Why would they want traders to call in, perhaps to discourage routing or a deficiency of their order placing software that might change at some point? I can't imagine telephoning a broker to place options orders throughout the day.
Hey Everybody - Not sure that this has much to do with Penny-Pricing, but I will kick in my two cents. My name is Danny Rosenthal and I am the CEO of OptionsHouse. We do offer flat rate options trading at $9.95 per trade with no per contract fees. For spread trades, the $9.95 applies to each leg. The only limits on the number of contracts are margin limits and risk parameters. We do not currently offer the ability to route trades to a particular exchange, but instead send trades through a smart router. We do this for a few reasons including 1) most of the pro traders at PEAK6, our parent company, choose smart routing instead of directing orders and 2) we believe that this makes sense for retail trading. The technology backend is derived from PEAK6 infrastructure and is flexible as to whether we let traders route orders or not. We do offer directed orders for portfolio margining and other institutional customers. Hope this helps. Danny