A couple of weeks ago I sent 3 online payments to my broker for $500, $500 and $200. They accepted the first one, but they would not accept the next two. The payments got sent as checks from my bank because my broker wasn't set up to accept "electronic bill pay" only checks or wired funds. My account is a joint account (why isn't really important right now) but the checks just have my name on them and I am the only one who uses the account, but the checks from the bank had both names on them and they wanted a noterized statement for each payment. They will send the 2 unacepted payments back to the bank, pay any fees, and pay for the cost for me to wire the money to the brokerage account but I have $700 that I have not been able to use for a a week and a half.
Tim, it sounds like it is a big but fixable mess that can only come out of relationship with a stock broker or a bank. It amazes me how long it takes them to fix the things that tie you up and keeps you from doing trades.
On Monday, I had a major problem with my broker. When I am interested in a stock, I will put in a trade well below the current price. If I can snag it for the amount of the trade that would be great of course but normally, during the trading day, I keep watching the stock while I work to see if its getting near its low for the day and then I revise the existing trade and buy it. I have the revision screen up and ready to go so that I can go in at the last minute and snag the shares I want fairly quickly. Well I was set up to do that on Monday with AES. Everything was going according to plan and when AES came close to my price, I went to revise my trade when the broker's website crashed. I then went to the automated phone system for trading but that crashed too. I then tried to get a hold of a trading rep. but I was put on hold and then disconnected. In the meantime AES is starting to move back up and I am p*ssed. Finally, I called the Seattle office of the broker all the while trying to get back into the website. However, their lines first were tied up and then I couldn't get a live voice. So I went back to the main phone line and after a total of 40 minutes I finally got a real voice about 6 minutes from the close. AES had jumped $.70........a big move for a $4 stock. The guy was a trader and couldn't help me with the problem because his systems were down so he put me into his supervisor. I had decided that my broker should make up to me the move of $.70. When the supervisor got on, he asked me a million questions and then said the problem was my fault. He claimed that had I called a third number and followed the prompts correctly, I would have gotten thru to a trader. I retaliated that all their systems were down......even the trader agreed to that. Not true and then the supervisor again explained to me that it was my fault.
As I was getting Excedrin headache # 24, I was about to give up when I decided a few hundred dollars is a few hundred dollars so I asked to speak to his supervisor which really surprised him.....frankly, I don't know why......he was acting like a jerk. He gave me the name and then said his supervisor would have to call me back. Ten minutes later the guy calls back, and says he talked to his supervisor and they had agreed to buy the stock for me and reimburse me for the difference between the lower price and the price they paid at the time of their purchase.
Strangely, the next day the guy's supervisor calls to tell me that the trade had been done and that my account was credited accordingly. The strange about it is that the guy's name was not the name given to me by the original guy. Who knows what that's about. While my broker generally has been very good, I sometimes feel like brokers in general are the mafia of the financial world and operate in a very gray area.
In the meantime AES has done nada since that day. So much for all my frustrations. :~((
ted |
