Let me prefice this by saying I have never bashed a firm in a public forum. I have an account with E-trade by default. I opened a Dreyfus brokerage account in 1999...then BrownCo bought them..now Etrade. Never had an issue with the first two, in fact Brownco was one of the best firms I ever dealt with. So, after Etrade bought Brownco I started liquidating position and ACATing stuff out. I had heard they were not the best. So as of March 11th all I had in there was one restricted stock position and one tiny penny stock position. I thought it best to just let them be and leave the account alone for now. No cash. I log in on March 12th to get a quote cause i`m away from my trading machine. And there is a negative balance of 2200.00...and they liquidated the penny stock position. Day one March 12 = I call them up..get connected to a call center in India where nobody can tell me what happened. They put me on hold for 10 minutes while they find a "licensed broker" ( what kind of Firm doenst have licensed brokers answering first calls???). So I RR on the line who tells me the obvious. The account has a deficit...no shit sherlock holmes. No joy...nobody can tell me why. Day 2 March 15th = I call etrade..get connected to india...no licensed brokers..let me get one on the line. 10 minutes later "D" cannot tell me what happened..only that I have a deficit. He says he will investigate and call me back. Day 3 March 16th = I call them because "D" has failed to call me back. Once again..Inida...15 minutes...licensed broker. "J" Seems capable. Not. "you have a deficit...A check came back from Feb 2006 (thats right...2006). I tell him I never had a checking account with Etrade of Brownco of Dreyfus..just a cash account. And the only checks I ever requested were from available cash. He says he will call me back with an anaswer. Day 4 March 19th = Nobody has called me back and I get a collections notice from e-trade stating I owe them 2200.00 or they will involve legal action. I call..get india..hold for 10 minutes while they get a RR..."M" gets on the phone. 'Hey Mr C...you have a deficit here" Now i`m getting really pissed off. I explain to him the same shit I told the 2 before him. He says this is under investigation and he will have to call me back. LOLOL..I laugh in his ear and tell him etrade is the most fucked up BD I ever had the displeasure I doing biz with. So now it is the 29th. Nobody at etrade has called me back. They are sending me collections notices for a negative balance I did not create. And they sold out the one position I had in the account to meet the bogus call. I cannot get satisfaction. I would beg anybody that is thinking about opening a etrade account to think long and hard about it. And if you have to call them you will end up on hold with India while Ganesh calls himself "johny" and cannot even talk about your statements because he is not a licensed broker. What a shit show
Scary story. Is it possible you were hacked? Seems like that has happened with a few Etrade accounts. Glad I'm at IB. They may have a couple problems, but nothing as bad as that! Regards.
I dont know. Frankly I dont think it would matter. Nobody there can tell me why there is a negative balance...just that I owe them the money. I would probably just end up getting arrested for disorderly conduct..
I did the same thing. Was totally happy with Dreyfus and then BrownCo. When I received the take over notices, I immediately searched for another broker. I transferred my two IRA accounts to Scottrade (since it was not a very active account). My last account went to Ameritrade, not great either, but better than Etarde. I heard there was a lot of people that also transferred out their account before Etarde took over. I'm guessing they lost a lot of their 'purchased' accounts just from their bad reputation!
Maybe. But there was no available cash and I never had checks issued so I dont know what the hacker could have done to get the money??? I have had investment accounts since 1999 and 99% of the time when I have had issues the BD will bend over backwards to make it right. E-trade just doesnt care at all. Stay away
Yes, E*Trade was really screwed up back then, and it must be worse now, as they're routing all the calls to India. Atleast when I used to have my account with them, all the calls were promptly answered here. I transferred all my money out of the account, and ran from them since 2004. They refused to close the account, and kept sending me the stupid statements every quater. Thank gawd, the balance is still "zero", and not minus Schaefer
If you were hacked then you need to find out why. But at E*Trade it's virtually impossible to be hacked if you have the security token that self generates a new random number every 60 seconds. That concatenated with your password to get access makes it as secure as it can be. They offered the tokens a year or more ago to account holders. It was a no brainer to me. In 10 years I've had no problems with my 2 IRA's and my long term brokerage account.
if you have alert on, etrade will email you what transaction 'you' had made. However hacker can turn it off too. There was other thread about etrade account get hacked and he didn't get his money back either.
Bricks and Mortars will tell you they cant handle that.... At least that was my experience. Then I left...