stocks, essentially tanking those stock prices and making investing decisions for its users. It of course still allowed for people to sell their already existing positions, but if you wanted to buy or trade options on those stocks, Robinhood wouldn’t allow you to. This is now two of the most basic requirements of a brokerage service that they have fallen short of (Security and freedom to make decisions). It is absolutely insane Robinhood is currently allowed to operate as they have lost their investors so much money.

Robinhood’s focus is not on their investors. They constantly lose their investors money and they don’t care because they aren’t in the business of helping investors. They are inthe business of helping large hedge funds. They don’t advertise this at all, but the way they make their money is by selling their investors data and information to hedge funds. They let hedge funds know what trades we are making and let them get in at a better price before they send out trades through. All they care about is that their investors trade in high volumes, not whether their investors make money. They make this blatantly clear time and time again too.

In conclusion, Robinhood’s name is honestly the most ironic part of their entire company as they are a company that specializes in taking from the poor to give to the rich. Absolutely do not use Robinhood’s service as there are so many better brokerages to use. Don’t get sucked into Robinhood’s scheme just because their app looks clean and they make things simple.

If I could give this app zero stars, I would. The idea itself is a good one, but the execution is very poor. I was referred to this app from a podcast that I listen to weekly, so I thought I’d give it a shot. I’ve wanted to start investing for some time now, and it seemed like this would be a great way to do so. I have a podcast online, and I write for a very large online music media outlet. I have a huge following online and I immediately REGRET suggesting that anyone use this app. I’ve already made sure to let my 150k+ followers know not to use this app as it is just a scam. So let me start the actual review.

Thank GOODNESS that I chose to just make a few deposits to get started. I deposited $20, $10, $10 just to test out the waters and see how the app is. Cool. No problems. then I bought a few stocks and crypto’s and watched them.. Cool. Everything seemed cool. I deposited another $7 and Everything was coasting fine. I had $56 worth of different stocks I was convinced this app was legit and I was literally about to deposit $2,000 today to invest in a stock that I was really excited about. Only when I log into my account it says I am now at $30 and have -$25 in buying power. Come to find out, my $7 dollar deposit was “reversed” (even though I definitely had enough money in my bank account and even called the bank to verify) so, now i owe Robinhood $7 plus a $9 reversal fee. Oh not to mention, once you receive a reversal fee, and deposit that you have “pending” will be canceled as well. Mind you, the $10 has already been withdrawn from my bank account, just Robinhood still has it as “pending” even though they have the money. So, they remove my buying power for the $10. They have no real customer service (even though it’s super easy to hire a call center for customer service) so you have to play email tag and HOPE for a response. I get a dry generic response telling me that it’s my fault and that my transaction was cancelled dude to “insufficient funds” even though my bank has no record of that (because I have the money!). So the app says the transaction was reversed and the email says it was cancelled due to insufficient funds. They can’t seem to get it straight on what actually happened. Once again the “customer service agent” tells me it’s my fault and also that now any pending deposits buying power are no longer available until the deposit “clears”. I tell them, look it’s obviously some kind of misunderstanding so please initiate the transaction again or just charge my other bank account and please refund the $9 as I didn’t reverse anything.

Customer service emails are so condescending talking to me like I’m stupid. “Firstly you need to understand...” and then putting things in bold and italics. It’s crazy that you guys just talk to your customers any kind of way. If you’re customer service can’t help me with my “$56 account” then how can i ever expect to trust you with a $2000 account? I worked in the service industry for years before I transitioned into my current career path and I can tell you for sure this is not how you talk to customers nor is it how you do business.

So, I decided to just go about this a different way, so I sold all of my stock and crypto but looks like now I have to wait 3 days for my “unsettled funds” to settle. And then have to wait 5-7 days to receive that deposit. Oh and also the $10 from that previous previous deposit? I have to wait another 2 days for that to become “buying power” again and THEN 3 days to settle and then 5-7 for a deposit! LOL. I am honestly SO happy that it turned out this way, I saved myself the hassle of having to do this with a lot more money. Also my wife has sold all of her investments and we are both moving them to an actually brokerage. As soon as I finish this review I’ll be calling ALL of my close friends and relatives and making sure they are doing the same. And all of my followers that I referred or was about to refer will all be doing the same.

If you look at the reviews there are SO many 1 stars and unsatisfied customers, its a wonder how it still has 4.8 stars. Sounds fishy to me. But listen to the 1 star reviews. Save your time and DO NOT DOWNLOAD. Good idea/concept but horrible execution and customer service. Won’t last much longer, I’m sure.

Invest in yourself. Invest in your future. But do not do it on Robinhood.

For those of you who want to buy partial shares or cryptocurrency, Robinhood does not offer these to Hawaii residents. So they advertise that’s what this app does but they are NOT offered.

The problem with this is, I downloaded this app to make stocks purchases, fractional stock purchases, and cryptocurrency and started using the app then realizing that they don’t allow fractional share purchases. I asked them about fractional shares and they replied that I “just” have to wait for the email that it is offered to Hawaii. In the cryptocurrency tab under the graph, it simply says they’ll let me know when it’s offered. Ugh.

Well, what am I supposed to do in the meantime?

So after much more research than I wanted to do, I found SoFi, another stocks purchases app, to do the fractional shares, then after even more research, I found Kraken for the cryptocurrency purchases app, and now I have THREE apps to check. Ugh, what a chore. I like the Robinhood app for the features it provides and would have liked to just use ONE app for stocks, fractional purchases, and crypto rather than three apps for the same work.

I am giving this app a 3 for the fractional and crypto sales overpromising (1) AND lack of communications (2), and for these additional reasons:

(3) Sometimes when you make purchases, it does not give you the lower price that you think you are purchasing. Instead, it gives you the higher price even though you see the lower price marked on your initial purchase entry. I asked them about this and all they said is: “Oops, sorry.”

(4) It takes an effort to get your account deposits set up so be sure to set that up right when you open your account or before you start making purchases. There is confusion in when you make a stock purchase but then it takes you to the deposit set up and then the stock purchase you though you were making is NOT held for you while you await authorization from your bank. And because of this, I lost the price that I initially set out to buy, and when I asked, they said, “oh sorry”. So, be sure to set up your bank deposits first and foremost! Oh sorry is not a good excuse for not explaining that while my deposits are being set up, that the stock price I was trying to get will not be held for me.

(5) Robinhood does NOT do fractional sales in Hawaii. Another irritating issue that means I had to find a second stocks app to use,

(6) ...and also note that you cannot just start out with a dollar as the ads here so proclaim if that’s what you’re tryna do with this app.

(7) Robinhood does NOT do cryptocurrency sales in Hawaii. Another irritating issue that means I had to find a third stocks app to use.

(8) Your individual stock purchase and stock watch lists are adjustable for organizing which is great but for Hawaii residents, the cryptocurrency list sits smack dab right between the two lists. If the cryptocurrency is going to be there, at least give it functionality to select 5 year, 1 year, 6 mos, 3 mos, 2 mos, 1 mos, 1 week, 1 day views. Instead, under graph is wording that says: we will let you know when cryptocurrency is available in Hawaii. Please, at least make it functional and helpful even if not offered in Hawaii.

(9) Allow for the watch list to be grouped into categories that the user sets without sacrificing ease of use.

(10) The free share they give you should be one that gets you started in the right direction, which is one of stability as a new stocks purchaser. However and instead, the one I got free is one of those realllllllly small stocks you probably would not bother to invest in. I got one in oil and you know what they say about the volatility of investing in oil so idk yet if this stock will be a hurtful one in the long run. I don’t want to have to take possession of barrels of oil in order to keep my (free) stock!

All in all, Robinhood is a good app to use and once deposits are set up, it’s fairly simple to use. I also appreciate the free trades. The stocks page format and information are well organized and helpful. If I were to give this app a higher rating other than 3 stars right now, they will not pay attention to my complaints nor will they bother to make the necessary changes I want to see about their app to help others who think to download this app. Better communications would really help this app improve and to let people know if they really should bother to download this app!

Article on Robinhood controversial business practices from CNBC

The revenue Robinhood gets from a controversial practice of selling customer trades to high frequency trading firms is skyrocketing, according to new research.

The popular millennial stock-trading app brought in $69 million in order routing revenue in 2018, according to a new estimate from Alphacution Research, three times what the company brought in a year earlier. So-called "payment for order flow," is a common practice on Wall Street. "This certainly means they're growing," Paul Rowady, director of research at Alphacution, told CNBC. "There's a lot more flow going through Robinhood's platform."

The Menlo Park, California-based company has ushered in 6 million users and a $5.6 billion valuation in its five-year existence. Its no-fee model for stock trading has been successful in attracting millennials and put pressure on incumbents like Charles Schwab and TD Ameritrade, which charge $4.95 and $6.95, for trades, respectively. Robinhood has faced criticism over its reliance on high-frequency traders, especially considering a founding ethos that some have categorized as "anti-Wall Street." The company sends customers' orders to high-frequency trading firms like Virtu or Citadel Securities instead of a stock exchange like the NYSE. These trades are executed in what's known as a dark pool, which as the name suggests, lacks some transparency.

Critics of high-frequency trading say the practice, which takes milliseconds, can result in big market swings and also allow institutional investors to gain an upper hand over smaller retail investors.

The question is, what does that suggest about the underlying execution quality? Are they are going to be biased based on who is paying the most?" Rowady said. "There's a feeling that maybe because of mass tech and speed in everything, that there's still some games being played."

But the practice is hardly unique on Wall Street. Roughly 40 percent of all trading is done outside of exchanges — up from just 10 percent a decade ago, according to CFA Institute, a group of investment professionals. There are also regulations that require broker dealers to execute trades at the best price.

The entire industry saw a roughly 42 percent increase in overall order-routing revenue, according to Alphacution. TD Ameritrade for example, saw 43 percent growth in order-routing revenue year over year. Robinhood's outsized percentage increase accounts for the fact that it was much smaller to start, Rowady said.

Robinhood makes money by taking a fraction of a cent per dollar from each trade order and collecting interest on customers' deposits. It also has a paid subscription service called "Robinhood Gold," unveiled in September .

As a private company, Robinhood is not required to disclose its income statements, which would paint a better picture of its revenue components. As a registered broker-dealer, though, it does have certain required disclosures, which Alphacution used to estimate its totals.

According to a Bloomberg report last year, Robinhood brought in more than 40 percent of its revenue in early 2018 from selling its customers' orders to high-frequency trading firms, or market makers. Robinhood's co-founder and CEO Vlad Tenev defended the practice in a blog post.

Tenev said like its broker-dealer peers, the start-up "participates in rebate programs which help customers get additional price improvement for their orders by creating competition amongst the exchanges and liquidity providers who fill the orders, often resulting in superior execution quality."

"We send your orders to the market maker that's most likely to give you the best execution quality," Tenev said a blog post. The company also said it does not take rebates into consideration. "All market makers with whom we work have the same rebate rate."

Robinhood declined to comment on the 2018 revenue figures.

The growth in Robinhood's revenue came alongside a massive increase in customers. The start-up jumped from 5 million to 6 million customers in a matter of months last year.

It also ended 2018 with a major misstep, though. The company announced in December that it would launch checking and savings accounts with an eye-popping, industry leading interest rate. Just a day later, Robinhood's co-founders said they were re-naming and re-launching after regulators and Wall Street sounded the alarm.

"Robinhood is growing and their business plan seems to be working," Rowady said. "It's just a question of when you look below the components of revenue -- is it sustainable, and how far can it go?"

To all: customers support is by far the worst. My account had fraudulent activity and it was reported within hours. This happened 3 weeks ago. Support has yet to resolve or help the situation. They even allowed a bank account to be linked after the account was reported as being fraudulent. All I’ve received are automated responses through email. No contact # that is actually a customer support #. I will have my account closed ASAP. Really, all beware.
The worst part is that I will probably get help now that it’s on a review.

Edit for response: Hahahaha, I knew it! That was the quickest response from Robinhood EVER. Why would I open another ticket? My god. How can someone be so blind to what they say and how ironic it is. Let’s continue to have our communication through the review system. It at least gets your attention.

Edit2: Well another ticket opened. How long will this one take? For the same problem ticket after ticket, with nothing but automated responses.

Edit3-My Review to RD Ameritrade :
Thank you. I have had the worst time with my other brokerage app, ZERO customer support. But that will be all over soon when it’s rolled to TD. I spent a little time on hold and that was the worst of it. Thank you for having a support #, thank you for having chat support, thank you for actually returning emails with an real person within a day, thank you, just thank you!

Edit4: Another day and mayday without a response or resolution. Stil Piss poor

Edit5: I love the new response that poor service “isn’t the robinhood way”. Hahaha, yes it is! I’ve already reached out to that email, and NOTHING for two days except this ridiculous response. Come on! My account is being transferred, and I’m not paying whatever fee you crooks want to charge. Beware all, piss poor service, then want to charge $75 to get out, this really is a scam!

Edit6: Another week has gone by and still no help. I have a small account and missed out on $500 plus profits. Where I I couldn’t even sell the stock. Not withdraw any money, but just sell. Truly the worst, I’ve received 10 plus automated or generic emails that the situation is under review by another department. Still...at this points it’s been over a month. And the most ridiculous part is Robinhood is holding up the transfer of my account, as I was able to get ahold of my other brokerage account and they were very helpful, unfortunately I started with this crap company...0 stars

Edit7: Just placed a review and complaint with the ComplaintsBoard.com. Come to find out Robinhood isn’t accredited with them. WOW! Again ALL BEWARE! SCAM! Other reviews on the ComplaintsBoard.com website are the same, no customer support. Still no response. Every time they respond to me on here I email them at the requested email, and still nothing. I’m thinking Class Action law suit how long are we going to allow these criminals to get away with ripping us off?

Edit8: Another week and still no progress. Filed another complaint with the ComplaintsBoard.com. It will continue. I truly hate this company now. It went from annoying to hate. I will get my money

Edit9: Received this today(below). Explain to me and everyone. Why updates cant be given? Why isnt there a time frame?
This problem is 6 weeks old.
What is the plan?

“Thanks for your patience while we worked on getting back to you.

After reviewing your account, it appears that we have forwarded your case to the appropriate department for additional review.

While we currently don't have an expected time frame that your case will be resolved, please know that our team is working on your case and won't be able to provide constant updates. Rest assured, they are handling this with the utmost care.

They'll be replying to your original message in request number. Please be on the lookout for an email from our team with that ticket ID.

I understand this is not the answer you were looking to receive, so I appreciate your understanding and continued patience throughout this process.”

Edit 7: weeks and no service, another day pass, No help! Account still locked to no fault of my own. This company are crooks.

Edit 8: Well another week went by with no help! Until I started to receive calls from a CA # that seemed very sketchy. The line isn’t clear, the conversation couldn’t be held because I couldn’t understand the caller but they are asking me for my personal information. In what world is it a good idea to have customer service call unsolicited and ask for personal information. All my other brokerage, Credit, financial companies...I contacted them, so I knew who I was dealing with. This is just another way Robinhood just doesn’t get it. Going on 2 months and no legitimate help. What do I need to do?!?!?

(Update): So I’m now learning options and getting other investing education via TDameritrade. One other negative to Robinhood, if you mess around with options without knowing what you’re doing you can get burned severely. Robinhood AFAIK, doesn’t offer any education.

I raised the ratings from 1 Star to 3 Stars because I do like the alerts about stock price changes, and seeing news tied to various stocks that explain possible reasons why stocks went up or down. Also, as you’re looking at a particular stocks there are “hashtag bubbles” that you can press that sends you to relevant stocks.
————— original post ———————
So with this global pandemic, I like many people are out of work practicing social distancing. I’ve long wanted to try my skill at stocks and figured now, after the market crash, might be a good time to acquire some stocks while they were down, (after all, isn’t that what some rich people do with their subtle inside training? I’m looking at certain republican senators who dumped stocks making millions before the pandemic hit, yet advocated to their constituents there was nothing to fear.)

I downloaded the Robinhood app based on some YouTube reviews. I linked my bank to the app. I had already transferred much of my savings into my checking account to cover bills and expenses during the government mandated “stay-at-home” order. I then invested in some stocks that I believed would rise based on my research. Within a few days, my investment increased by 25%. I started making other purchases, and my investment was mostly increasing. Great!

Unfortunately, I awoke one morning to see some of my limit orders and buys failed. Later I got an email from my bank stating that I was negative in my savings. So here’s what happened:
When I linked my bank to Robinhood, the app linked to my savings. I wasn’t aware of this, and don’t recall being given an option on which account I would like to link.

I bank with Chase Bank. And like most big banks, Chase punishes the poor. If you don’t have a certain amount of money in your account they charge you fees to do things like: hold your money, withdraw, & transfer funds, etc. yet they don’t do this to people who have large sums of money in their account. If Robinhood had linked to my checkings, I would have had ample funds to cover the stock buys.

Here’s the worst part, whenever the stock buy fails, Robinhood charges a $9 fee for each failed buy. Also, Chase charged me a fee for each failed transaction. You guessed it, my investments were nearly wiped out. So I figured out how to add a link to my checking account and transferred money to my savings just in case, no thanks to Robinhood customer support. I contacted Robinhood customer service to explain my situation. They simply responded stating what I already explained here. “We charged you because you didn’t have enough money.” Yes, I know that. I’m contacting you for help!

So, I tried to unlink my savings to avoid future issues. But I couldn’t! The Robinhood app kept telling me that I couldn’t unlink the account because I had pending transactions. What?! Ok maybe I can find and cancel these transactions. Nope, there was no way to find nor cancel these transactions. Ok, I’ll contact customer service again, maybe they can transfer the pending transactions to my checkings. Support waited nearly a week to get back to me. In that time, four more failed transactions occurred, and four more charges and fees stole money from me by both Robinhood and chase bank. I was furious.

Ironically, I was now finally able to remove my savings account from Robinhood. Understand that even IF I had enough money in my savings to cover all my Robinhood expenses, I would STILL be charged a penalty fee by Chase. Chase has a “no poor people” clause; if you have less than $15k in your savings, they penalize you for making too many withdrawals in a month. I explained all of this to Robinhood customer service in the email I sent them nearly a week prior. They didn’t care, they offered no assistance. They merely repeated what I already knew whilst offering platitudes of “if you have any questions or concerns, blah blah blah”.

Robinhood is like other banks, they cater mainly to the wealthy and penalize the poor. They offer no real assistance. If you choose to use their app, make absolute sure they don’t link to your savings account. Double check what account they link. You’re probably better off just depositing a lump sum of money and not allow Robinhood to make automatic withdrawals from your bank.

I’ve heard bad things about Robinhood from others on social media, regarding their app crashing at crucial times, poor customer service support, or a limited UI for more advanced trading. My time on Robinhood was limited, I can only attest to the poor customer service. I’m going to switch to another app. It’s unfortunate because I suspect I could have doubled my investment if I didn’t have these issues.

I typically don't write App Store reviews because I'm lazy, but I've been using Robinhood for about 2 years now and I absolutely love it!

I'm a student so I don't have a lot of money to begin with. The commission free trading allows for me to actively trade small amounts of stock (5-10 shares) without my profits getting eaten away. This has allowed me to become a better trader and develop profitable strategies which I will use when I get a real job and have more money, likely with a different broker (Interactive Brokers) because Robinhood does have some disadvantages for active algorithmic swing trader such as myself.

The Robinhood Instant feature was a great addition. I like being immediately credited with the proceeds from a sale. Those without the Robinhood Instant feature should learn how to manage their capital better in order to always have cash on hand to make purchases. Rule #1 of trading is capital management. Rule #2 is risk management.

The people complaining about not being able to day trade don't understand there's an SEC regulation which prevents accounts with less than $25,000 in cash and stock from making 3 or more day trades (a day trade is defined as buying and selling the same stock in a single day). In other words, on the 4th day trade you are labeled as a pattern day trader. The rule is intended to protect unsophisticated retail investors from destroying their accounts. Theoretically, you can make 15 day trades per week (i.e., 3 day trades per day) with an account with less than $25,000. Personally, I wish the SEC would get rid of this rule so I can make more money from all of you! Lol. Also, you're not going to beat the high frequency trading hedge funds. They laid down their own dedicated fiber optic networks to connect directly to the exchanges. Your fingers aren't fast enough to beat their orders even if Robinhood was directly connected to an exchange.

I'm looking forward to Robinhood offering the following (no rush except for #1 and #2)...
1.) Trailing stop loss orders --> I'm getting a little tired of having to move my stop loss orders up to protect profits.
2.) Margin accounts --> Rumor has it they will charge a monthly fee instead of interest like traditional brokers. If this is the case, all you have to do is buy a few stocks which offer monthly dividends and then use the dividends received each month to pay the margin account fee. Basically, you'll receive additional margin for free!
3.) Order strategies --> see second to last paragraph
4.) Short selling equities --> I would like to try an extremely dangerous strategy I read about with a very small amount of money just for fun. The strategy is to short leveraged ETFs in order to capture contango and convexity.
5.) Option trading --> I would like to be able to buy insurance via the options market for my equity holdings.
6.) Foreign equities and markets --> There are some really quality foreign companies out there. A stronger US dollar would allow for me to buy more shares.
7.) Over The Counter (OTC) markets
8.) Futures

Advice to new traders so I don't take all your money...
I've gotten a few friends and family members to open accounts with Robinhood. I typically recommend starting with $500-$1,000 in an account. Once you've developed a winning strategy (it might take you a year or more to do so), then add more money. Be patient and learn from your mistakes. You will make plenty of them.

Robinhood's disadvantages for an active trader...
As I mentioned before there are some downsides to Robinhood, but it should be noted all brokerage firms have certain disadvantages and I'm not just referring to commission fees. For example, some only offer certain strike prices for options contracts, disallow certain options strategies, favoritism towards customers with larger accounts when brokering trades, etc.

A major disadvantage of Robinhood as an active trader is orders can't be linked together in an order strategy. For example, I'll enter a limit buy order for 5 shares of a new position, but I have to wait until the order is filled before I am allowed to can enter a limit sell order or stop loss order. An order strategy would allow for me to bundle a limit buy order, limit sell order, and a stop loss order together automatically. Then depending on how the stock trades after the limit buy order is filled, either the limit sell order or the stop loss order gets activated (whichever price the stock reaches first) and the other order is canceled. For example, if the limit sell order is filled first, then the stop loss order is canceled.

Another disadvantage of Robinhood is I have some algorithms which I would love to test live with small lots of real money, but in order to maximize profitability, short selling is required. Also, I can only connect the algorithms to Robinhood via Quantopian which is annoying having to translate code into another coding language. It would be nice to direct connect to Robinhood's API.

Overall, Robinhood is an amazing platform. I would even keep money in my Robinhood account so I can still support them when I eventually "graduate" to a platform like Interactive Brokers. Lastly, to anyone out there complaining about the features (or lack thereof)…STOP IT! Robinhood is free, don't ruin a good thing. There's tons of other free programs such as NinjaTrader (free professional trading program for PC or Mac) which allow you to do technical analysis, so use those and then make your trades on Robinhood. It's not that difficult. Lol.

This is the only app review I've ever written and probably ever will write. I've decided to write this review to answer some of the questions I've read in other reviews, offer feature suggestions, and because I genuinely hope this company succeeds. If you've ever wondered if someone can deliver a promise, ask these four simple words... “Can you guarantee it”? When you finish this post, I GUARANTEE you will have learned something new about the Robinhood app, the stock market, or another relevant area entirely.
A very quick introduction and how it pertains to this app:
I've day traded with a company called Lightspeed using the Lightspeed Trading Platform with level 2 quotes and other data features. In very simplistic terms, level 2 quotes are basically the order book (allows you to see bid/ask spreads and depth) and provide access to realtime data.
The order book shows you who is making:
Bids (how much someone is willing to pay and how much stock they want)
Asks (how much stock someone is willing to sell and at what price)
Lightspeed uses Apex as their clearinghouse so I knew ahead of time I wasn't going to have any issues there (Robinhood also uses Apex as their clearinghouse).
I've since stopped day trading due to lack of time needed for other projects I've become passionate about; I'm in the process of researching and writing a book on Kinesiology and applied nutrition in the human body as well as the planning stages of a computer services company. One planned service is security penetration testing (I've included this information because I'll be reviewing the security features Robinhood uses to protect its customers' data later).
I have no affiliation with Robinhood in any way, shape, or form. I greatly admire what they've accomplished already and believe that if they succeed as a company, they'll have created a much greater disruptive technology than the vast majority of their users and many others realize. If this company flourishes, every single person who trades on any market around the globe will be affected. It is that disruptive. However, to be fair and give a complete and honest review, I've also noted what I perceive to be the deficiencies both large and small in the app as well as within the company.

The information will be broken down into the following sections:
My Experience With the App
Feature Suggestions
User Questions
Robinhood's Security
Immediate Growth Steps (I've included growth steps directed for Robinhood in the review so that if they spark ideas in someone reading it, they will feel free to submit them to Robinhood)
Robinhood's Revenue Stream
Robinhood's Weakness as a Business
Future Growth Steps
Conclusion

*Robinhood (Robinhood Markets Inc/Robinhood Financial LLC) may use any of the information I've written for inclusion in their website, blog, or other media posts.

My Experience With the App:
There were no issues setting up the account or the transfer of cash into Robinhood. I'd made several individual cash transfers into the app as a test before depositing any larger amounts. After each transfer was completed, I purchased a different stock each time. This process was repeated several times with no issues. I'm now comfortable enough to begin transferring larger sums and make larger stock purchases without fear of encountering any issues. The only “issues” I've encountered are features, or rather lack thereof, but nothing vital to the functioning of the app or security of my assets. I've also just opened an account for my mother that I'll be depositing funds into (because we all like to make sure our moms are taken care of).

Why I refer to Robinhood as a disruptive technology:
Currently, no brokerage in the entire world offers commission free trading in the form Robinhood does (others offer limited initial commission free trading or require account minimums). When Robinhood's business model proves feasible, other brokerage firms will have to follow suit or face a dwindling customer base who move to Robinhood. All brokerages could easily offer zero-commission trades, and are normally getting paid for executing trades (via payment for order flow). What you are paying for is the advertising costs to become a customer, brick and mortar storefronts, an army of redundant employees, and so on.

Feature Suggestions:
Below are feature suggestions for inclusion in the app or changes to the website and the reasoning behind certain suggestions.

A small section of the website to let people know what's being worked on and what to expect in the next update. It's a small effort on the team's part and a large customer service/goodwill boost. Users who download the app, browse through and see it doesn't yet have a feature they want (or need) might stop using it altogether before truly getting started or switch to a different brokerage app.
Unrealized gain/loss
Max year charts
5 day chart
Ability to create own chart time frame (5 minutes, minute charts, seconds if wanted, et cetera)
Watch-list reorganization
Advanced order types
Searching a stock doesn't automatically add it to the watch-list.
Easily switch between multiple accounts on the same device (not even close to immediately necessary, but it would be nice).
Create a linked forum from Robinhood's website where members can answer other members’ questions, discuss topics, Robinhood can relay news, et cetera. An 800,000 user base creates a large volunteer customer service force for Robinhood.

Since the review I had written is too long to include in its entirety (stupid maximum lengths), I set up a blog post at ExperiencedRobinhoodTrader(dot)blogspot(dot)com - you can't normally write urls or the post will be flagged. For those who are interested, the review covers nearly the entire spectrum of Robinhood and will answer any question you have. Thanks

When I started the app was expecting good things like : No charges to buy and sell stocks and it encouraged other stock apps to follow suit ... It gives some info on stocks so people can pick which stocks to be a good or bad deal without being charged. You do charges reports in more detail for a fee which most don’t want to pay why because we are poor every dime matters. Really we could find that info some where else too for
You are a stock company ran under the influence of other company’s OK. But your selling to us the general public, it don’t matter if it was free or bought our being a part of your company should have mattered to you for example we buy in stand with you spread the word helping you bring in more people to invest prospering your company so we all can prosper and make good money isn’t that what it’s all about helping one another to make more money to have a better life for all of us. When I first got in to robinhood I was looking at writing down all the different stocks not having no idea what I’m doing I personally even when I had lots of money to invest could not find one honest person in investing to help me invest my money I found stocks that for what reason I don’t robinhood took it off the list now I can’t buy it example ( ECC, DHY, etc... ) but now I can’t access that stock to buy it, maybe it’s a problem with the app I don’t know I’ve sent notifications to support about it and never got a reply back so I dont know what wrong there but it stoped me from prospering my funds and accounts too, so I could prosper for me and my family to no avail ... so now I’m handicap can’t work lost all stocks of any kind to help my family I’m just now trying to build it up with what little of I have you basically slammed the door shut in my face I wanted to buy AMC, GAME STOP, etc... and I wanted to buy while it was low a little at a time because I can’t afford thousands like everybody else yet but you slammed that same door in your own face because your hurting the ones making you the money because what most rich people forget without us little people you have no one to support you in your business which in this case is financial stock app company it might be your business but it’s our only chance at living a better life to me that should have mattered because what rich people don’t think about they loose site of what’s important on money yeah you can screw over us little people in some cases get by with it probably make millions yes but how much more would you have made supporting us helping us to succeed in making a lot of money one would have been a positive on you and your company reflects and image it would have brought in enormous revenues and prospects it sure would have put you and your company as big as the world because everybody would have wanted to be in board with that ship sailing a luxury liner on the high seas instead we got the titanic bound for glory at the bottom of the sea ... My best option or opinion for robinhood is you made some mistakes say I’m sorry for one say you will do better to stand behind your people because we are when we bought in to it ... then help us to make it too information is the key for all of us you might know away to invest to make more money how is the best way to hold or what’s the ideal time to sell I’m not asking you to put your head on a block just give helpful hints so we can chose how to better ourselves... I promise you, you will never regret it you look after our best interest to help us make money the world would trample themselves to get on board with you stand with you fight with you and for you because you would do the same for us right at least I would hope for that wish for that so show us you will do that have our backs just like giving free stocks made your company support your customers and you could possibly gain the world why you would you do that ? The bigger picture if your customers are making money the states are making money your company will make more money every body wins but how much is up to you win big or win very little it’s your choice we will recover from this like we always do but we would rather be on board with you then having to move some where else having to start over again trying to make away and in these times it sure would have been a great blessing to know you helped us and our family’s to succeed I promise when other company’s step in to knock your company down or to try to put you out of business that’s hard to do with the world standing behind you with all that money and references who could hurt your company the alternative is not good how long would a company support your company if you had no customers for support howling could you stand or the company’s helping you would they be willing to keep supporting you ... I know I repeat myself a lot but it’s because some kids you have to tell them a lot over and over again until they get it ... HELLO ? Parents only do that because we love our family’s help our family’s to succeed try not to set them up for fall so they get hurt or cause them not to try again we want our family’s to make right, if you don’t realize it we are your family now let’s make a better way of life helping one another for my sake if not yours I’ll be the one in need here literally I’m that guy hoping for the better always ... keep trying todo good you won’t regret it ! won’t try to write the bad points the list would be too long and besides I’m trying to stay focused on the good things and not the bad or at least that’s what my family told me to do growing up and if you hurt somebody meaning to or not when you understand you did be a man or woman enough to say I’m sorry I’ll do better if you will give me a chance to make it up ... that’s how we survive helping one another : education working hard achieving our goals making life better for ourselves but the people around us who might be on their last leg in life who needed that one person!

Update 5/15:
So I’ve been using Robinhood for about three years now- & overall am a huge fan. If you want to read a first world problem rant read my initial review from 2018 below- at the time you couldn’t dollar cost average by purchasing partial shares- luckily that was fixed and I didn’t delete my account/
Updated thoughts:
Now that Robinhood allows for partial share purchases in any dollar amount ( which allows for dollar cost averaging) in a big fan of the App/Service/Company
Robinhood is a great place for common everyday people to start investing in the stock market/ Limited Crypto choices/. Overall I think that’s a good thing
I’m a huge fan of investing- my go to’s are the stock market & real estate (60% real estate 40% stocks). Robinhood can, almost make it too easy to invest- so everyone should keep in mind that (IMHO) only invest money you can afford to invest ie: don’t start investing the rent money- the mortgage money or the grocery money- Invest money that fundamentally you know you may loose/. The stock market/ Crypto Market ( especially the crypto) IS NOT A SAVINGS ACCOUNT; it’s something much stronger and much RISKIER/. Welcome to capitalism- strap in & enjoy the ride . Oh- quick word to the wise- don’t even think about using the Options feature if you have to Google what options are- how they work etc. GGF
Pros:
Ease of use ( easy set up, east navigation)
Ability to dollar cost average
Partial share purchase power
Easy auto invest options
Offers the majorcrypto players
Instant deposit

Original review below: May (+\-)
I’m a 42-year-old male and I’ve been investing since I was 17 years old I was really excited to learn about this app and had great thoughts about it but the set up process although only took a few days was rather tedious and I was rather upset to find out that you cannot buy fractional shares which to me is an absolute necessity if you are ever going to change your fundamental monetary situation.

There is no phone number to call customer support-they did respond to my email in a rather timely manner of about three hours but I was shocked to find out they do not allow you to invest in partial or fracture shares-which essentially means you either need to deposit a lot of money to be able to buy even one share of stock like apple that is hundreds of dollars per share or you are forced to buy extremely cheap and mostly unknown stocks or stocks that are “known” but still only a few dollars each ( highly speculative & not a good way to start your foundation with investing in the stock market in my humble opinion.) When their online support confirmed that at this time you cannot buy fractional shares I knew something was wrong and that this could not be a bona fide way to invest as anyone will tell you one of the greatest things you can do is to put your investing on auto pilot with automatic payments and deposits this is an easy time (2018) to do that & I don’t know how this app can say they are for the people when they do not allow people who are young and or just starting to invest an opportunity to buy fractional shares over long periods of time— buying on a regular, even fractional basis is the very foundation of investing. Not everyone has enough money to buy one full share each time they want to invest—— and being able to simply buy $25 of Apple ( which would be a fractional share purchase) is better than not buying any part of Apple.

I find this application to be useless —it is great in theory and I’m sure that the creators are making a ton of money by giving people very cheap stocks then not allowing them to buy fractional shares and then they can make interest on the money that is left sitting in the cash accounts so in reality this app is a farce and really the scams on anyone that deposits money into it unless they have a huge amount to spend or are happy purchasing unknown stocks or low valued socks under five dollars for me I would not be using the app any longer and is soon as I can take out the free stock I was given which by the way was only $4.25( Groupon) I will withdraw my money and delete the app.

I am beyond disappointed that I gave my personal information to this company and that they do not even offer a telephone line to speak to a real human being and that even though my questions were answered via their support they did not answer my entire questions and danced around the fact that they do not offer phone support of any kind a total waste of time in my humble opinion. You are much better off using DRIPS through computershare.com drips allow you to buy one share of stock and then you can reinvest the dividends and by fractional shares over and over again with no or little fees- that is the way to truly grow yourself financially. You are much better off to open up an IRA through a online discount brokerage then invest even five or $25 using this app the vast majority of people who are probably dipping their toe into investing would be much better off opening an IRA and putting money that is tax sheltered into that account. If all you want to do is get excited about buying your very first stock Ever in this program might be for you but if you were serious beyond that this is a total joke and in my view a sham at best and a scam at worst. Either way this is not investing this is not the way to make money of any kind this is a novelty at best.

If you use this app all you’re doing is giving your money and interest to the two Founders of the company which I for one will not do. I made sure that after my last trade I left the minimum I could in my cash account of $.01 and plan to make a full with drawl of the modest amount I have in my account as soon as I can this is not a company that I would like to associate myself with and there is no way I would recommend it to anyone that really wanted a real way to invest for their future or their families.

I think they should change the name from Robinhood to Robbing you.

I wont be returning to the service and/or using it anymore. They have refused to close the account. I have simply asked them to close my online member account and delete any information not necessary to keep. Just as anyone can close their checking account, credit card account, etc while the company keeps the necessary information on the back-end. Instead, they have chosen to leave open my account open (not a credit line or loan in any way). Leaving my personal information, as well as my credit in danger of identity theft, SSN Fraud, brute-force attacks, data breaches and hackers. This situation has caused a great burden of stress.

June 21, 2023 7:54pm I sent $1,191.84 Transaction ID: f5a8500b0bf78811740fe4c78e86266d0b8b7e54ed443251328e1f6ede668a3c

Robinhood account number

Brokerage (RHS) Account Number

[protected]

For more than a week now they've held it frozen in review. I've tried contacting customer service but it seems not to even exist. Their platform essentially just leads you by the nose, in circles.

UPDATE:
I recently was notified that a purchase went through on Amazon’s stock as a limit buy. The purchase never appeared on my account even though I was notified of its success through the notifications portion of the app in addition to my limit buy disappearing from my account. I reached out to customer service through the app to see why this was not showing up on the detail page of the stock within the app and have opened the app today to see my limit buy was put back and the notification of the purchase gone from my in-app notifications without any response from customer service... 1 star. I am today selling all my positions through this app as a result, and changing trading platforms.

PREVIOUS REVIEW:
It won’t let me respond to my previous app review so here’s another...

Having no iPad app and a less than suitable web based replacement, as the dev suggested using, is not sufficient. There are numerous other apps out there with iPad interfaces that offer equal or better user experiences, such as ETrade.

I have enjoyed this app for a while but now that I’m getting a bit more serious I question whether this app actually has what it takes to stand up to the competition or if it is really just hyped up because of the free stock it gives you when you or a friend sign up.

Since all the developers need to do in order to add an iPad interface is check a box in the development process and should only have to make a few extremely minor changes to make the iPad interface work it seems the developers are possibly just lazy? They don’t even necessarily have to write new code to make this work, unless their code is really atrocious. In all honesty I’m shocked that they didn’t do this from the beginning.

After making a previous review about this I noticed that the developers tend to make canned responses to the majority of reviews, never include any valuable information in the update notes, and didn’t read my last review because I said that the web interface was not suitable in the title of the review (Why?: 1. It lacks the full feature set of the phone app, 2. It is glitchy and difficult to use on iPad), in addition I’ve noticed the bug fixes which have been made recently are consistent with poor app architecture likely due to an inexperienced iOS development team, (stock detail page not loading the next pages data before scrolling to it).

Like I said in my previous review, happy to do it for you! I’m an iOS dev myself...

I have contacted Robinhood numerous times about restricting my direct deposits with no reply or no inkling that my business even matters to them. Previously I. Convinced many of my friends to join telling them how great this commission free platform is. Now I will direct all of my friends and acquaintances to Webull which is much more customer friendly and responsive & now has an overall superior platform. My direct deposits were restricted due to one incident where a deposit was supposed to be transferred to my bank account from another investment account but somehow was delayed for 2 days. This delay caused a couple small direct transfers from my bank account to Robinhood to be return (all due to a single delayed transfer into my bank by outside account). I paid the fees with no complaint and waited for the couple months that they state in their own help section that it may be restricted for. However, when the restriction wasn't lifted I messaged customer service numerous times and either got no response or automated response and then was told there's nothing they can do for me. This entire time they were taking my $200 /mo fee for top tier status for the sole purpose of having direct access to the largest amount of direct deposit money immediately. I was never offered a refund & they also stopped paying me interest which I had been receiving monthly without any notice or explanation. I was flabbergasted that this is the manner in which they would treat a customer who had deposited $300-400K in their brokerage over the past couple years (& all do to an isolated incident where several couple hundred $ transfers were returned from one delayed deposit that should have been in my bank at the time). I was never treated so poorly by Webull (Or any of the brokerages w/ fees such as ETrade, TD AMERITRADE, Fidelity, TIAA, etc)...If this is ever remedied I will post an amendment acknowledging their response, but at this point anything short of refunding the $200 from every month that I was restricted, removing the restriction, offering a formal apology for the way they treat any customer (but especially one who has invested so much in their firm), and give me and all other investors a formal announcement & explanation for why interest payments stopped without any warning or official explanation)...I'll leave the ball in RH's court now and see if they have gone from one of the most customer responsive brokerages to one of the poorest. STAY TUNED...

If you want confirmation just ask. I trade with thousands of people that have left Robinhood for the same reasons. Some of the customer service responses would shock you to think “Did they even read a word I said?” Absolutely impossible to get any REASONABLE customer satisfaction. They cut all contact from phone queue to sending thru a form where you cant even send a screenshot of an example to what the issue may be. Virtually NOTHING is considered in the UXP. Just drop the “U” because in our experience, they don’t consider “U” at all, only use cases from perhaps management that has long forgotten about retail trading/investing. If you can get an answer from them in 48 hours, consider yourself royalty. Money is on the line, YOUR money, and you’re waiting for the first wrong answer from them so you can tell CS they have no experience or training other than a book they gave them and your money may be dwindling more. How about options? Timing is everything. Watch how long it takes even if it does get transmitted. Hours? Sure they have hours. Just not many. Where are they now? An hour before the bell and an hour after? Probably something near that. Something’s always changing and buggy. You can almost smell the fat cats smoking cigars rolling in crypto. Did you see all the notices before leaving a comment? They’ll capture your IP, ID, where and who you are. Wonder why they say such things? Likely because they keep getting slammed in reviews and rather than being a legitimate business who cares and is proactive, they’d rather come after you like in a mob movie. I don’t need to tell you any of this because it’s clear and obvious. Try transferring money and wait to see all the problems they cant explain or need to get their IT guys to explain IT, YES the ones who are integral but get shut out and no part of answering any technical questions unless you state “This is a technical issue with your database and programs. The error code is empty. That’s why I got a form-fill letter saying you’re charging me, but the reason is only a NULL mark in the letter. You’d think SIPC, APEX, FINRA and everyone else would be on these guys. Don’t let the way they rule you stop you. Call the ComplaintsBoard.com first and continue. Their resolution times are unacceptable. Don’t let their perks fool you! Search for best brokerage apps and if Robinhood is there you know it came from cherry picking. The people who like this place don’t know what they’re doing yet. I could give you a list myself. But you can do it on your own.

I don’t manage too much money on robinhood which is why the commission-free trading is fantastic. That’s the only reason I still use the app though, the research they provide through Morningstar seems very extensive if you’ve never invested in equities before but it’s very one dimensional. If you want access to research that will substantially affect your decision on whether to trade a stock, go open another brokerage account on TD, ETRADE, Schwab, etc. just any other platform other than this one. Also, their risk check for options trading is a little scummy. Sometimes you get your short leg assigned and your long leg executed and you get the full spread that you’re owed between the two contracts, but sometimes they just sell your in the money spread at a discount of what you’re owed. I don’t know exactly where that money is going though because I try to buy in the money spreads on expiration at a discount and I’m not allowed to buy em. I think robinhood is buying these options off us as a way of “mitigating risk” and picking up a few free pennies along the way.

Update***(12/11) wrote that^ a few months ago.
This app isn’t relevant anymore. Everybody and their mother is moving towards commission free trading. Robinhood interface has gotten worse over time. They’re trying to add features like news updates (snacks), without fixing issues like showing the wrong P&L for positions. I literally have to check option chains on yahoo to look at bid/ask spreads on options to make sure I wasn’t hemorrhaging money like my robinhood app was telling me! Good thing I don’t put stops on because I can only imagine what kind of havoc that would wreak.
Also, what is going on with these infinite money glitches? I could only imagine the hundreds of thousands of dollars of free leverage people are adding to their accounts are not coming out of robinhoods pockets! Also the risk checks are absurd and whether your in the money spread is assigned is completely arbitrary. I’ve lost a stupid amount of money because robinhoods risk check had to sell my positions at a discount to make the contracts liquid instead of just assigning my debit spreads that were IN THE MONEY.

I write these as a warning to beginners because you’ll either read this and be wise and try another broker or you’ll disregard what I’m saying and learn the hard way. Robinhood, you HAD a great thing going for you! There weren’t this many problems in the past and you guys are freaking out and adding pointless features because you’re no longer a commission free one trick pony.

I’ve been using Robinhood only for direct deposit, I used to invest but after noticing that every stock/coin that I would put money into dropped the instant I submitted my order and would never come up, then as soon as I submitted to sell the stock/coin it would immediately jump up, I stopped.
Robinhood offers a monthly interest on the amount that’s in your account, I’ve never made more than $.03 no matter the amount.
I’ve had several refunds where the transaction shows “refunded” but the money was never actually added back to my account, I was able to get through to customer service who reviewed the transactions and calculated my amount while on the phone with me, stated that I was correct but there was nothing they could do since the computer is in charge and they can’t override or correct what the computer does. Do to this I’ve had well over $300 stolen by Robinhood. I’m currently disputing a transactions in which I made a purchase and never received my items after reaching out to the store they’ve refused to provide the items or issue a refund. I provided emails confirming this information between myself and the store as proof in the dispute (in the email the store clearly stated they will not provide the items or the refund on 4 separate occasions) yet I have received no info regarding the despite and no money returned which puts me out nearly $50. My card was used to purchase a monthly subscription for over 6months, I’ve contacted that company but the transactions don’t appear on my account with them so they can’t remove the card, issue refunds, or end the subscription so I reached out to Robinhood with no response. With my dispute Robinhood cancelled my debit card but didnt notify me until after the despute was submitted, it takes 3-4 weeks for a new card to arrive leaving me helpless. Transfers to outside banks can be done but take 4-5 days for it to go through.
Don’t expect to use your cards outside your immediate living community. My account was locked and they refused to unlock my card because they insisted I got a new device and Robinhood had to confirm my device was really mine. I NEVER got a new device! I was stranded in California heading to WA and had to have money sent to me by other means because Robinhood refused to unlock my account. Once back to WA my account unlocked itself so I deemed that the account was locked due to the location monitoring.

2 years of stolen money, account issues, losses, and disappointment. I finally moved on and will be closing my account as soon as all my money has been removed.

Do you like never being able to talk to a human being ever when there’s a problem with thousands of dollars of your own hard earned money? Do you like trying to place an order to trade, and having it hang for thirty seconds to one minute so by the time your order posts, the price of the security has already moved far, far away from your entry point? Do you like dealing with delayed market prices and terrible charts? Do you like a brokerage that steals all of your personal data and sells it to the highest bidder? Do you like a brokerage that inflates Limit orders and Market orders by several pennies so they can pocket the difference in trades? Do you like being charged fees to borrow money on margin only to have the brokerage not allow you to use any of the money they’re charging you a fee for? Do you like being blindsided by full on account restrictions the next day after you make supposed “illegal moves” according to their ambiguous internal rules without any warning? Do you like using a brokerage who is in major trouble with regulators right now over lying about their “Checking Accounts” that aren’t checking accounts? This is basically a phone app designed to steal money and data from unsavvy and unaware people. Go to a real brokerage and actually make money. ——— 02/14: I really am both amused and amazed at the copied and pasted reply below. I received several more from their “Support” after this incident. These statements above are facts that can be found with a simple google search of this fly-by-night. It is not, “How [I] feel.” I am reporting this scam to the SEC and all other regulatory agencies who will listen. Today I liquidated all holdings, cancelled the margin account and will withdraw my $65,000.00 on Monday to go to Fidelity. I have also advised my friends with similar account sizes to do the same. This is utter garbage run by scammers. You are far better off paying $4.95 commission on a single trade with a reputable and customer-facing brokerage. ——— 07/05: Nothing new to update on at all. I just want to reiterate to anyone thinking about using this... “brokerage” to run. Run away fast! It’s a garbage bucket shop! ——— 12/21: So the SEC forced this brokerage to return $3,800 they stole from me over the course of ten months. I received a settlement check several months back. Two more class action lawsuits are still pending settlement today. Their stock is also tanking straight into bankruptcy since they went public. If you’re stupid enough to use this “brokerage” then you will deserve every penny you lose! You’ve been warned.

I lost a lot of money when I was unable to access my account for an entire day not one of my order executed they sold my stake in a company that had no orders for anything and all the others were fully executable and were not and I lost tons. I have emailed them and messaged a 100 times even broke down to penny how much and what time each order should have executed and the totals I lost by the time I was able to login my account everything had been canceled by them before I could ever have logged in of course day was closed and they were not responding to anything I sent. Before all of this. My bank flagged a couple of deposits for security and my approval to allow them to take the money that night they were contacted by my bank to let them know what happened and they never answered them till this day not one response to the tons of messages and emails from me and my bank was ignored also they reversed the deposits because they didn’t respond at all ever to them so Robinhood took $9 for each of the 3 and then have done it 2 more times to me and my bank was ignored again. So my bank took full responsibility and Robinhood has never one time since November returned any messages emails phone calls from me and my bank who we had all the paperwork for them to reverse the issues and charge my bank and again never one person contacted me. I get they got my message sometimes but never actually do anything. My bank fully refunded me everything I disputed for Robinhood failed to ever respond. I left a review like this and developer message and responded to my review giving me an email address to email so they could help me faster and not one response from them AGAIN! That was feb 14 my review has been taken down. I’m filing a sec complaint about missing money from my account they sold stock I didn’t authorize they are not addressing my losses and anything that happened that day and I have never had a serious issue resolved. They are stealing from me and stole from my bank. If their is a response all they do is that. They are 100% liars I have proven it and they have never taken deposit restrictions off of my account and my bank suspects I’m a drop in the bucket of the stuff they do. Please look on change.org today for a petition to start a class action against a company robbing a disabled single father 2 girls and live on pennys. Don’t believe them I have been burnt dozens of times before and they have not stopped in 5 months and hundreds of dollars missing and they won’t ever answer any questions or anything else I have sent and my bank has sent. Sign the petition

2021-01-28:

Robinhood halted trading of certain stocks (AMC, GME, etc) to “protect retail investors” when in fact they are manipulating the market to help the naked shorting institutional investors. Very disappointed.

———————————————————————
2020-09-09 TLDR: Robinhood’s flawed system costed me during a partial fund transfer.

A sleek and easy-to-use brokerage platform, Robinhood has done investors a favor by decreasing the barriers to investing. I also enjoy the rollouts of features so far such as fractional shares and cash management (but I’m not so much a fan of the DRIP).

For Robinhood, it has several areas for improvement, some unique to this platform while others common amongst the competitors:
1. Research features are limited. It’s missing the ability to see the *more detailedfinancials, news, corporate actions, press releases, and analyst opinions on companies.
2. Purchasing fractional shares can only be done by market price and not by other means such as limit order.
3. Low traffic tolerance. The platform occasionally freezes up during crucial times of the market, leaving gains on the table.
4. Friendly, and helpful, but inefficient customer/account support team. The team is great each time I interact with them. However, because support can only be reached via email, time-sensitive or critical issues may be addressed too late.
5. Prices are lagging/higher than actual market prices. This has to do with the way the platform works and there is no fix to it.
6. Cost basis for shares may not make sense to you at first. Robinhood uses a first in first out (FIFO) rule, making the numbers look weird and possibly skewing your Realized and unrealized P/L.
7. Your portfolio P/L chart will be messed up if you do a partial fund transfer (and there is probably no way to fix it).

A side story of when I was truly disappointed with Robinhood:
I lost ~104 USD due to a flawed process most likely on Robinhood’s platform. Robinhood refuses to reimburse due to their policy.

How that all happened:
I made a partial fund transfer out to WeBull. When it was complete, it resulted in my Robinhood account having naked calls (something that Robinhood does not allow and we as users should not have the capability to do). Robinhood was oblivious to it and only found out when I reached out to them to ask why I had naked calls. The result was Robinhood closing my naked calls at my expense and causing my account to go negative which I had to address by selling some of my other shares. This was obviously a bug or flaw in the system, yet they refuse to compensate me for my loss of ~104 USD.

First of all I love this app and the idea behind it. I use Scottrade, now TD Ameritrade to invest in stocks but I fell in love with Robinhood. But there are some serious issues. The first thing is their customer service is slow and terrible. You can't talk to a live person and there's no phone number to call. If you lose your phone hopefully you have a backup or a tablet with the Robinhood app. They should make it so that users can access their accounts on a web browser too and not just through the app. Also if one of your stocks split, Robinhood will display it incorrectly and if you contact support to fix it they will give you completely useless information and not resolve anything.

I am updating my review. As of 02/15 Robinhood has added web browser access to all accounts so users can access their portfolios and enter trades outside of the app. Which is good.

However Robinhood has still not fixed the issue of stock splits displaying correctly.

If you have a stock that splits 3:2 like ROL did in 2018 it will show incorrectly in the Robinhood app. This happened too when Under Armor stock split into two different classes of stock in 2016/2017. This issues still has not been fixed in 2018 and early 2019.

After the stock split the Robinhood app would not show the correct average cost and often would show a negative number or a loss. And if you contacted customer service they would not fix anything for you and would give you useless information like “just look at your statements” but the statements would show the incorrect average cost as well. Only Robinhood does this. No other online broker displays incorrect info and refuses to fix it. And this is actually illegal. Ever since 2012 by law brokers are required to provide their customers with certain info like average purchase cost. Robinhood does not. And even when you ask customer service for the correct price they won’t give it to you.

Go on places like Pinterest and search “Robinhood under armor stock” and you’ll see I’m not the only one. I liked this app because it charges no commissions but there are serious issues and when these issues happen Robinhood’s customer support will not help you. I contacted them 8+ times regarding this issue and other issues and they were no help. We just went around in circles with me stating the problem and their customer service providing me with no solutions and useless info that had nothing to do with what I was asking about. Also the app displays my balances incorrectly. Also when I login the total value of my account: stocks plus cash is wrong and Robinhood refuses to fix it. Does that make any sense?

Let’s begin with their “let the people trade” mission statement.. more like we’ll take a cut off every share you buy and sell.. AND we’ll sell the data from all of our users to any hedge fund that wants to bank on where people are putting their money into. Should I Continue?

Their margins profit them > Your buy price is not the price you’re buying it at. It is a margin price that basically allows them to buy a share from a different broker at a cheaper price and they pocket the difference.

Now that this is out of the way; speculative investigations into GME / AMC / BB / NOK etc developments over the last week portray the company as being completely in bed with Citadel and other hedge fund ventures. Robinhood halted buying of options, contracts, stocks, equities, you name it; mid day as trading progressed but never halted the selling of stocks in these markets.

This coerced investors to only having the option to sell which in my personal and professional experience puts every investor at a disadvantage as people who see the stock dropping further positions the investor to sell.. further driving the prices lower and lower which can be seen as clear market guidance towards manipulation of stock.

Onto my biggest point here. This Deceitful and incompetent CEO then comes on an interview with Elon and literally quotes “we got a call around 2 AM” meaning, they had more than 5-6 to make a statement to its traders before the opening bell to caution its traders and notify its traders that it needed to halt the exchange market. Instead, they waited until mid day to halt trading without giving any notice or reason or statement and totally DESTROYED the market as people only had the option to sell.

My point here, it is in the absolutely best interest and COMMON FN SENSE to Stop all trading and selling In said markets PERIOD. Under no circumstances should have they and other exchanges been allowed to conduct their business in such a way that it literally pinned every investor against a wall and a cliff.

Do yourself a favor, go with fidelity. It’s just as easy and you will learn more from them than this crappy application that literally shows a graph, some numbers flickering, and nothing else. Their gold membership is crap as it literally shows no market statistics or more detailed history of the stocks.

This is Robin the Hood mentality.

STAY AWAY FROM THIS COMPANY.

I incurred a large amount of loss over the past couple of months and I see it clearly now once I switched over to fidelity.

Robinhood is not free, and it is most definitely not aligned with the mission statement or in the best interest of the people.

Update 4/17
So now these tools decided the best way to lock you out of trading legally, is to constantly change your login method, now at random intervals I cannot use my phones pin and need to go back to passwords I have long since forgotten and with still non existent support, i'll open a 4th account with fidelity at this point after 3 years of scandals i'm done with these retards.
*update 10/1 they must know the future they sold me out of a stock on a stop loss when the price never dropped to the trigger by 10 cents double checked yahoo days range and it confirms with robinhood a days range. Charles schwabb just announced free trades so guess what is going to happen nextThey absolutely do not execute market orders at best price, if you don't place a limit order they are very good at buying stock at up to .94% higher than the actual price far beyond the bid ask spread, how do i know after placing a market order and loosing 1% right out of the gate I placed a limit order 1 second later and got it at the price of 1cent over the ticker price. Meaning it was clearly available at that price for the same quantity. I realize after investing for a year now that robinhood Cannot be used for orders over 1000$ you will loose far more than any standard fee, it's just the facts of life. It's good for day trading low amounts like 500$ but you need to quickly place limit orders on your buys and sells. what's 1% on 1k vs a simple 5.99$ fee elsewhere? imagine 10k order.

They got me again on Store capitol had a limit order placed for 36.99 and the stock dropped well below to 36.83 my guess/ i know they are looking for a larger margin to collect on. the spread on this stock from my past history is roughly .02-.04 cents when your not paying attention all the sudden it's .16 cent spread on an above average volume day. I also have e*trade and stockpile and e*trade is just overly convoluted and stockpile is just stupid but robinhood constantly rips me off. I'll be getting the ameritrade or schwabb app today i'm done with this i've been tracking every transaction for a year and they cannot deny it anymore. good to start with but have an exit planned for a real company now that ameritrade is also free there is no reason to deal with robinhood. I guess i can thank them for starting the trend but i'll be utilizing the other company's savings account that is nothing more than a pipe dream at robinhood. GL
3/9
good for being down at the most important times I opened a fidelity account yesterday, they been dragging their feet on cash management as well as fractional shares, the interface is easier but that's where the pros end they are free but cost you in the long term...bye now they are all free!

This app is a joke. Go with another platform. The stock is going up at a prime buying time I can’t invest my $33,700 in money for 5 business days and customer support is none existent. I emailed them it said a response would be 1-3 business days but then the automated email I got said it would be longer because of covid-19. Here’s how it went down. I had an excellent standing account with never any issues from my part. I had over $33,700 invested. About $13,000 was in one stock, when one day based on my research I felt good and wanted to try to get as much money into that one stock as possible so I looked into margins. The app said it would allow me to barrow roughly $16k at 5% what a good deal when your expecting a stock to go up and you can make a bunch of money on money you wouldn’t have been able to invest without the margin and it would only cost you 5%. So I sold the other stocks and decided to put my extra $20k plus the $16k margin and deposited about another $4k from my bank account for what should’ve been a $40k buy for at total of $53k in one stock. Well when I went to purchase the margin they promised ended up only being about $137. Yes $137 instead of $16,000. Well whatever it wasn’t really my money in the first place so just a missed opportunity I apparently never really had. I bought the stock at .$91 it went up and came back down to $.90 as markets move we’re talking about couple percent change in one day not a big deal. Well they put in a call on that $137. In order to make good on that call it said I needed to sell the stock, pay back the call and leave for $4k liquid because I allowed the call to happen. I figured well as I expect the market to drop this isn’t a big deal I’d be selling anyways and buying back once it bottoms out. Well I sold at $.91 so through the deal I didn’t make any money but I didn’t loose any either so you might be thinking what am I complaining about? Well because of this and a banking error with there withdrawal system over a $369 deposit into my Robinhood account they locked my account from buying stock until the $369 clears in 5 business days as well they’re holding the $4k I deposited amongst a couple other deposits even though most of that money has already been taken out of my account. So I should have almost $39k available in total but my moneys locked up because of a $137 margin call and $369 deposit that allegedly got reversed when deposits before and after that one made it through just fine and custom support is on covid vacation. Like seriously how hard is it to answer a phone or respond to email while on self quarantine. It’s a bunch of crap and that the stocks are going back up I’m missing out on thousands, possibly tens of thousands in profits because of Robinhood. Like I said Robinhood is a joke!

UPDATE 08/22
ROBINHOOD HAS FROZEN MY ACCOUNT AND CONTINUES TO PREVENT ME FROM TRADING OR WITHDRAWING FUNDS BACK TO MY BANK. THEY SAID THEY NEED TO VALIDATE MY ID. THEY REJECTED MY DL SO I WENT AND GOT A NEW PASSPORT. I SUBMITTED DOCUMENTS TO THEM AND IM STILL WAITING FOR A RESPONSE...

TERRIBLE EXPERIENCE, I WANT MY MONEY!

Update 08/02- Since posting my review, my account has been locked for compliance. I have experienced more losses as a result of their account tampering and as I write this review now, have more than $3,100 in funds I’m being refused access to withdraw or otherwise.
-08/02

ORIGINAL REVIEW
I have been using Robinhood for a couple of years and my experience has been disappointing to say the least. At first I was thrilled with the platform when I saw that I was able to trade commission free. However, nothing is free, and Robinhood has some hidden costs I wish I knew about prior to joining.

1- Options trading on this platform is significant, way more than traditional brokerage accounts due to issues on this platform. Especially when it comes to covered calls and puts for those with smaller cash balances and limited Buying Power. Ive had options assigned that were covered yet I was still put in margin call and experienced losses as a result. Ive also had options automatically sold by Robinhood on expiration date for a loss although they were winning trades if allowed to end the trading day. Robinhood automatically sells options you own or buys to close out, hours before market close. EVEN if you don’t want to. The platform will also restrict certain option from sale or purchase if it thinks you are creating a box spread. This can be quite an issue...

2- Account Balances and Reporting. Good luck trying to see your exposure or reviewing your portfolio. Robinhood has potentially the worse desktop site created and is zero help actually managing the holdings you have in your account. This really requires you to find a way to take the data from this account and plug it into a different platform to manage effectively.

3- Customer Service. Terrible, when you realize the limitations of the platform or some of the quirks they don’t make clear upfront, you will soon realize that there attitude is “oh well” and silence. There is no phone support folks, so write a nice email to in the middle of your account being frozen and money burning away, and hopefully, you can afford the collateral damage resulting from the untimely response. I couldn’t and was shocked to find when I tried to voice my frustration, all I got was generic emails from a robot and no way for recourse.

Ive lost thousands using the Robinhood platform and would not encourage any user to use this App, stick to a brokerage with size and quality, it’s worth the cost.

You may think that free commission trading is the benefit you need when entering the stock market. You couldn’t be further from the truth, many banks offer free commission trading when starting your account for at least up to 3 months. With Robinhood, they initiated two LARGE transfers by a glitch or error, and somehow I was still charged with two separate bank reversal fees when I finally stopped the transfers from over drafting my bank account once I realized the deposits had been made. Their support team spoke to me as if I was lying to them about these transfers, and as if I intended to overdraft my bank account to fill my “Robinhood “ portfolio with my entire bank savings. The process was extremely detrimental to my mental health as I agonized over how the transfers were made in the first place, while still getting no answers or help from the app. Their support staff messaged me saying that “unfortunately, your bank reversals cannot be overturned! Thank you for your understanding, have a great rest of your day! :)”. Maybe the people training these half-headed workers should explain to them that you don’t speak to customers in smiley face emojis, especially when you are denying them any help and furthering their frustrations. I am currently in the process of transferring all my funds out and closing my account, mind you I’ve had Robinhood for less than a month and this is my experience. They denied any possibility in their own wrongdoing, which I believe to be a part of their “margin requirement” function, which may have initiated the large transfers from my bank automatically to fulfill a nonsensical equation within the app that works to “benefit” me by offering a larger sum to invest without actually investing the money, but in this case they did invest my real money from my bank account, and their support team failed to offer to make an investigations into my account of what was going on in my account, even after five full length emails detailing my the accounts of my situation. Not until after I initiated the transfer to send my entire portfolio holdings to the brokerage associated with my bank account, did they offer to begin a full investigation into the ghost deposits that were made, and they said that if I wanted to go that route, my funds transfer would be delayed or cancelled. I am not walking, I’m running away from this app, and I hope that this review can at least help one person to make the smarter decision to not trust a company such as this, especially when they are able to make deposits from your own bank account without your knowledge. Just go with a real brokerage, it is so much more worth your investment and your money will at least be secure, and not tied up to some company that does not even have a physical office space. Please, take my word for it.

Charts have horrible lag. Advance charts line graph are slow and sometimes freeze. The option watch list are not updating fast enough. Moving between menus is a chore because of how slow the app has been functioning. Also please give the user the option for Robinhood to stop selling the contracts 30 minutes before contracts expire on zero dte. I have lost money because Robinhood force sells options contracts without my consent on a specific time. Please give advance user the option to not allow you robinhood to not sell option 30 minutes before market closes. It is not fair for users that want to hold contracts closer to market close for zero dte. I use other stock brokers that are not as slow when using their aplication. I currently have over 400 different items on different watch list. I have the same amount of list with other brokers and Robinhood app is the only app giving me horrible lag when using the app. Please also create a iPad app. Multi window view would be awesome also. A desktop app for mac or window users would be great also. Thank you for your time.

—-new problem added to the iOS Robinhood app. If there is Momentum in the trade, when I try to add a stop price to my option contract app does not function properly. When I tap the stop price section to type the price, The app moves the selection to limit price. I tried multiple times to tap on stop price order and it suddenly shift back to limit order without any input from me. I tried restarting the phone or app. Nothing. But if there is no momentum in the stock I can select the stop price order and it does not move the selection to limit order. This is nuts. I loss money because I could not set my sell stop price in profit before the position reversed on me. Thanks to not being able to add the stop. This can make people lose a lot of money. Especially with weekly option contracts that are extremely volatile. Fix this problem asap. This is horrible. I have videos of me tapping the stop order and your app moving my selection to limit order quickly without my input. . It is almost like the app is purposefully trying to make me lose money by not allowing me to add a stop loss especially when in profit. Seems that this happens when position is in profit and there is a lot of volatility in the trade. Ui input goes down the drain. Please fix this soon. Latest update did not fix this horrible bug! This is with regards to setting a sell stop order. After market closes the app allows me to add my stop order without a problem. Not useful during a day trade. Only when volatility increases the selection goes crazy.

I have seen that when certain stock gamma squeezes. Your app has a tendency to delay the option contract from updating to its real time price. This is not great. Fix your server system. It has insane lag.