After last week’s bloodbath in the markets, investors were hungry to get shares rolling upward again Monday, but the free trading application Robinhood made it difficult, to say the least, for users to get in on the action.
Robinhood, an application that offers commission-free stock trades and money market accounts, suffered massive service outages that prevented its 10 million customers from executing trades of any kind.
“On Monday, we experienced an issue with a part of our infrastructure that resulted in an outage, preventing customers from using our app, website, and help center,” a Robinhood spokesperson revealed in an email Tuesday.
“As of Monday night, Robinhood is back up and running,” the email said. The outage ended up lasting 17 hours.
It couldn’t have happened on a worse day, though, as U.S. indexes rocketed up in an attempt to recover from the worst trading week since October 2008. The S&P 500 regained $1 trillion Monday, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose a whopping 1,293 points, or 5.1%, its best single-day gain since 2009.
It looks like Robinhood hasn’t figured out the issue either, as the service experienced more issues Tuesday morning after the Federal Reserve announced it was implementing an emergency interest rate cut as part of efforts to sustain the economy amid the coronavirus outbreak that is now hitting the U.S.
Robinhood announced the outage in a tweet Tuesday, and many users took it as an opportunity to vent their frustrations.
Our systems are currently experiencing downtime. We’re determined to restore full functionality as soon as possible. We’ll be sharing updates here and on https://t.co/ZS733Gooqj.
— Robinhood Help (@AskRobinhood) March 3, 2020
Stock market is on the rise and many of us can’t even make moves. Get it together. This mistake is costing everyone money.#robinhood
— Joshua Ayres (@TheRealJayres) March 3, 2020
Some users were even suggesting filing a lawsuit against the company to make up for missing out on Monday’s massive buying opportunity that eventually bled into Tuesday.
Someone needs to start posting links to lawsuits, two days in a row. This is unacceptable for any company handling millions of hard working people financials
— Djthunder?? (@DjthunderTV) March 3, 2020
Others just demanded Robinhood reimburse them with free stocks or Bitcoin.
Free Stocks of Tesla or $100.00 of Bitcoin
— Renould Pierre (@RenouldChosen86) March 3, 2020
Robinhood said it is considering compensation on a case-by-case basis for some clients, according to Bloomberg. Compensation could come in the form of billing credits for its premium Robinhood Gold service. The service announced it was sending out a way for customers to get in contact and address the issue.
When it comes to your money, issues like this are not acceptable. If you’re a customer, we’re sending you info on how to contact us so we can work with you directly to address your concerns.
— Robinhood Help (@AskRobinhood) March 3, 2020
It’s not a good look for a company that has become so popular among individual investors, particularly younger people. The service’s commission-free model has been adopted by many larger brokerage firms like TD Ameritrade and Charles Schwab.
The outage likely caused users to miss out on some serious gains, and those same users are now looking elsewhere as markets remain volatile.
Pulling my money out today thank you and good luck ✌️
— ZVBO (@ProdByZVBO) March 3, 2020
As of 11:12 a.m. Tuesday, Robinhood was still down.
Editor’s note: Were you affected by the Robinhood outage Monday? Are you considering a different company now, or will you stick with the free trading app?
