To: RealMuLan who wrote (11772 ) 4/27/1999 8:38:00 PM From: Scott Respond to
Sure, I had my name and account number on the check. Did not seem to matter to Datek. They said they acknowledged cashing the check, and not putting it in my account, but they were not going to credit my account until they could find out where they had put the money, because it was really unreasonable for me to expect them to just give me my money back until they found out where they had misplaced it. And when I said that they should compensate me for the opportunity cost, they said that Datek has made no promise of any kind that once they cash your check and have your deposit, that you have any right to expect to have the deposit in your account, under your control, in less than a week or two. I mentioned that in at least one place on the website, it says that the fastest way to deposit is to overnight mail a check to the address I used, since wiring it may take "as long as 2 days" for the money to get into your account; that said to me that Datek was representing that FedExing to their address would get the money into your account in LESS than 2 days. They disagreed. They thought I had no right to complain (after all, they gave me TEN FREE TRADES! Not bad for them - essentially cost-free use of $52 K for 8 days). The frightening part was that they could not even find where they had mislaid this paltry sum, despite my giving them the check number, exact amount several times, etc. It finally turned out that every time they re-entered the amount to see where sums of that amount had been deposited that day, the person entering the figure into the computer got it wrong. But why would you expect an on-line brokerage to have people who can enter a dollar figure correctly? Besides, since the downside is just having a good laugh and giving the irate customer TEN FREE TRADES, maybe they do this for fun.
