I had to exercise soon-to-be-expiring ex-company stock options. E-Trade charged me $77 commission for 770 shares + $10 for sending the money by check! Ouch!!!! I'm very glad to have my trading account with IB!!!! Chinook
i don't think they robbed you at all. hey was it a great price no but 87 bucks for 10k is not the end of the world.
E*Trade's commissions page claims that option exercises only cost $19.99. Did you do this all online or did you talk to a live broker?
I did it online. These are employee stock options. He said they charge $0.10/share (under 1000 shares) for option exercises!!!! So you pay $99 for 990 shares! Chinook
etrade sucks they actually DID rob me, but it was only for $4 and change, many years ago. i'd pulled money out of my account and left that much in it as i got paid interest after i withdrew the $$$, and they mysteriously swept it out of my account i'm sure they needed it FAR more than i did, but it still blows, but then again so does etrade i realized that if i was dumb enough to put my money with etrade, i probably deserved to lose it... i'd tell the management to use another broker for options...a dime a share is robbery...
This is not bad. For a "cash-less" option exercise, you have to expect to pay a bit. There are lots of transactions involved.
ESO/ISOs are a manual process for most firms, and a real pain in the butt, AFAIK. It's not surprising for them to want to make somewhere around $100 to handle it. I imagine that the per-share rate should/could go down substantially for more shares done at the same time.