APOLOGY FOR RECOMMENDING BROWN & CO
Last year I opened an account with Brown, and posted recommendations on this thread. Sorry! In the last few months service has degraded. Often I'm unable to access, get thrown out and have to enter the address all over, sometimes several times. Couldn't get on at all Tuesday, when the sky was falling. Customer Service was locked up, and the Atlanta office required several minutes hold on the phone.
Recently I sold shares for $254, got credited for $54, had to talk to several people to get it cleared up, 2 days later. If an order is executed in partials sometimes they charge the commission on more than one execution, so you get nicked each time they do this.
Their screens are awkward to use, several steps to go from one to another, and they don't interrelate. Account balance page doesn't tell daily P/L on positions, etc.
I'm moving all accounts to Preferred which I've tried for 7 weeks. Slick software designed for quick trading, you can pull up an entire option schedule or just the month or strikes you want in an instant, and trade right off the chart! You can slip page to page without closing either. The financial page tells all you need to know about account balance, margin, buying power, etc. When you open Preferred the first screen shows your active orders.
Only negative is the inability to print all screens, necessitating a separate ledger. I've complained. One thing Brown does well is count the free real time quotes you have coming. I don't need to know my count is down 1 from 46,324. I'd like to know market value of my positions, not the last trade, several hours/days old. Preferred provides countless R/T quotes, and R/T values of all positions.
They talk nice, too! Brown's margin department trained with the Gestapo. I had a call after Tuesday's debacle [when their screens were down]. My positions were solving the problem nicely by Wednesday afternoon when I got a call, and I asked if I could hold for a couple of days as I understood there's 3 days to meet maintenance calls. "NOPE! We allow 3 days if you're sending a check, but if you're trading your way out of it you have to act TODAY!!"
I figure they've got more business than they can handle. Will do my part to alleviate the problem.
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