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Non-Tech : E*Trade (NYSE:ET) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ecommerceman who wrote (4868)	2/4/1999 11:21:00 PM
From: Tom Hua	Respond to of 13953

If you're a daytrader, then you're foolish not to have a backup broker. Of course, if you're a daytrader you're probably foolish in the first place... ecman, I'd add that if you're a daytrader, you're foolish to trade using Etrade. When their server is not down, it's known that execution of trades is tardy. A daytrader can't tolerate slow execution. Regards, Tom

To: ecommerceman who wrote (4868)	2/4/1999 11:38:00 PM
From: Tom Hua	Respond to of 13953

This will appear in tomorrow's WSJ: February 5, 1999 Glitch Disrupts ETrade Service For a Second Consecutive Day By RANDALL SMITH and REBECCA BUCKMAN Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL A computer glitch disrupted online stock trading for the second consecutive day at ETrade Group Inc., even as the New York state attorney general launched an inquiry into the recent burst of service problems at online brokerages. Separately, some House Democrats said not enough is being done to address problems raised by the sudden rush of online stock trading. They raised concerns about "the potential for a speculative bubble or 'tulip mania' affecting Internet stocks," and raised the issue of privacy protection for investors with online accounts. Thursday's ETrade outage, which lasted two hours and 45 minutes and thwarted as many as half of those customers who wanted to trade stocks in that period, followed a one-hour service break on Wednesday. The bad news hit ETrade's stock; the shares fell $1.75 to $53.50 Thursday on the Nasdaq Stock Market after slipping $3 on Wednesday. Such snafus are common in fast-growing businesses. But "this is perhaps more embarrassing for ETrade than for others because they've been so vocal about how superior their business is," says James Marks, who follows electronic-commerce stocks at Deutsche Bank Securities. Lisa Nash, a vice president for customer management at ETrade in Palo Alto, Calif., said the company was "apologizing up and down because our customers deserve an apology." The glitch began at 10 a.m. EST; within an hour, she said, the company had begun restoring service. Although the company's Web site continued to function, Ms. Nash said 40% to 50% of the customers couldn't access the trading page. Service was restored by 12:45 p.m., she said. The New York attorney general's office said it has received dozens of complaints from cyber-investors, including many who said they couldn't connect to their firm's Web site. Others griped that their brokers' systems were too slow. Some ETrade customers grew increasingly frustrated Thursday. At one point, the third-most popular discussion group on the Web site Silicon Investor (www.techstocks.com), where online investors discuss stocks, was one devoted to ETrade's service problems. One ETrade customer, David Corey of Austin, Texas, said he was able to place an order to buy 500 shares of Dell Computer Corp. via Charles Schwab Corp. Thursday morning, selling it 10 minutes later for a quick $1-a-share profit. But when he placed the same order at ETrade, it took him so long to get back the confirmation statement on his purchase that he wound up selling at a $160 loss. Mr. Corey said he was locked out of the system completely for a time on Wednesday. "I think I'm going to look around for a better trading system," Mr. Corey concluded. "I recognize that we're on a rocket ship going places fast, but geez, this is really hurting their reputation."

To: ecommerceman who wrote (4868)	2/4/1999 11:47:00 PM
From: scanshift	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 13953

How about this idea? Keep $100 at E-Trade to see all the bells and whistles on their site that Ms. Levison, their President is so proud of. When it comes to trading, do it somewhere else!! ETrade is ranked first by Gomez Associates for all the bells and whistles on their site, but when it comes to getting a trade executed, they are not ranked first. Datek, Waterhouse and Suretrade are when it comes to the Gomez "hyper-active" trader category. Those are traders who trade a lot and need to get a trade executed. As far as I am concerned, the only reason one trades on line is to get a trade executed. So if you can't do that, why trade at that firm? Interesting, Gomez says that ETrade "is a popular site and can be slow during busy market hours. Turning the graphics option off helps." How then could he ever give it a top rating, when on regular days the site is slow?