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Non-Tech : eSchwab

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To: Rick Ryan who wrote (49)	10/25/1996 4:22:00 PM
From: Jeff Gibbons	of 76

Rick, 2 examples on slow fills. I put in a limit order to buy 1000 FORE (Fore Systems) at the Ask. I have NASDAQ Level II quotes as well as Time $ Sales. My order sat unfilled for 5 minutes while the Ask remained constant and all of 6 trades occurred in the 5 minutes. Then the Ask ticked up and I knew it would no longer trade (unless the Ask ticked down again of course). FORE continued to rise and I cancelled the order. I called to complain and was told about the manual review and that 5 minutes was considered adequate. I didn't demand that they fill that order as I probably should have. They certainly didn't offer to fill it. Several days later I put in a market order to buy MSFT when the Ask was 122. My order sat unfilled for a 1 1/2 minutes as I watched the Ask go up to 122 1/8 and then 122 1/4 at which point I submitted a cancel since I had no idea how high the price might rise in the next several minutes before they might execute my order. Based on what they had told me after the FORE trade request I wasn't willing to let it sit very long as a market order. I called about this as well and they said but you cancelled it and again told me about the manual review. I pointed out that the computers could verify fund requirements much faster than a manual review and that 5 minutes was unacceptable. They just said they were not set up to do it by computer. One of the brokers I talked to explained that there might be special conditions on the account that the computer would not understand and that was why manual review was necessary. I pointed out that a single bit of information could mark an account with special conditions and such accounts could be kicked out for manual review while letting the vast majority of accounts with no special conditions be validated automatically. Well we can't do that I was told. I've moved on. Too late to go back and complain about those trades now. There would be no fair way to ajudicate them now. BTW, these are not my only complaints. The web interface is way to slow and not at all designed for executing trades quickly. You cannot stay logged in for more than a few minutes so you have to go through 5 or so very slow screens to execute your trade and that alone can take several minutes if the servers are somewhat busy. I made several suggestions to the Schwab folks about how they could improve this and the people I talked to said they were very good ideas. That was a few months ago. Never heard anything more about it.

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