Ok...
After cleaning up the bicker fest we just had about rebates.. I'd like to make a few things clear:
- I agree that the rebate industry is a burden, and prevents brokers from competing on lower fees since they 'rebate' has to come from somewhere.
- I also agree with Ramy's sentiment, if the money is there, take it. As from a consumer point of view it makes sense. And the broker would not facilitate it if they weren't still making money in other ways.
- I also am aware that using rebate providers as a huge marketing engine can help brokers gain market share quickly (but at a high price, and locking them into the model once they've achieved a high enough market share to no longer require it.) So there is a utility to rebate IBs for some brokers.
(Obviously these points conflict with each other. They are just based on different ways of looking at the market; from a business and cost perspective, and as a trader.)
If you're really interested in my thoughts on the matter: I lost my cool on the subject about a year ago when an article appeared in Forex Magnates:
http://forexmagnates.com/the-fx-middle-man-an-effective-sales-tool-for-brokers-2/
(Go to the comments section and look for "Jack Larkin"... also notice the people flooding into that comment section to defend the rebate industry since they work on the inside and depend on it, some even say things that aren't even true just to make the business model seem more legit.. sad really.)
That being said, I'm going to ask that we not talk about rebates on FXGears.
That sounds odd, but the reasoning is this: The entire rebate industry is run by Introducing Agents or IBs. The forum rules mentions that brokers are allowed to have a representative join the forum, so long as they only act in a "customer service" capacity and do not spam or post promotional material. Since IAs/IBs are not the brokers themselves, and the specific kind that only does marketing or rebates for brokers does not add value through their own products or services, they'd fall under the promotional / spam posting side of things for brokers. So I'd like to avoid creating big discussions that would encourage seeing them appear on the forums.
Not to mention that a few entities in the rebate industry now push for their clients to spam the web for them through various referral and multi-level-marketing programs. Clients literally get paid pennies to ruin their good name on forums and link build for these IBs. Not cool. So avoiding the temptation for some users to do this would be awesome as well.
So we're done here

Let's not continue this bickering, and move on.