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Non-Tech : Online Broker Down - Sue 'em - EGRP, JBOH, AMTD, SCH, NDB -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Clint E. who wrote (85)	2/7/1999 5:31:00 PM
From: Shoot1st	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 253

Has anybody anywhere ever had a broker error result in a PROFIT? I'd like to know the ratio. Shoot

To: Clint E. who wrote (85)	2/7/1999 5:38:00 PM
From: VLAD	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 253

Back in October of 1998, I had a very unpleasant situation with e-trade that I would like everyone out there to know about. I initially opened up an account withthem because I was told by their phone reps that a particular stock I was interested in investing in was a marginable stock. I later found (the hard way) that this was not true and in fact all stocks less than $5.00 are not marginable with e-trade although they may be marginable according to NASDAQ regulations. I opened my account based on wanting to take a position in this particular security. On the day I thought my bank wire had transfered, I attemted to execute a few trades which were invalid due to insufficient funds. I called e-trade and was told by an e-trade rep that my wire did not yet transfer thus the inability to execute my trades. The rep told me that I didn't need to worry about trades executing if funds were unavailable because the software system would prevent such trades. Later that afternoon I my account was credited with the wire transfer and I was able to execute an order for the stock I wished to buy. The next day I bought more of the same stock and later that day I made several purchase orders of AMD as it was dropping south after posting better than expected earnings. I bought a total of 4,000 shares of AMD. At the end of the trading day as I figured how to access all the info about my trades and account status, I found that my account had much more buying power than I felt should be allowed. I called e-trade and found that they had inadvertantly double credited my account and that the first stock that I had bought the prior day and that moring was not marginable. This series of event made my created a margin call on my account which was due the following Monday(this happened on a Wed). The same evening I was finally able to contact a supervisor who I was able to discuss my problem with. I was told that e-trade realized its mistake and would work with me to resolve my problem in an aimicable manner. I told e-trade that I did not have the funds to make any margin calls and being the fact that e-trades own errors created the problem, an agreement was reached that I would have until Monday to liquidate whatever position I desired to meet Monday's margin requirement. The next day the market was in a major sell off and in the moring I received a call at work from another e-trade supervisor that since my AMD position continued to drop I must take immediate action or otherwise e-trade would liquidate some of my stock. I was quite upset and told the supervisor that under no circumstances should e-trade liquidate any of my position until i had some time to assess the situation and make my decision. After calculating which position would be the smallest loss, I got to my computer about one or two hours later to liquidate the least losing position which was in the first stock I purchased which I initially thought I was able to buy on margin(which was not the case). When I placed my order, my computer told me that e-trade had already executed an order liquidating about 3,200 shares of my AMD for about a $9,300 realized loss. If I were allowed to execute my intended order, I would have been able to sell my position in my other stock for a loss of only about $3,700.00. I only was holding positions in 2 stocks at the time and my AMD position was creating the margin call because the other stock was not marginable as I was initially led to believe. After, many hours of holding on the phone and attempting to contact the original supervisor who told me that e-trade would work with me, I finally got a hold of him. I explained what had occured and was told that he would review the situation and get back to me. The response from e-trade never came in a timely manner and after almost 2 weeks of phoning and always being given an excuse as to why the supervisor was unavailble I finally got a call from another supervisor who told me that e-trade reviewed my situation and was willing to credit me $1,500.00 for my $9,300.00 loss. I advised the supervisor that I felt that e-trade should credit me the difference between what my losses would have been had they allowed me to liquidate the position which would have given me a much smaller realized loss which was about $5,500.00. I was told that the buck stopped at this supervisors desk and the offer of $1,5000.00 was the best they could offer and that if I felt that the offer was inadequate, I should write a formal letter to e-trade explaining my position and requesting the so called recorded phone tapes as i would need to file with the NASDAQ for arbitration. I indeed wrote my letter and was given a written response from e-trade which in essense told me that I was responsible for producing the margin call generated because I should have paid closer attention to my account and noticed the error of the double credit on the initial wire transfer. E-trade's response letter was was dated October 21, 1998. I figured that my best defense was the telephone tapes as everything I was told via telephone by e-trade contradicted the actions they took the following day when they liquidated my position less than 1/2 of a day after admitting to their errors and telling me that they would work with me. Weeks passed and I never recieved the promised phone tapes. I tried calling the supervisor(his name is Eric Renga) about 10 times over the next 6 weeks or so. He was never available and never returned my messages or phone calls. I then decided to document my attempts for a reply by sending this supervisor a no less than 3 e-mails over the next 3 days. Finally after threatening a lawsuit for a much larger amount, I got an e-mail reply from Eric Renga claiming that the reason for the delay was that e-trade was not going to send me the actual tape recordings but a transcript of the same and that I should recieve them before the holidays (ie Christmas). Well here we are 6 weeks later and I have not recieved the promised transcripts. I now plan to file a claim against e-trade through the NASD so that this matter can be settled via an arbitrator. Since the amont in question is less than $10,000.00 there is a method for a quicker decision to be rendered by not holding a hearing and having but one single arbitrator make a ruling. i wonder if the arbitrator might not be biased towards e-trade since they give the NASDAQ plenty of business when it comes to trade orders but based on the facts, i would hope that I am given a favorable ruling. I am sending out my former complaint this week. Talk about an absolute nightmare. Those of you complaining over this latest problem should realize that perhaps e-trade didn't have control over the down time that occured and that shit happens when dealing with an overloaded electrnic system but regardless of this latest problem, I can tell you all that e-trade absolutely does not give a shit about its customers. All they care about is making commissions on their trades and nothing else. I have never dealt with such poor customer service in any other situation I have dealt with in my life. This company not only needs to pay for not being able to deliver services promised to millions of online customers by not being able to provide service beyond its capacity abilities, it also has a lot of lessons to learn when it comes to admitting to its mistakes and not forcing its own customers to pay for them. E-trade not only made mistakes by initially falsely telling me that a stock which was under $5.00 was marginable (which IMO boils down to poor employee training) and then over crediting my account in error which allowed trades to execute that should not have(another employee error on their behalf), but the worse part IMO was the lying that took place on behalf of their own supervisors (ie saying that they would work with me thanks to their errors and then the next day just going right ahead and screwing me over to protect their own interests). In essense not only do they have problems with their software etc..., they also suffer from a very serious ethics problem which I feel will ultimately ruin this company's business. I warn all e-trade customers. DO NOT TRUST E-TRADE. THEY DO NOT GIVE A SHIT ABOUT YOU THE CUSTOMER. THEY ONLY CARE ABOUT MAKING MONEY AND IF IT ENDS UP BEING AT YOUR EXPENSE SO BE IT. If anyone else has had a similar experience please feel free to share as I do not have time to read through all the old posts (you can link me to any similar posts that you have made). E-Trade suffers from a serious ethics problem and I encourage anyone who is using them as a discount broker to think twice about what might happen to you if they create a problem for you in the future and then make you pay for it. It happened to me(and is still happening) and I see no reason why it can't happen to you. I will keep you all posted as to how my problem ends up getting settled and in the mean time I would advise others to seek a more ethical discount broker! VLAD PS Sorry about any misspellings. I normally make my corrections after going over the spell check but since this is regards to e-trade it isn't worth my time. They have already wasted countless hours of my time being placed on hold as I tried to resolve my problems with these people.

To: Clint E. who wrote (85)	2/7/1999 5:54:00 PM
From: Bob Duncan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 253

Clint: Actually the irony is if Etrade had not acted for me and waited ten more minutes I would have made 12K instead of losing 8K. As I mentioned before their margin dept. decided to buy to cover my position AT MARKET which bumped to price up 1 point. (I noticed when it went through the bid was 62 1/2 and the ask was 63 7/16, of course since they put the order in at market it went through at 63 7/16.) I had covered half of the position at 62 a few minutes earlier and had a limit buy to cover in for the rest at 61 1/2 which AMTD hit ten minutes later (actually it got below 61) As for paying back commissions, nope I got an 8 1/2 x 11 folder in the mail with all of the trade confirmations - most of which went through at 19.95 a piece. For what it is worth I am still getting a "please contact Etrade customer service" error when I try to login to my account, and I have sent 5 emails to their support with no answer. Tried calling them last week but got tired of waiting.