Time will heal the faint at heart! remember what I said!
E*Trade crashes as Dow soars
By Paul Festa
June 24, 1997, 6:25 p.m. PT
As the Dow Jones Industrial Average roared back
with a rebound today, users of E*Trade's online
investment service were locked out of online
trading for the last hour of the market due to the
failure of a recently installed backup system.
E*Trade users, however, were offered an
alternative backup: the telephone. A message
posted to the dysfunctional Web site directed
users to call in their trades. At the end of the day
the company had an average waiting period of
three minutes per trade.
"To be a serious player with a level of customer
support and satisfaction, you have to have a high
level of redundancy," said senior vice president
of marketing Rebecca Patton. In E*Trade's case,
redundancy refers to replacement hardware,
networks, files, Internet service providers, and
customer service representatives that can spring
to action when something goes wrong.
Patton said E*Trade was investigating the cause
of the breakdown.
E*Trade should know the importance of
redundancy. In May of 1996, the site suffered a
blackout that wound up costing the company $1.7
million in user compensation for missed trades.
The company has since invested more than $3
million in redundant systems. It has also
quadrupled its customer service staff from about
50 to over 200. E*Trade has accounts with four
Internet service providers: BBN, PSINet, UUNet,
and ELI.
"In May of '96 we did not have the kind of backup
system we have today," said Patton. "We even
have customer support in both locations so if
there were an earthquake in Palo Alto we're
backed up."
The Dow today closed at 7758.06, up 153.80
points over yesterday. |
