I was paying my mortgage by trading at TD Ameritrade. (I had started out at Wells Fargo, where I paid $243 for a 100 share trade of SLB which my financial adviser there suggested. I used Yahoo to see how things were moving and I chose a few stocks on my own that were less per share. One of them was up a hundred dollars in a few days, but I thought you "had to" hold a stock for a long time, like at least a year... so I failed to sell it. And it went down. I was surprised. By the time I had problems at TD Ameritrade I was well aware that stocks fluctuate and it's a good idea to "realize" a profit.) Okay, so here's the question: when TD Ameritrade changed their Command Center it wouldn't show dollars for me, it would only show cents. I tried to get tech support/help but they gave me a series of wrong responses. I have a bit of brain damage so when I couldn't remember the dollars I had to keep going back to check and it just took too long to ever get things to work in terms of making a hundred dollars a day... if you don't have brain damage and I hope you don't, it's probably hard to understand what it's like after you lose over half of your processing speed and half of your working memory. Here's the question, (really): Please will you look at the page I did showing the responses TD Ameritrade gave me that were wrong http://www.health-boundaries-bite.com/TDAmeritrade-Fails-a-Disabled-Client.html and tell me how angry you would be, or ... maybe I should ask, how angry you would be if you were me.
well, if you want to embarrass them, you could contact your local tv stations / press and point them to the site, or cnbc (from the ameritrade angle). but i'd suggest printing it / sending it to one of the higher ups over there...
Thank you for giving us your perspective on trading. It is easy for most to never walk in someone elses shoes as we selfishly lives our lives. I hope you are able to get your problem fixed. I am an Ameritrade customer and will send the CEO an email with your thread linked to it. I think if the ET community gets involved we can help this Gal. Rennick out
Oh, I'm sure that is a good idea. I mean, VERY wise. The brain damage I have is from a few different things. I'm not sure the traumatic injury part or some of the damage from toxins can heal entirely. I'm a lot better, though, than I was. For awhile it was as if a black tunnel followed me around swallowing up everything I had just done. I couldn't remember what room I'd just been in... I could not remember anything. That was extremely scary. Thank you for your post, I appreciate it.
Thank you for the suggestions. I thought about NBC. I'd have to be pretty clear about my disability so that they could see why it took too long for me to be able to trade after the change. It's hard for me to combine things because of the reduced working memory. (It seemed to me that active traders would be more likely to understand than someone who wasn't as familiar with how the market changes.) That is a good idea, though. (What is cnbc? is that cable?) Thank you for helping me think about this.
Oh, wow, thank you so much. My gosh, I was so worried when I posted that maybe no one would understand and would just jump on me for not being faster. Thank you. I think that you are right. I think that when someone is alone they tend to be invisible and ignored. Especially if they are perceived as somehow not a real member of whatever because of some difference, like a disability. Thank you.
About his blog: when he sends 39 emails in 2 days and they are all responded to and even by managers, and then he writes in his blog that they 'blew him off'. I never understand people like that. It's unreasonable to expect a firm to rewrite their software for one person based on their emails, if there is really an issue here at all.
As an aside, my name is Karen Kline. I always put it in my signature, which is about how our fingernails reflect our health, but I wasn't sure signatures with links to web sites were okay here, so I didn't put it in my profile. It was TD Ameritrade who characterized it as 39 emails in 2 days. The fact was that the emails were sent over months and no one until just the other day, 9 months later, explained how to make Command Center work to show the dollars. I certainly was not asking them to rewrite their software (though apparently firms do have a responsibility to disabled people to make their sites accessible to the disabled, and I have seen some references to actions against firms, like Target, that didn't make their sites accessible). I was telling TD Ameritrade that Command Center was only showing the cents and I couldn't remember the dollars. There was an answer, which the tech supplied a few days ago. What I objected to was being given wrong information. Being told to look on one side of the page, when they meant to write the other side. Being told I could go to the old site, only that wasn't true. Being told that the old site's command center would work for me, when really it caused everything to close down. I resent all my emails of two months after being given so much wrong information over such a long period. And I knew when I lost it that it was going to be to my detriment, but I did lose it. When I try as hard as I can and get no where it's so hopeless feeling because it takes so much effort to get things organized so that I can deal with them, in terms of thinking. So when it all fails, it's like everything in my mind falls apart like a house of cards, and it's so frustrating.
Having thought about this since I read your post, I think the hope behind getting news coverage is that people will write letters, and that there will be a change that will help many people. I think if some people here did as William Rennick suggested, that the problem would be addressed swiftly. But torontotrader said what I was afraid most people would say, that it was my fault (and I should just suffer the consequences.) Torontotrader has a wrong view, an inaccurate view of the facts. But it's certainly what TD Ameritrade would like to hear as the last word on this subject.