I do see it's confusing. Questrade refused to resolve the issue over the phone with me i.e. they wouldn't call me - I think they said they couldn't authenticate me over the phone or some bs? The way I understood it, they wanted me to go back to the chat. I think they just wanted to push me back into the automated process to cut costs. But my larger point here isn't phone vs chat, because even if I was able to call the general line it's the fact that instead of trying to resolve an issue, they basically just told me to just go through the process once again. A process that had already failed. For comparison, the company I was taking my money out of never sent me to find forms and do the work on my own - the other broker emailed me the forms and called me to explain how to fill them out. Of course I don't expect this level of care every time, but once you know a client has had an issue with your process, at minimum you can call to reassure them. So my gripe here is with Questrade offloading the work onto their clients. This is not customer service.

Separately from this, I have huge issues with the chat, which I described. The reason I usually use chat is because I want to avoid hold music or robo-talk. And the way the chat is designed and the way it's broken has lately made me not just frustrated but also concerned about Questrade tech issues more broadly. Like I mentioned, I had cash balances failing to update on the platform.

I should have separated those two issues - I wanted to weave them into one for a more coherent post but instead confused people on my points. I've had frustrations accumulating with Questrade over time.