E*Trade Stinks
I have been with E*Trade for 2 years. I am leaving them and here is my lastest story.
Today, I wanted to sell Chrysler in the morning because of the Damler-Benz merger. I knew the stock would pop. I positioned myself on my E*Trade order screen and selected SELL ALL. When I pressed enter, I got a server error. So I quickly (as quickly as E*Trade functions which is VERY SLOW) went back to the order screen and entered 700 in the # of Shares field. Hit enter and received a message that I was overcommitted by 100 shares. So I checked the Portfolio Summary, Account Records and Transaction History to try and find out what's wrong. I could not find anything wrong. So I called the 800 number and then WAITED QUITE A WHILE for a customer service rep to answer the phone. In the meantime, the stock had dropped from 48 _ to 46 «.
I start talking to the rep and he told me I had 700 shares and Chrysler was at 48 «, so I hit the enter key. Then I asked him if he had real time quotes and he said "yes". I said, "Then why does it show 46 « on the entry screen." He did not know. So I told him I wanted to cancel the order. He said for me to just enter a cancel order. I said, "I can do that on a Market Order?" He said, "Yes." ***I did not think so, but I figured because E*Trade is SLOW AT TRADE EXECUTIONS he just maybe be right. *** After I entered it, he told me he saw the cancellation go through. After hanging up with him, I got a message that my order executed at 46 «.
So I called customer service back again and they told me they would credit my transaction fee. That is a whopping $14.95 after I have just been squeezed for over $1,500. She said she would have a supervisor call me. I got a call back and they said they would investigate it. After I hung up, my wife said, "They are just buying time to make up an excuse on why they are not going to make the situation correct." She was correct.
The supervisor called me back and told me the SELL ALL feature was for limit orders only. It does not say that on the screen. BAD DOCUMENTATION. Then the overcommitted message is a bug they know of but it is just a cosmetic error, nothing real. SYSTEM ERROR. Then he proceeded to tell me that I should know that a market order cannot be cancelled. I informed him that his own rep told me it could. POOR CUSTOMER REP TRAINING. You add in the SLOW RESPONSE TIME and being SQUEEZED ON THE SPREAD and that adds up to a pretty crappy product.
I asked him what he was going to do to resolve this situation and he said "Nothing." I informed him that I would be moving all my business, tell everybody I know and post this message every place on the net I can find. He said to me, "Is that fair?" I said, "Based on my loyalty staying with E*Trade despite their growing pains that I have endured for years, how E*Trade has not kept up with their competitors and how they do not stand behind their product, Yes, I feel this is more than fair." I told him if I did not hear back from E*Trade by the end of the day on how they would rectify this situation, the posting would begin.
Obviously, I did not hear from them because you are reading this now. Not only is E*Trade's product poor, they are not very smart either. If they had given me a $1,500 credit, I would have stayed with E*Trade even if I hated them because I would have had to use up the credit.
Please be aware this is not my first problem with E*Trade, just the one that broke the camel's back. For instance, just last week I had another problem with them. Before EDS took a 4 + point plunge, their stock went up about 2+ points in one day. On that day---ALL DAY LONG---EDS was incorrectly shown as selling at their previous days' close which was 2 points lower. This was not corrected until I brought it to their attention and not until the following day. How can you ever rely on a service that CAN"T PRODVIDE ACCUARATE STOCK QUOTES????
Well I soon will not be an E*Trade customer and I recommend the same to you.
Please reply back to this thread so E*Trade can see what happens when you combine the power of the internet with poor customer service/product. If you know of any other messages boards I should post this on please specify. I put it on Yahoo, Techstocks and Elite Trader.
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