Onboarding Grind: My Ongoing Battle with Prop Firm Infrastructure

Alright folks, need to vent and maybe get some collective wisdom here. I've been wading through the prop firm challenge circuit for a while now, and honestly, the biggest hurdle isn't always the trading itself – it's the damn infrastructure. I recently passed a substantial challenge, feeling pretty good about it, only to hit a brick wall with the payout process. It's a combination of clunky dashboards, KYC/AML procedures that feel like they're designed by medieval scribes, and then the actual broker execution side. You see spreads that magically widen just as you hit your target, or slippage that would make a veteran scalper weep.

I get that they need to protect themselves, but the hoops some firms make you jump through just to get your earned capital... it's a joke. One firm literally took over two weeks to verify my documents for a payout, claiming 'technical difficulties' with their payment provider. Two weeks! In this market, two weeks is an eternity. It makes you wonder how much capital is tied up in these payout pipelines, or if it's a subtle way to encourage you to keep trading it away. Is anyone else constantly battling these logistical nightmares, or have I just picked the short straw on infrastructure-challenged prop firms? I'm talking about the whole stack here: the broker they use, their payment service provider (PSP), their internal processing. It feels like the Wild West sometimes, and I'm left questioning if the juice is always worth the squeeze when the operational friction is this high.