>>You'll always get : "it's not our fault
Sorry, though I'm preaching to the choir, I'm going to vent a bit.
for those of you that are Etrade customers I'm sure you've experienced many or all of these problems.
I list them here for those that may be considering Etrade!
I've opened an account with a different broker - so far no complaints - and am in the process of liquidating my ETrade account.
Do they not realize they have competition (almost typed competent by mistake) that's the same price or cheaper - and all I have to do is write an ETrade check to move my funds?
1: Has anyone ever heard them take credit for anything?
2: They have recently been "reversing" many of my transactions.
Sales, Buys, cancellations - After I get confirmations. Once they did it the next day.
When I question this, they say, "Market Makers have up to three days to reverse any trade".
Anyone know if this is even legal (they refuse to cite a reference, but say it's "probably" a NASD rule)? Please PM me if you know if it is or is not true.
It certainly isn't acting in my best interest, which is what I pay them for...
Funny thing. I've NEVER had them reverse a trade that saved me money. In every instance, they reversed one that would have made me money. (even the reversal of the cancellation buy lost me money - of course I cancelled it because it was going down. They reversed it the next day.)
Too bad they can't reverse the losers too!
3: When they're down, its "Isolated and only affected a few users for a short time".
I must be very unlucky because I'm ALWAYS one of those isolated users - and it's never a short time.
3a: They tell the press that "People will be compensated". Then they say "on a case by case basis".
3b: But all they ever tell me is, "Tough - Read the customer agreement. And besides, you could have used the phone or Telebroker" - sure like they weren't endless busy signals.
3c: ? Has anyone EVER been compensated for losses when they were down?,
When they're slow, they blame your ISP. Even if I'm on a T-1 that flies on anything else at the time.
4: Their standard answer to everything is "Purge your cache".
5: Their new "Realtime" Account info screens are NOT. (still yesterday's closing and they don't even update to yesterday's closing until a little while before the open)
Though when I call, they insist they are "realtime".
And when I insist, they say, "well a few people are having problems".
Or they say, "They're only realtime for Power Etrade customers".
I tell them I am. And they don't know what to say.
(They say Realtime even for non-Power Etrade users. I checked my wife's account).
I tell them to remove the blatantly misleading lines and they haven't.
6: I constantly show "open calls" and when I call they say, "oh, don't worry about it, it's probably just the way our journaling works"
What good is it if it can't be trusted?
6a: The one time I did ignore it, it was real. They liquidated some stock (below market) right after the open without giving me any warning. It was only one day after I actually got myself into the call position - I'd think I'd have more than a few hours to fix it.
When I called them - after getting the sale confirmation out of the blue, they said, they notify you in advance on a "best effort basis". I guess they don't try very hard.
They said someone "may" have tried to call me. BS - I have an answering machine on all the numbers that they have.
6b: Ditto, Account Equity - it's virtually meaningless And can't be trusted tomean anything.
7: If you have a short, you'll notice that the Account screen is really bogus.
The line that says (Long) is really your Net,
Then they list your shorts one a new line - Just to confuse you.
Looks real interesting when your "longs" get negative - Now that would be REAL crappy stock!
I've talked to lots of people there who don't believe me about this problem - even though I've faxed them copies four times.
I guess none of them has ever shorted a stock - they certainly don't understand the concept.
8: I love the way everytime I email them I get a different person. Even If I write ATTN: xxxx, someone else replies, who has no idea of the history and messes things up even more.
(At least they've gotten better about not insulting me with form letter responses).
9: If you have more than one position in a stock, when you place an order, it asks you which batch you want to sell.
Then they sell the wrong one anyway (lets say you want to sell the second, larger batch, they sell the first, and then part of the second.)
I finally talked to a supervisor who told me that for orders less than 300 shares they handle all transactions first in, first out.
When I asked her why it asks me which batch, she claimed it didn't.
When I asked her why they don't say that on the order screen, she said they did.
I explained that the only thing on the order screen that mentions 300 s All or none.
10: Most of the time when I call about balance, equity etc, they have a different number than what is in front of my face.
They say, well our screens are different than yours.
Now if it's right before the market opens, don't you think all the values should match?
Maybe they should make them all open accounts at Etrade so they'd know what the screens look like.
Nah, that would never work. I'm sure they all have accounts somewhere else!
11: Before I had a margin account, I (stupidly) placed a market order, which they executed way above market.
This spent more money than I had in my account.
I didn't think you could do this without a margin account.
Again they said, they try to prevent it on a "best effort basis".
12: They didn't even want to talk about why they bought the
stock way above market... They told me i should always place limit orders - which I do now.
I guess this is so they can make $19.95 while advertising "$14.95 per trade).
Well, after all that, I'm embarrassed at myself for not leaving sooner.
Thanks for letting me vent.
I hope someone benefited from it.
RickT |
