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

To: Joel Goldberg who wrote (5631)	10/28/1997 11:51:00 AM
From: Larry Voyles	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 16892

I'm probably going to take some heat for this, but I think we're getting pretty much what we pay for. You pay the lowest price for a service, you generally get the quality you pay for. This is _not_ a Datek slam! Datek is the low bidder, and for that low bid, you get bare-bones service. They probably have enough hardware to handle an "average" heavy load on an "average" heavy day. Today is probably an extremely heavy load on an extremely heavy day. We (myself included) knew this up-front when we sent our money (stocks, whatever) to Datek. It's just like the after-Thanksgiving sale at Wal-Mart. EVERYBODY is trying to crowd into the store at once, and there just aren't enough cashiers. Wal-Mart isn't going to add another 50 registers that will remain unused 350 days out of the year just so they can handle a few "rush" days. All the people that came after us are after the same thing: cheap commissions. These commissions make it easier to turn a profit on a quick 1/8 point movement. If we paid more in commission, we could probably get quicker execution and better customer service, but the "quick kill" would be harder to come by. It's a delicate balance between commission paid and service delivered. I'm not saying that I'm happy with the way things are. I'm not. I hope things improve this afternoon. Here's a question sure to piss some people off: Would you be willing to pay more in commission ($2-5) to Datek for improved service and all those "extras" like research reports and BB stocks?