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Pastimes : ETRADE Sucks! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: HairyWho? who wrote (786)	11/4/1997 11:40:00 AM
From: Thomas Scharf	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3262

The internet has caused an explosion in the number of people investing in individual stocks. One impact that I have noticed is that the brokerage houses can't find enough qualified people to handle their customer service lines. Recently, I detect that even Fidelity (who's customer service I continue to praise) has had to change their system a bit. The first person you get on the phone these days is able to handle only routine questions. Anything complicated is instantly forwarded to a more qualified person, so I can't complain, but obviously they have been forced to hire some less qualified people to handle the increased call load. ETRADE, having been founded as an on line brokerage, never had the core base of highly qualified people to handle the tough stuff. That is where their system breaks down. If they manage to survive, I suppose that they will eventually develope the human infrastructure that they need. This trend is not limited to the financial industry. As an electrical engineer I use a lot of complicated Computer Aided Engineering tools. Most of the vendors have gone to a similar system of "gate keepers" to avoid having their valuable technical staff overloaded with the more routine customer questions. I have noticed this trend accelerating in the last year or 2. I suppose that this is part of the price we all pay for the country's low unemployment rate.

To: HairyWho? who wrote (786)	12/10/1997 6:44:00 PM
From: HairyWho?	Respond to of 3262

From Herb Greenberg's column dated 12/10/97 (as I said before there are Lies, Damn Lies & ETrade): -- Numbers, please: Remember those deals ETrade and Charles Schwab were striking a few months ago with investment bankers to give their customers access to initial public offerings? Yesterday, Palo Alto-based ETrade issued a press release bragging that it had sold all of the shares it was allocated by Robertson Stephens in last month's IPO of Sportsline USA, an Internet sports information service. ETrade CEO Christos Cotsakos was quoted as saying that ''the great amount of enthusiasm ETrade customers showed for this offering is proof positive of just how interested independent investors are'' in IPOs. Now, for a reality check: Only about 125 of ETrade's customers were eligible to buy the Sportsline IPO. To get in on the deal, they had to meet certain requirements imposed by ETrade, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the National Association of Securities Dealers. Of the customers who wanted the shares, only about 70 actually got them. And according to ETrade and Robertson Stephens, ETrade only had access to a measly 75,000 shares of the 3.5 million that were offered. ETrade says this was just a pilot program, but it shows that despite the hype, individuals hoping to get in on the ground floor of a hot deal may get a cool reception.