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Non-Tech : Datek Brokerage $9.95 a trade -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jaison who wrote (12662)	7/8/1999 6:40:00 PM
From: Sir Francis Drake	Respond to of 16892

Would you rather switch to SureTrade? Article in NY Times... nytimes.com <<SureTrade Customers Suffer By The Associated Press NEW YORK (AP) -- For online investors, Suretrade Inc. has been a little unsure this week. Computer problems have plagued the company's Web site since Monday, forcing many customers to trade stocks the old fashioned way -- by calling a broker. Suretrade, a division of Quick & Reilly/Fleet Securities Inc., upgraded its computer system over the weekend to expand capacity, but software glitches have shut out many investors. ''I've never been able to get on the last three days,'' said Jeff Kozera, a Suretrade customer in Boston. ''I just talked to a trader, and he said it's been up temporarily today, but it keeps on crashing.'' Suretrade typically processes almost 98 percent of its 13,000 daily trades over the Internet. Customers pay $7.95 for an online trade, $11.95 for a trade placed via an automated phone system, and $32.95 for an order with a broker. Company spokesman Charles G. Salmans said Suretrade would post a notice on the site Thursday evening offering to waive the extra fees for phone or broker trades if the customer couldn't execute the order online. ''There's some irony,'' Salmans said. ''You do some changes designed to enhance capacity, and ... software problems cause bottlenecks.'' Companies like Suretrade are expanding their computer systems because more than 7 million Americans are trading online, and more than one-third of individual trades are made online. And the numbers are rising daily. Suretrade is one of the nation's smaller online brokers; industry leader Charles Schwab conducts 137,000 trades a day. While other brokers like E-Trade and Ameritrade have had their share of technical difficulties, they are usually fixed within hours, not days. Suretrade said its Web site was never completely shut down, but just operating very slowly. That distinction, however, was lost on customers like Norman Nithman in Chicago, who hasn't been able to access the site all week. ''I can't even get in to trade, it blows up my browser,'' he explained. Suretrade said it hoped the Web site would be operating smoothly by Friday. ''We're working on this 24 hours a day,'' Salmans said.>>