Nightmare Scenario: FINRA wrongfully accusing me of a violation for SIE

Before people say I am dumb and should of went to a test center I realize that mistake now lol but I had a tight schedule. 

So I took my SIE virtually. During the exam really unfortunately for some reason my laptop either just died/ran out of charge (my charger was plugged in but for some reason possibly wasn't charging) or my harddrive or something crashed and died. 

I called ProMetric instantly who runs the proctoring and software and they said from their end they see it and confirm it as a technical difficulty and my laptop did in fact die and that this is normal, happens to a lot of candidates, that I should not stress and they will let me take the exam in the next few upcoming days no problem at all with no penalty and not marked as a fail.

Now this is where this shit goes crazy. I called FINRA to explain the situation and they are saying that when they looked into it, my test ended disruptly because the proctor accused me of "Switching Profiles", and that I did not experience any technical difficulty at all. My test and laptop went black and restarted because the proctor marked me as a violation. They would not hear me out or let me explain my situation and pretty much told me to fuck off and pay the $80 again and retest. 

I went back to Prometric with this and they said that the proctor who marked it was definitely incorrect and even if I did some sort of violation I would receive an alert and notice from the proctor, but literally my laptop died. They are now escalating my case to a bunch of higherups and will investigate further and will let me know the outcome. They said my proctor most likely terminated my test incorrectly and that they have no idea what this "Switching Profiles" entails and from their end so far they see no indication of me doing this, no indication of me violating anything, and that their system says my test was incomplete due to a technical difficulty, not any sort of violation whatsoever. 

I just wanted to hear your guys thoughts and whether anyone dealt with anything similar or how I should go about this. 

12 Comments
 

Oh my god this is literally exactly what prometric told me too!! They said I should have never gotten FINRA involved and that they always don't seem to agree with them. Bruh but how was I suppose to even know i was "in the wrong"? Like from my perspective my laptop malfunctioned and I simply reached out to FINRA explaining that and they come back with this fat accusation that literally comes out of no where. So I don't really see how I told on myself.

 

Echoing my above response but what was so wrong of me to explain my technical difficulty to FINRA? When I reported back to ProMetric FINRA's response they said FINRA has it wrong and that ProMetric knows I am in the right and did not do anything wrong. 

 

I mean, you should see the test taking environment as a black box - FINRA only cares about one output, which is whether or not you've passed. The legitimacy of that single output is certified by Prometric. But now you decide to break the black box and go talk to FINRA? In that regard, them telling you to basically fuck off and retest is expected - it's not their problem and they really don't give a shit since the single output here is: whatever the reason, you didn't complete the test and therefore you failed. What were you trying to convince them of?

Similarly, what are you trying to convince Prometric of? Just schedule a new test and be done with it rather than ringing everyone's bell. Trying to get everyone involved sounds like an excellent way to get fucked and I fail to understand what you're trying to achieve: again, whether your laptop died or you had a stroke or your score was shit, you didn't pass. So the solution is to retake the test.

 

So the worst thing that can happen here is that you have to pay the $80 and retake the exam? You have to retake it either way, so paying the $80 is the worst thing coming from your mistake.

When I read your post I thought you got banned from FINRA or something. Just pay the money and move on. Once you get that IB salary you will laugh and tell the story to your whole analyst class.

 

Honestly, a lot of the SROs just want to feel important so they make a big deal over everything. The testing center people are the same way. They take themselves way too seriously. If any person with half a brain looks into your situation, I am sure it will get cleared up in no time.

 

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