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Non-Tech : Complaints About Schwab -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jorj X Mckie who wrote (156)	3/8/2000 2:15:00 PM
From: Mark Z	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 196

Fun with Schwab Deux: This a.m. I phoned in an order (web was down) to sell 1 ICGE Mar 140 put at a limit of 12. At the time it was at around that price and was in a fast market. I specified the CBOE as they generally have the best prices. So, several hours later I find out I was filled at 12. Well, I go to look at Time & Sales and there's only 1 put trade at that strike and it went for 15 (ICGE dropped about 8 pts from where I phoned in my order). When I asked them about that they initially said since my limit was 12 that was all they would give me and that in no way did they sell it for 15 and pocket the $3. I pushed a bit and finally they 'offered' to compromise at 13.5 and told me to take it or leave it. So I took it but now I wonder... are these outages viewed by Schwab as profit opportunities? Again, a review of the T&S on the CBOE shows only 1 option sold and it went for 15 so that had to be mine and, oh, btw, they acknowledge that the order went to the CBOE. And they know, as I do, for $150 or $300 it just isn't worth filing with the SEC over this.

To: Jorj X Mckie who wrote (156)	3/14/2000 11:34:00 AM
From: cirrus	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 196

Oooooohhh! I'l bet Charles Schwab himself would LOVE to hear about that response! Why don't you snail mail him? For what it's worth, the last (and only) time MyTrack went down all subscribers received a letter from CEO Barry Hertz explaining exactly what went wrong and what they did to make sure it never happened again. Schwab seems to think we should accept its software crashes as a normal part of business. Ever notice that Schwab seems to crash in the morning, right after market open? It's always some software stuff they did overnite that causes the crash. After this email I received a phone call saying that I wouldn't get any more information than what I received in the emails and that I was perfectly welcome to research other online brokers since they were positive that I wouldn't find better reliability.