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

To: Stocker_Roberts who wrote (1372)	2/3/1999 2:04:00 PM
From: DD™	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3262

IS ANYBODY ELSE HAVING PROBLEMS AGAIN? THIS SUCKS!! DD

To: Stocker_Roberts who wrote (1372)	2/3/1999 9:00:00 PM
From: gbh	Respond to of 3262

Stocker, wow, your first day as a member, and you're quoted in the WSJ. You better watch what you say, you never know where it might end up. :) interactive.wsj.com February 3, 1999 ETrade's Online Systems Fail, Blocking Service for Customers An INTERACTIVE JOURNAL News Roundup Web broker ETrade Group Inc. said its customers were unable to make computer trades for about 75 minutes Wednesday morning after a software upgrade made late the previous day caused its online-trading system to fail. Sporadic problems continued in the afternoon. The outage between 10:15 a.m. EST and 11:30 a.m. crippled online trading for all 676,000 customers of the Palo Alto, Calif., Web broker. Lingering problems blocked trading for 1% of its customer for half hour in the afternoon, the company said. Online traders, who have grown accustomed to speedy execution, were angry at the latest ETrade outage. Tom Pikoulas, an ETrade customer in Phoenix, summed up the feelings of many: "It's just frustrating." "This is not a system overcapacity or volume problem," ETrade spokeswoman Lisa Nash said. "But that still doesn't make it less frustrating for our customers" Ms. Nash said customers still were able to make trades over the telephone through a service representative, but she admitted that there was a longer than average delay because of the increase volume of calls. She said ETrade will investigate complaints from customers who feel they lost money because of the problem and make restitution if necessary. ETrade has set up a special e-mail address (service2@etrade.com) for complaints, Ms. Nash said. ETrade President Kathy Levinson, in an interview broadcast on CNBC, said switching the software used for online trading caused the outage. Ms. Levinson characterized the glitch as "embarrassing." She said the software change wasn't related to the recent surge in online trading volumes. The outage is the latest black eye for the online trading industry. ETrade and other Internet brokerage firms have faced a series of problems -- and many customer complaints -- during the past several months as trading volume via the Net has swelled. For some online investors, Wednesday's problem at ETrade was an invitation for them to send their trading business elsewhere. "I'm asking about Datek. I am tossing out this ETrade trash," said "Stocker Roberts," a participant on an anti-ETrade bulletin board on Silicon Investor. The problem, however, probably won't result in a mass exodus from ETrade, said Bill Burnham, an analyst for Credit Suisse First Boston. Some clients probably will change brokers, he said. But many simply will vent their frustration on Internet message boards rather than endure the lengthy and convoluted process involved in closing brokerage accounts. ETrade's problems Wednesday may "raise some eyebrows" given the company's recent efforts to improve its network, Mr. Burnham said. But most online brokerage firms have had problems recently, especially last quarter, when a market-wide mania for Internet stocks led to shockingly high trading volumes. Daily online trades surged 34% to 340,000 in the fourth quarter of 1998 from the previous quarter, according to a report released late last month by Mr. Burnham. And E*Trade averaged 39,992 trades a day, good for an 11.8% market share, third among Web brokers. Online trading now accounts for 13.7%, or nearly one out of seven, stock trades. That's up from 11.4% in the previous quarter and 9.2% in the fourth quarter of 1997. Analysts expect online trading to grow dramatically as companies continue to make it easier and more efficient for individuals to invest cheaply with a click of the computer mouse. According to Gomez Advisors, a Concord, Mass., research firm, the number of online brokerage accounts swelled to 7.8 million last year from 3.75 million in 1997. That number is expected to reach more than 14 million by 2002. But along with increases in trading volumes, online brokers have had problems keeping customers happy overall. There have been a flood of complaints about poor service, overburdened systems and delays in executing transactions.