09/15/2009 - 1 COMMENTS
This is a rant page about my frustration with eTrade. I'm not going to outright accuse them of fraud, I'll just put out my experience and let the viewers decide on their own if eTrade deserves their time of day.
About 10 years ago I worked for Computer Associates and signed up for the Employee Stock Purchase Program. For 6 months a small piece of my check was put in some account which then was used to buy shares (10 for me) of company stock at 85% of face value. The stock was stuffed in an eTrade brokerage account.
2 days later Computer Associates stock dropped in half and 2 years later all the CEO's were in jail for "Accounting irregularities" and 9 years later the CA stock had been to Viewpoint stock to Enliven Stock and had come down to being 1 share worth about 9 bucks.
I can't recall how it all went, but somewhere back in that 8 to 10 year ago range I had 700 to 800 bucks in the account and had done a trade here or there over 3 or 4 years. Nothing since.
In Summer 2009, I happened to look close enough at one of those junk mails that I realized they were about to charge me $40 for a service fee on the account. The rules had changed and they were going to start sucking me dry.
After a couple days figuring out how to get into my account I found out I had been zapped the $40 one time before so I got on the phone and had it out with the customer service agent. We parted ways with him giving me a courtesy credit for that $40 if I would make at least 1 trade in the next 30 days. I agreed... Sell my 1 share of stock, does that count for a trade? Yep.
Will I get a future $40 charge if I am out of stocks and just have my roughly $150 in the cash fund? Yes... Really? Yes...
I'd have to zero out my account, or get it above $2000 to not get the $40 fee anymore. So I asked.. I need to zero it out, but I can keep it open and then I won't get the $40 fee? That is correct.
If you have an eTrade account you know that they charge you to send you a check, the thing is like trying to navigate a snake pit of fees and charges, so I already had a checking account attached to eTrade so I did their Online version of transfering the money to that checking account. In fact, the exact amount that I had in the account. Good, done, zero balance, no more $40 fees!! Well, not exactly...
I got another notice this week that I was about to get zapped $40 again. How can this be, let me look into it. I went in my eTrade account and there was 1 cent.
I told the lady I wanted complete seperation no matter what it takes. I tried transferring the 1cent to my checking account but they only let you do $1 or more. She said they could kill the penny and close the account.
I asked her what would happen if I left the penny in the account and the $40 fee hit. Would I be at $0.00, or -$39.99? She said I would go negative. I then asked her if the penny was real or if that was a way to try to fraud me out of $40? She said it was interest earned.
Well, maybe it is, maybe it isn't. What I am sure of, is that this is not accidental at eTrade. The fees are there to try to grab your money without telling you to your face they are going to do it. Hopefully this one and other financial institutions are pushing hard enough on consumers that they will get a regulation stating that any notice like this has to go out 4 times in the mail with big(20 point) red letters on the front of the envelope that say "We are about to charge your account a fee of $40" before they can go ahead and do it.
Picture them with a rake standing over a big bucket of eTrade accounts waiting for the clock to tick to 0 so they can rake off $40 from a million accounts this month. Did they just drool on the account bucket? I think so.
A. D., a young lady at eTrade tells me my account is closed. Somehow I don't expect this to be the real end of it. I really am curious how a company can thrive when they work this hard to drive customers with positive cash balances out the door. Goodbye eTrade, good luck on your road to failure.