Dear Mr. Ni,
We apologize for any misunderstandings. The customer service representative who thought your order had been filled was new and had made an assumption based on the current price of the stock. He promptly called you back upon learning of his mistake. Datek is aggressively hiring new people to help better serve our customers. We apologize again for any incorrect information that was given to you.
It is possible that your friend got an execution even though his order was entered after yours. If several market makers are offering to buy stock at a certain price, we can only send your order to one market maker at a time. Your friend's order might have been sent to a market maker who was willing to buy stock, while yours was sent to one who had already executed a trade and was about to change its quoted price. Unlike the NYSE, the NASDAQ market is not a unified market. There is not one single queue for orders sent via SelectNet preference or by phone.
To clarify our one minute guarantee please read the customer support link on our web page. Look under the 'Brief Overview for New Users' link. Admittedly, this guarantee has a few conditions. These address situations that, although they occur infrequently, might prevent us from filling your order in under a minute.
1.Your order must remain marketable for at least 1 minute and have adequate volume.
2.The stock must not be locked or halted.
3.This guarantee does not apply to NYSE and AMEX stocks before 10.00 a.m. ET
4.Orders that have been stopped within one minute and all orders to sell short will be charged $9.99.
5.An order that has been stopped is one that has been guaranteed a price of execution but which might get a
better price. Effective August 1, 1997
However, for most situations, if a marketable order is not filled in a reasonable amount of time, we won't charge you a commission.
Finally, I would like to thank all the participants on this thread for their comments. While we would certainly prefer if our customers only had nice things to say about us, we also appreciate the constructive criticism we receive. Datek Online is a rapidly growing company that is constantly breaking new ground, offering new services and improving its existing services.
Your input is, and has been, invaluable because it tells us just how we can improve. Please keep posting your comments and suggestions, both favorable and unfavorable. We will be paying attention and responding as quickly as we can.
Jon Normile
Datek Online |
