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

To: Andrew who wrote (6391)	1/9/1998 11:15:00 AM
From: peter michaelson	Respond to of 16892

Andrew- Sounds like a terrible experience. I'm sorry you had to go through it. Clearly, Datek does have serious problems but I remain cautiously optimistic that these are growing pains. Having left New York myself for Oregon, I know how rude people can be there. Oftentimes, they seem like horrible people on first contact, and turn out to be some of the nicest once you get to know them. Must be a consequence of over-crowding combined with multi-ethnicity. It is horrible, but I'm glad you got your money back. Every now and then I check with the SEC and other regulators looking for investigations and complaints against Datek, but there seem to be no more than against many other better known companies. I check, because it has occurred to me how easy it would be for Datek or another brokerage to simply disappear with the money - and lots of it. It's a balancing act for me, because it's really not the $10 commission versus a competitor's $20 that keeps me there. It's the rate of successful order fills, the immediate availability of funds for trading after closing a position and other such factors which I find extremely compelling. For example, I have found no other brokerage which can fill a short order for Thai Fund, but Datek consistently does so. Nevertheless, had I experienced what you have, I would be long gone. best of luck, peter

To: Andrew who wrote (6391)	1/11/1998 7:56:00 AM
From: John Xu	Respond to of 16892

Andrew, Sorry to learn your experience with DateK. I suggest you to seek cash compensations. I had the same problem with DateK in last August with check request. It took 10 days to get the check and I fawned on SI and got supports from others and finally Jon Normile (the representative from DateK) decided to give us 20 free trades. Not bad. But I did expect they would have learned the lessons. I am very shocked to learn that they still have the problems with fund requests. As to the attitudes of the customer representatives. I once mailed Jon Normile the followings: [...... You guys were trained to the fact that your customers are idiots. I wonder when you can change this. Once i saw this at the entry of a grocery store: Rule 1: Customers are always right. Rule 2: If the customer is wrong, go back to Rule 1. Something to bear in mind. ...... ] John

To: Andrew who wrote (6391)	1/13/1998 3:07:00 PM
From: Bernard	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 16892

Glad you got your money. I'm still waiting for mine. I had to resubmit my fax twice, and then was told to resubmit the request on the WEB. It's been 2 weeks and I'm still waiting. The reps are useless, all they do is say "we upgrading", "you'll have to wait 48 hours", "the wire will occur tomorrow", "you'll have to refax your request because we never received the original". I looked at my "Daily Transactions" and they got my balance all screwed up. I can't believe they have beta code on the production system. If they can't get wires out and are doing beta testing on a production system, imagine the Year 2000 impact will have on them. I out before the Datek 2000 Disaster.