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

To: Jon Normile who wrote (5712)	10/29/1997 4:15:00 PM
From: Jon Tara	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 16892

Jon, congratulations on continuing to operate with a much higher level of service than most brokerages over the past few days. Those who were not ther in 1987 (I was not invested in the market, but I did watch it on TV) do not understand how good they have it, if they were able to trade at ALL over the past 2-3 days. In 1987, the "tape" was running two hours late. Unless you were on the floor, you basically had to guess about what price you might get, and place market orders and cross your fingers. The NASDAQ market makers simply didn't answer their phones, and so trading was effectively halted in NASDAQ issues. I'm sure that some people experienced significant problems with Datek. While I did not trade all day on either day, I did execute trades, and experienced only moderate delays. This is so much better than getting a busy signal trying to reach your broker by voice or touchtone, that there isn't any comparison. I'm finally on Rodney's side on this one. Any ability you had to squeeze in a trade on Monday and Tuesday was just an unexpected bonus. Datak gave us much more than the ability to squeeze in a trade, and seems to have worked very close to normal. I have seen people bitching on other threads about not being able to get through to their brokers, and complaining that they should have anticipated this, and made sure they had enough phone lines and enough brokers. But it is NOT reasonable for ANY broker to anticipate a market like this, nor to provide the capacity needed to trade it with 100% reliability. Datek came very close - I'd bet closer than most anyone else. Thanks, Jon, Peter, and all what what you were able to achieve!

To: Jon Normile who wrote (5712)	10/29/1997 4:35:00 PM
From: ojai	Respond to of 16892

Jon- Thanks for the new servers, I'm sure they will help. I'm wondering about the free quotes you guys give out. I appreciate them, but I hear that you give them to anyone that fills out paperwork with you, even if they don't send any funds. It seems that this would tend to overload your system, and you get nothing in return. Is this the case? It would be prudent to reserve this service for your paying customers, and lighten the load on your servers. -Tim Droney

To: Jon Normile who wrote (5712)	10/29/1997 4:44:00 PM
From: MJR	Respond to of 16892

Jon: As a satisfied DATEK customer, thanks so much to all the DATEK staff members from the ground up!!! You all did a great job through Monday and Tuesday!! As someonoe who manages a high-volume / high-availability computer datacenter, I can appreciate what goes on at DATEK, as well as the customer issues at hand and what goes on during those "crunch" times. Again, great work to all! Mike

To: Jon Normile who wrote (5712)	10/29/1997 4:45:00 PM
From: sharecropper2	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 16892

Jon While I appreciate your efforts to reassure DATEK users, I think you need to understand the magnitude of the problems some of us had on Monday and Tuesday. If the big idea behind DATEK was, as you say, to avoid small traders being locked out during a market crash - I am afraid you failed abysmally in my own case. In my case, it wasn't a question of the system being a bit sluggish, as some other users have reported, but a total inability after logging on successfully to access PORTFOLIO, OPEN ORDERS, DAILY ACTIVITY or even more importantly to receive confirmation that trades had gone through. In two cases I waited for around half an hour to try and confirm market trades, by which time the price had moved so much the trade wasn't worth it, but I was unable either to confirm or cancel until I found out much later that the trade had in fact gone through at a totally unsatisfactory price. I don't accept the suggestions by others on this thread that general network congestion was the problem since the general speed of response of other sites at the time was patchy but not that bad. In between waiting for responses from DATEK I was able to get into NASDAQ, DBC, SI etc. most of the time. Those of us who trade across the pond are used to the symptoms of general network congestion and that wasn't the primary factor on this occasion. Bear in mind that NASDAQ volume on Tuesday, although a record, was less than 150% of average levels - a level which I would have thought could easily be designed into your systems. Please accept this post as constructive criticism - it was instigated by irritation at your rather rosy assertion that "these last few days have proved that DATEK is one of the best etc etc......." Best regards David Carr

To: Jon Normile who wrote (5712)	10/29/1997 5:20:00 PM
From: clark66	Respond to of 16892

Your success is proven ..... I found your service up to my expectations .... I hope you can continue to provide execellent service inspite of your success .... thanks

To: Jon Normile who wrote (5712)	10/29/1997 7:33:00 PM
From: John Xu	Respond to of 16892

Jon, Can you give an explanation why yesterday morning when i tried to confirm my orders, i always got the reponse "unable to confirm the order". I do not think simply adding more servers will solve this problem. Otherwise, I did not find other problems with Datek and I guess i am among the first one complimenting you. Regards, John

To: Jon Normile who wrote (5712)	10/30/1997 11:31:00 AM
From: David Kuspa	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 16892

I also encountered the dreaded "unable to confirm order" message trying to place market orders right after the market turned around on Tuesday. Although quotes were completely down, and performance was very sluggish, I was able to enter trades and got through to the confirmation page, but was unable to actually get an execution. I checked and re-checked my password, but the daily activity page just showed "order not placed". I was trying to buy NXTL at market, then about $22. This went on for half an hour. By the time I got a small order through on the express server, the price was back up to around $26. So I'm baffled by those who say they were able to trade all through the day. Were they able to get quotes? Was my experience specific to this one issue? I'm disappointed, but realistic that I should expect some problems on a high-volume day. For the record, Fidelity's WebXpress site was completely unreachable. (even on regular volume days, it is very sluggish, with way too many sub-levels to navigate before you can actually place an order) Worse, their Touch Tone Trader phone system which I use as a backup was busy, so I couldn't get through to their automated phone trading system, nor a human broker. Things were so bad over there that I couldn't get through to them even well into the evening, and many of their mutual fund NAVs were not updated at all on their web site or through several other resources. Since I was able to access some of Datek's screens, albeit sluggishly, I don't know if more servers would have cured the "unable to confirm order" problem that prevented me from trading. I agree with others' concerns that the free quote policy may be responsible for contributing to the unavailability of services on days like Tuesday. Can Datek respond with assurance that the volume of free quotes given out has never contributed to poor performance for the rest of us customers who actively trade with Datek? If there is any chance that this is the case, then I propose that Datek suspend free quotes on heavy-volume days, freeing up more bandwidth for their paying customers. D. Kuspa

To: Jon Normile who wrote (5712)	11/14/1997 7:53:00 AM
From: Ie Coan Bie	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 16892

What if my stock is delisted from Nasdaq and moved to OTC trading system ? Dear Jon Normile, As one of your customer and a small investor I like smallcap companies but there is one thing that bothering my mind to invest in these penny stocks with Datek service, i.e. regarding The Nasdaq SmallCap Market Requirements (effective August 22, 1997). So by this posting, I just want to ask you some questions, What if these penny stocks are delisted from Nasdaq and moved to OTC trading system, can I still hold these stocks with Datek ?, how can I trade these stocks ? and how can I manage my portfolio ? That's all my question and thank you in advance for your reply !! Sincerely, Abidin PS : - I have been trying to e-mail this question via support@datek.com for 3 days but never get the answer and by posting it via this thread i hope i could get the answer.