optionsxpress used to send me birthday cards in the mail each and every year i had an account. Who cares about fills.
If you make 40 trades in a calendar month you get a $39.95 rebate to cover the cost of broadband. If you choose/negotiate a different commission schedule to the published standard rates the rebate is forfeited.
TOS has unpublished rates schedules as well. I know because I am on one of them. Once they know you are a trader you can get better rates. I am not opposed to IB but I ran into all sorts of margining issues with IB when it came to options. Maybe they have changed over the last 18 months. As an example; IB wanted margin for both legs of an iron condor even though you cannot run off both sides at once. Or the one that finally did it for me was this example: Same underlying, same strike: short stock + long call + short put. IB wanted margin on the short stock position plus margin on the short put. Reality is that this position is flat. TOS looked at the whole position and required no margin. IB crimped my style big time when using synthetics to enter/exit positions. Maybe with the SEC rule changes all brokers will move to a margin on risk rather than a margin on position. I agree IB would be a preferred choice for stock + futures. My 2 drakma.
Charging margin on reversals for european options is pretty annoying. For American, though, it only makes sense. Their formula seems pretty reasonable. ToS does not charge you margin on an American reversal?