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

To: Jeff Dryer who wrote (9155)	7/17/1998 2:25:00 PM
From: Bill Rood	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 16892

Mr. Dryer when people expect a service and they don"t recieve it, and lose thousands of dollars in the meantime they then become the unreasonable minority. Your right Datek has promised many things options,checking, servers that work,and have delivered 0. Mr Dryer are you a customer of Datek? I have never noticed a post by you on this thread is there some other agenda here. I posted that I placed an order that did not show on my daily activity for 5 min. In that 5 min I could have been filled, the stock could of reversed, and I could incur a substantial loss all before it even shows on my daily activity screen. In this scenario I cant sell I cant cancel. Are my expectations to high. This happens daily. My inability to sell a stock in the first 1/2 hour has cost me 4500 and 1500 last month alone. But were unreasonable. The other people that have lost thousands here are also unreasonable but unfortunately there not the minority you are. Datek first to interact with there customers in this forum hoopdidoo. Not one thing posted by Datek here has happened in fact it has gotten worse. I average 30 trades 60 roundtrips a week I think my commissions generated allow me to voice my minority opinion. I state facts here and if I was making my concerns up Datek is free to rebut them. Have they, no. Because I post facts. SI on the other hands is well run and my congratulations to you on a job well done. I f datek would post that if you want to trade the first half hour of the day this is not the place to be, and if we cant match you with a buyer or seller on island the likliehood of you being filled before the price moves away is nil there would be few complaints.

To: Jeff Dryer who wrote (9155)	7/17/1998 3:01:00 PM
From: peter michaelson	Respond to of 16892

Jeff: I agree with much of what you say. However, whenever a business stops listening to its customers and stops responding with either positive action of civil words. it is a danger sign for the business. The business becomes un-responsive to its customers and falls behind the competition. The pure art of civil relations with one's customers has been practiced beautifully by Schwab for many years, and has been incredibly successful. I think Datek has been one of the leaders in revolutionizing the industry, but absent decent customer relations they are doomed to fail. I am one of Datek's supporters, but I think it's safe to say that their customer relations are not good. Peter P.S. Ill add that SI conducts its customer relationships exquisitely and one of the concerns with the Go2Net deal was whether the attitude towards customers would suffer. BTW, I received 4 T-shirts yesterday from you guys. It will be the first advertisement I will wear in my entire life. Won't see me wearing a Datek shirt - they do a great job but it's the attitude.

To: Jeff Dryer who wrote (9155)	7/17/1998 6:05:00 PM
From: INFO_DART	Respond to of 16892

Mr. Jeff Dryer, I am very flattered that you, as a co-founder of Silicon Investor responded to my post. Therefore, I would like to answer the questions that you raised. However, before I do that, I wonder if you, or anyone else, can directly answer any of the questions that I raised? Alternatively, if you don't know any of the answers, please just say so. I will list them for you again: How much money Does Island make on my trade even if Datek "refunds" my $9.95 for slow execution? Since both Datek and Island are owned by the same people, how much money are they making on my trade, even when they do not charge me a commission? If they execute my order, commission free, and don't fill the order on Island, are they still making money? What is Datek's business model? That is, how do they make money? Has anyone ever received a CASH refund of the $9.95 commission, after complaining that a marketable trade took more than a minute? I only receive credits for "free" future trades. And, yes you scalped me for $60 on my SI membership after only a couple days of my 30 day trial membership by blocking my ability to post a response to your inflammatory comments. We will get to your other questions in due course. But since you are so interested in my business experience, please see post number 9087 for a start on my bio as well as a Text Book example of Customer Service Datek Style.

To: Jeff Dryer who wrote (9155)	7/17/1998 8:03:00 PM
From: Spots	Respond to of 16892

>>Datek linked to discussion forums on SI when no other brokerage firm would. Employees of Datek participated in SI discussions when no other brokerage firms would. Jeff, thanks for posting. I know how frustrating it must be listening to all the gripes. I was not an SI member way back, but I read the Datek thread nearly from the beginning before I opened an account (as a lurker before I joined SI). And what you say is true. Datek participated. I did find isolated instances of others, but Datek (Peter Stern, Jon Normile in particular) were frequent contributors. Now try it in the last 6-9 months. Promised services have not arrived, customer complaints have gone unanswered, the interchange with most Datek representatives has dried up and customer rapport on this forum has mostly dissipated. There are occasional encouraging words from the new customer service manager (sorry, I forget his name), and certain things have actually improved dramatically, such as getting a check sent. But by and large the things important to most of us -- rapid, consistent executions, responsiveness to customer problems, the long-promised checking and the equally long promised options, have gone unaddressed. And the silence from Datek is deafening around here. (Not all of these experiences are mine; I'm partially reflecting what I've read here. But we've all experienced the silence on the thread.) There's only so far you can go on your laurels. Spots

To: Jeff Dryer who wrote (9155)	7/18/1998 7:28:00 AM
From: Rene Madsen	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 16892

Somewhat OT, but on the subject of Internet Companies with Unresponsive Webservers -- SI seems to have some troubles this week. Are you aware of this? Half of the time I try to connect your server doesn't respond. I hasten to add that this is not because of my ISP - I connect to most other US servers without problems. Maybe you ought to consider some alternative path to your server - and alternative network provider perhaps? Just an idea of course.

To: Jeff Dryer who wrote (9155)	7/21/1998 12:19:00 PM
From: INFO_DART	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 16892

Jeff Dyer - The courtesy of a reply is in order. We are trying to help each other on this thread. Why don't you reply? Message 5234256