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

To: Marc D. who wrote (7104)	3/2/1998 11:13:00 PM
From: GR	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 16892

I am very dissapointed with datek.The friday problem whereby I was unable to trade NYSE cost me big time.I was not aware of the problem when at 3 pm i heard on cnbc that AMD had just made a big deal with IBM.From prior experience,i've found that you have to leap on these.I use the express server and put in a BUY 1000 shares @ market ,within 10 seconds.Sure enough this baby moved up like a rocket.I usually get filled within a minute.I kept clicking back on Daily activity but found no purchase.Finally after a while I called up and was informed of the problem.Note that there is no "history" icon on the express server,and i was unaware of what was going on.At the same time i was unable to sell MO which i wanted to sell at the time. I am again amazed that they had no backup to this problem. A day before,i put in a MARKET SELL with 6 minutes to go on CPQ.It was never executed.I took a 1700.00 loss the next day when CPQ was downgraded at the open.Datek is looking into this,but at this time I have not been refunded the $1700.00,although to be fair,they are"looking into this".(actually one of the phone answerers said "CPQ has been giving them trouble". My basic attitude is that i have dealt with many,many brockerages.When you don't fill a market order there really is no excuse.I should have been IMMEDIATLEY refunded,no questions asked. Secondly,since this problem occured a full day before their big NYSE screw up,there was, and is no reason why they should not have refunded me same day. On the day of the NYSE screw up i lost somewhere between 1000.00 to $2,000 in profits.(as an aside,if you buy stocks on breaking cnbc news,you can make a tidy living).Their offer-2 free trades--WOW! thanks. And just in case you guys on this thread think i'm an infrequent trader,I trade about 200 times a month with datek. My final warning is that be very careful when trading in the last 2-5 minutes-especially selling.I was told that when their servers get "10,000" or so orders all coming in at once,that screw ups can and do happen. I feel that a $3000.00 credit to my account would be the fair thing to do. I trade very frequently with datek,so if anyone has any further caveats i would be interested in hearing them.