E*TRADE

I would rate them a zero if I could.
Be very careful with E-trade. I was a customer for 5 years and had 5 accounts (taxable, Roth IRA, traditional IRA, my wife's IRA and a savings account) with them worth nearly 300K. I found out that when I transferred my Roth that they had mistakenly set it up as a traditional IRA. Since I didn't notice this immediately they refused to do anything about it and stated it was my fault because I didn't notice it soon enough and that it was to late because it was already registered with the IRS. Wasted my time filing a complaint with the SEC to no avail. If this is how E-trade treats a 5 year customer with multiple accounts how do you think they will treat you?

Well I landed here and read all of the horrible reviews about E*trade after searching for the phrase "etrade sucks" on google. Glad I found some support here of my opinion, and am pleased I found a place to add my own horror story into the mix. Warning: E*trade supporters should not read.

After trading on E*trade and losing some money in the stock market (my own fault, not etrade's - I was an inexperienced trader) I decided I wanted something tamer than the stock market for a while to calm my nerves. I decided to try bonds, since E*trade has such an advanced bond trading platform. I knew exactly how much money I had in the account as I pulled my money from stocks and put it into bonds, mind you. Well I left my money alone for a week or so, but after I went to check on it, something funny started happening. Suddenly, $5 would be missing. Then 10. Then 5 again another day, and then perhaps 15 the next. I'm absolutely convinced this was NOT unauthorized access to my account - this was E*trade's dishonesty, taking my money bit by bit until at least $100 was missing, hoping I wouldn't notice. I decided my money wasn't safe in bonds with etrade any more, so I pulled it out, selling the bond since the yield had gone up anyways. The magic disappearing money seemed to come back when I sold the bond, but I'm of the firm opinion it should have never left the account in the first place.

Well, then I made another stupid mistake. I trusted E*trade with my money AGAIN. This time I had made a little bit of money in the stock market and then lost some again, and again I knew EXACTLY how much I had in my account. I don't mess around when it comes to money in my accounts. Anyhow, knowing exactly how much I had, I trusted these clowns again with my money, and put it into another decently yielding 3-month bond.

Boy, was that a mistake. Their crowing moment was when I checked into my account a couple of days later, and $300 was suddenly gone. Poof. Vanished. Well, I immediately called customer service to ask where my money was. Their response was to check my previous day's real-value amount and compare it to determine: ta-da! I never had as much money as I thought to begin with. I was speechless.

How was I supposed to prove this, when their own records were against me, and I had no records to back me up that my $300 suddenly vanished into thin air? Boy, was I angry, and shocked. I felt like I was back in philosophy class, being explained to that the burden of proof was on me to get my money back. After that, when I sold the bond, ANOTHER, yes another! $200 disappeared from my account. Oh, and it wasn't because the yield had gone down either, because it was roughly the same. Of course, I couldn't be more upset. So what did I do? I immediately transfered my money back to my bank, where it sits today.

After I transfered my money back to my bank, guess what happened? The money was MAGICALLY THERE AGAIN! Yep, my $500 or so dollars was back again. The rest of my money transferred without problem, but that $500 transaction back to my bank somehow failed to transfer successfully 3 times. Finally, I broke it up into smaller transactions and it went through.

The point is not that I always got my money back from them eventually - it's that it disappeared from my account in the first place. I, personally, have better and more calming things to do than be playing the "where's my money?" game with them.

They never gave me problem with stocks, but for bonds, definitely stay away and find a better trading platform! When you suddenly notice large sums of money disappear, you can't say you haven't been warned!

Etrade inactivated my account without sending me and email or an "alert". I logged into my account and all my money was gone. I called them, and they said since it is a self directed account, I have to call them to find out why my account (and my money) was inactivated.

Anyway, they inactivated my account b/c they had to return a transfer to my bank. Meanwhile, they were able to accept the the incoming transfer from my bank. So they had my newly transferred money locked up and I had no access to it for days. I had to call them several times and spoke to rude customer service reps from the Phillipines who showed no sympathy for my situation. We had to call my bank together and verified why the funds were returned (insufficent funds ....duh!) It took two more phone calls and two days later for them to lift the inactivation off my account. And now my money is going straight back to my bank....I plan to close my account with them. I never ever want to have the feeling of not knowing where my money is, or knowing that some monster corporation has my money and won't let me have access to it.

And the customer services were threatening, saying if I didn't cooperate with them in answering private questions (to verify that it is me....wanting my money back), and calling my bank with them, that I would have to go to bank and get a notorized letter and mail it to them. How ridiculous is all this when the bank clearly states that the reason the money was returned is due to insufficient funds?

This is a true story. I hope that ETRADE loses all of its business and shuts down.

I'm internatioonal user.
You can't enter wire transfer through web. you need make a phone call to enter / activate it !
So you believe your wire (once entered with a hassle of 30 minutes international phone call) will serve you well and good ? WRONG. from time to time wire 'bounces' back. the only available option after that to send fax (how insane it could be ?!) and they charge you once more all the fees of wire transfer. Now. cherry on top of a pie. being fed up by bounced wire I decided to ask 'SWIFT copy' of wire I've made. in order to verify with my bank what went wrong with wire. I'm having 10 email long conversation and e*trade claims they can't provide me a copy of international money transfer but 'we can assure you wire bounced back'.

If Etrade was a person, I would have already found them, tortured them, killed them, then killed their soul. Because of their incompetencies I have lost so many trade opportunities and have spent hours day after day with them, only to have solved nothing. What I am most frustrated about is this,

It took several weeks and many phone calls to get level 4 options upgrade because they require this document and that then they take their sweet time to try to verify the documents. After i finally got level 4, i traded for a few months, then while carrying out an options trade one day, etrade said I only had level 1 options and needed to upgrade. After calling etrade, the associate said that he had no idea why it was downgraded and that i would need to reapply. I reapplied and got level 4 again. A week later it was automatically downgraded to level 1 again. I called again, and they replied that they don't know why it keeps happening and that i can reapply for an options upgrade again in 3 months. At which i replied fuck you and hung up.
The process of transferring out my money will take at least a week.

Heed these reviews and close your account before something happens to your account.
I only wish I could give them a lower rating.

Investigation of E*Trade’s ILLEGAL Margin Practices

http://www.badmargincall.com/

The law firms of Moody & Warner, P.C. (Chris Moody and Repps Stanford) and Nicholas & Butler, L.L.P. (Craig Nicholas and Alex Tomasevic) announce an investigation into E*Trade Financial Corp. and related companies, including E*Trade Clearing, LLC.


Our investigation seeks to determine whether customers of E*Trade, particularly options traders, have experienced any of the following:

incorrect margin balances/buying power calculations by E*Trade

incorrect margin calls by E*Trade

improper options contract assignments and/or failure to deliver

lost trading opportunities due to incorrect margin balances

forced liquidation of account assets by E*Trade to meet erroneous margin calls

Actions of these types by E*Trade may violate one or more of E*Trade’s legal obligations to its clients, including obligations imposed by California consumer statutes. If you have experienced one of these actions and have suffered losses as a result, you may be entitled to compensation. If our investigation confirms that these problems were sufficiently wide-spread, a class action lawsuit seeking compensation may be filed.

If you have information on any of these issues we want to hear from you!

http://www.badmargincall.com/

This company makes it extremely difficult to take your money out and close an account. I sent them the requested documentation that they wanted and they never sent me my money. Then when I called customer service they said I needed some other form to take my money out. Do not use this company, they make you work so hard to take your money out. Terrible customer service, the people are india and incompetent. DO NOT OPEN A ACCOUNT! use another discount broker like Scottrade or another company with better customer service.

Poor documentation, $99/mo. for the "Pro" Trading software, renowned for crappy customer service and slow execution...what more do you need to know?

Make the effort to learn the think or swim platform. You can trade with "fake money" until you feel comfortable with the application.

I keep seeing people in the reviews opening up the accounts with an absurd amount of money. C'mon people. Do you REALLY trust an unknown to handle your money??? Open with the minimum & see if they can handle THAT. Establish trust first, THEN start moving your big dollars, ESPECIALLY when you're dealing with E*SHERADE.

I opened up my E*TRADE account long enough to transfer an opening $100 to create the account. My account is already frozen due to "fraudulent activity". No one in customer service knows how or whom can handle these issues. I finally got one gentleman who took the time to tell me the account has been closed and that money will be transfered to the original source account. I'll believe it when I see it. I've grown numb to E*TRADE's ability to act on pretty much anything. I'm not talking special cases here. I'm talking basic "open an account, transfer funds from another, reliable bank to fund the created account, sit, wait for checks, monitor the account and never see any available funds from your deposits" process. I'm amazed they can afford the TV commercials.

I suspect that they determine activity based upon the IP addresses that access their account. I have a few online banking applications that log into E*TRADE to pull data, i.e "Mint". I haven't had any issues whatsoever with any of my other *normal* banks that I pull data from. If this is the cause, it's just plain silly that E*TRADE would have such a policy. Don't they realize that people bank from their phones, home & work these days?

It's my fault though. I had ample warning before creating an E*TRADE account from online research and the likes of the reviews above. I ignored all of the bad reviews E*TRADE gets all over the place online. I should have known better. I just couldn't believe a bank could really be that bad. Now I know.

ETrade ripped me off with exorbitant quarterly charges of $40. eTrade is Evil.

http://www.eviletrade.com

If you are still using E-trade out of inertia, I encourage you to shop around. I know they were the first online brokerage and I was an early customer and fan, but I left a long time ago. They are not competitive anymore on price, usability, or analysis tools. A friend asked me to maintain his account for a while, and I found the site to be cluttered and awkward. There were several pricing levels and I noticed the trades were so expensive compared to what I was using! There are so many better discount brokers out there now.

Zecco offers much cheaper trades if you just want to trade alot. I find their site kind of buggy and unreliable though, and their reports leave much to be desired, which is unfortunate because someone probably wants to trade a lot if they use zecco, and that means lots of information to be organized.

Scottrade offers reasonably cheap trades, no surprise fees, basic customer service, but you are limited in doing more complex things. They offer very limited features for trading options. Their website is very straightforward and easy to use. Their flat rate pricing is very easy to understand. I recommend them for all beginners in trading.

Fidelity is all right if you have significant sums of money and want to do simple trades and analysis. They have very good customer service for a discount broker, and physical locations, which is extremely helpful if you need to occasionally see someone live to sign papers and notarized statements. Their website is easy to use. The reporting features are good. The ATP desktop trading platform is functional, but difficult to set up and start using. The interface is clunky and unorganized. You spend lots of time trying to figure out where everything is for what you want to do.

If you want to hold long term low fee mutual funds, definitely go with Vanguard. That is what they do best. However, recently I have noticed their customer service is not as knowledgeable or helpful.

Last year I opened up an account with Thinkorswim, and find them to be the best experience by far, if you are an experienced trader. Their java desktop platform is vastly better and faster than Fidelity's ATP and makes ATP look like the clunky Windows program that it is. Thinkorswim's web interface is awkward and confusing (I only use it to check on my account if away from home), but I only use their desktop trading platform, which I find to be easily the best interface I have seen for desktop trading, compared to ATP and Scottrade's. It's very easy to set up and all the information is neatly organized, and where you'd think they should be. I can trade FX, options, futures. They also allow some options trading in retirement accounts, which was a major reason I wanted to switch to them. Their prices are extremely competitve, especially for single options ($3 compared to ETrade's $10 !!!!) They have great customer service too.

A bad report for E*Trade:

A friend of mine who's retired tried to open an account with E*Trade last week, but his experience was not good. Ultimately he chose TD Ameritrade because E*Trade took well over 4 - 6 days to process his application. Now mind you, he's not from Yemen, he has a very healthy bank account, receives well over 100k a year from retirement, but E*Trade's online application does not have a box for "retirement" when selecting a choice for "employment".

Here's how it went down. My friend's name is Miller.

Friday: Miller processes online application and transfers 4k via direct deposit for margin account.

Tuesday: Miller attempts to place online trade. Money IN THE BANK with E*Trade but not available for trade. Miller notices message notification online. Miller calls customer service, but can not access because phone system does not recognize his account number. Third try, Miller finally accesses rep after selecting "new accounts" option.

Rep, advises Miller needs proof of employment. Miller states he's retired and now recipient of CalPERS - rep states no problem and advises it would take 24 hours to process. Miller requests they expedite, stating he needs to place trade ASAP as he believes press release will come any day with good news and stock will jump.

Wednesday: Miller attempts to make trade - money not available. News hits, stock rises 153%. Miller notices another message in his online mailbox - messages are never delivered directly to his personal email because he's disabled that feature during online application. The SAME rep who assisted yesterday sent message stating they need "address" of Miller's employer. Miller is pissed. Verrrry pissed. Move on trade is missed, he's already explained to this rep he's retired. Miller provides address for retirement fund. 4 hours later, E*Trade returns his reply with message stating it will take AN ADDITIONAL 2 days to process information.

Wednesday, 1PM PST: Miller files online application for TD AmeriTrade (TDA) and transfers 4k via through direct deposit for margin account. 2PM PST: Miller calls TDA to confirm account is processed without issue. Rep advises Miller can trade IMMEDIATELY.

Wednesday, 3PM: Miller cancels E*Trade and requests money be returned immediately to his bank. E*Trade advises it will take 2 business days to process cancellation and 5-7 days to return funds to his bank.

AMAZING! It takes less than 48 hrs. for E*Trade to receive money, and 5-7 days to return funds.

I've used E-trade for several years. Started with trading (just a few trades a year), and then IRA, and banking. They've always been very gracious on the phone when I had questions. The site has everything in one place, but visually is looking a bit dated (that's why I deleted a star).

In summary, I've been moving more and more accounts to E-trade for convenience and because I'm happy with them.

Just a note. I see a lot of single stars here. Two of those reviewers misspelled the word "ridiculous"the same way ("rediculous" and "rediculously"). Could be real reviews, but it smells a little fishy to me.

In November 2008, I found out that my outgoing transfer in E*trade bank was not successful because they placed security hold on my account which was at the balance of approximately $20,000. I called them and they told me I need to write a notarized letter to them. This started my nightmare with their incoherent verification process and rude customer service.

They lost my notarized letter by accidents, repeated tricky requests to me even if I was not able to do their requests. Their requests didn’t make sense at all, like requesting my source bank to promise I am the account holder. But E*trade didn’t care, and would hold my fund forever until they smelled possible lawsuit from me.

Their representatives had been really rude during my communication with them. Some of them told me if I satisfy their request, they would “consider” removing security hold on my account. Some other representatives directly hung up on me and refused to communicate after I finally satisfied their request (and that was hard to do). They even got rude when I pointed out that they did receive my notarized letter.

Their service and attitude were very bad through the tedious discussion, which took me 3 months of time, countless call and headache. The funny thing is they kept making difficult requests to me, but they could never give me a clear answer why they placed security hold on my account.

After reading hundreds of complaint in Internet, I know my case is not rare. It looks like E*trade is doing every possible trick to hold customer’s money as long as they can. Very unethical and disgusting.

E-Trade completely BLOWS! I am SOOO pissed about the way they do business! They DO NOT deserve even the single star thata is required...BOOOO HISSSS They SUCK! YUCK! STAY AWAY!

First, DO NOT BELIEVE THE ADS ABOUT 100 FREE TRADES ---- IT'S A COMPLETE LIE!!!

I have argued with many people there about it (non of whom are Americans or even speak decent English!), and they will not honor the terms of what originally brought me to them...the 100 "Free" trades...it's complete crap! They should be sued and somebody needs to file a claim with the FTC for false advertisement! I NEVER got a single trade for free, and I started my account with $5000, and it currently has over $20k in it that they will soon be loosing!

I smell Class Action Law Suite! Anyone game for that?

Second, their REDICULOUS policy of holding MY money hostage for 4 business days if FREAKING INSANE!!

I was going to buy 500 shares of Microsoft at $16+, but they are still hold my money, and it's now almost at $20!!! That's almost $2000 that I am losing because the bastards are pirating MY money! By the time it clears, the stock will most likely be well over $20 and I wil have lost the difference!

And last, the theiving Cyber Thugs that they are now want to charge me an additional $60 to transfer my funds away from them to take it to an Ameritrade account. Personally, 60 bucks is a small price to pay in order to be able to use MY money when I want too!

Hang 'em all, I say! Screw them! The strength of capitalism is still alive and well, and if enough people defect from these scamming, lieing, caniving E-Bastards, then they will hopefully go the way of the DoDo Bird...but hopefully WITHOUT MY MONEY!!!

DO BUSINESS WITH THIS COMPANY AT YOUR OWN RISK. ONCE THEY HAVE YOUR MONEY YOU WILL NOT GET IT BACK WITHOUT ALOT OF HASSLE. yOUDON'T EVEN GET TO TALK WITH SOME ONE IN THE UNITED STATES. NO MATTER HOW MANY TIMES I ASKED THEIR PEOPLE IN MANILA, PHILLIPINES WOULD NOT PUT ME IN TOUCH WITH A PERSON IN THE UNITED STATES. THEY GET BLESS THAN NO STARS.

I think Minus ***** would be more like it. I used to own a business and if I had treated my customers like E Trade treats theirs I would have failed. In Feb 2009, E Trade sold all my stocks, at a loss of $9,862.00, to satisfy $240.00 in “Maintenance fees”, without my permission or giving me any prior notice. I did not buy these on Margin either! I'm so mad I created a web site at etradesoldmystocksandkeptthemoney dot com to help spread the word about it. I even provided screen captures of my account and the emails I got as evidence of their corrupt policy.

Can I give it a lower rating than one star. Their site is terrible, sometimes you can access the brokerage side but not the banking side and there is no explantion. If you call their tech support, if you can call it that. They say you need to use MS stuff and then you need to dump all cookies, cache and restart the computer. From a technical point that is the equivalent of needing to stop your car and turn the engine off just to change the radio station.
When you try to stop payment on an automatic bill pay you should give two weeks to process, I tried it with only a weeks notice before the beginning of the transaction and it still paid. Also they will let anyone cash a check they send for you. They sent a check to the wrong address and someone with a different name was able to deposit into an unknown account. They cleared it. I was out the $120 for the 6 weeks it took to clear it up. Then they tried to bill me for the mistake. I didn't give them the wrong address, it was in their system incorrectly.
Etrade may seem easy but it isn't. Their site is difficult, their customer service is difficult and they have cut services so what you really get is poor banking.

Registration - B
Trading - A
Charts - A
Research Tools - B
Commissions and Fees (Pass/Fail) - Pass

E*TRADE offers excellent charts, a great trading engine and is very good in all other aspects. I would not recommend E*TRADE for those that are charged the $40 quarterly account maintenance fee but there are lots of exemptions so most customers will not be charged - see more details in commissions and Fees. E*TRADE is highly recommended.

For my detailed review of E*TRADE and other online brokers please visit http://onlinebrokerreview.blogspot.com/

Do not open and E*Trade Brokerage Account. I have accounts with Fidelity, Vanguard, T*Rowe and have had great service - E*Trade is a nightmare. I've been trying to close my account for 4 months now, of course incurring account charges all this time while waiting, according to E*Trade customer non-service for a THIRD PARTY to deduct a stock certificate fee from the dormant account. Do not, do not - do business with E*Trade !!!

Please, Do not open up with E*Trade Financial. You will lose all your money like I did and youll will be charge for a lot of stupid reasons and every time you have to call them to give your money back. Since you put your money in E*Trade account Its impossible to remove it again, They kept my money in account and my checks returned and I paid a $75 check returned fee to E*Trade and my bank. I made a very important Wire out transfer to my another banking account because I had a mortgage to pay but it returned to my E*Treaded account again because the customer service mixed up.
They advertised 100 Free Trade but that is not trough. They charge you $13 for each trading and you have to pay and if you buy over 2000 shares you have to pay 1.5 Cents extra and you have to do all your 100 free trading within a month and then they may credit it back to you almost 2 mints after opening your account witch Im not sourer, So far I havent received it yet. But not the money you pay 1.5 cents for over 2000 share. You have to pay that once for buying and gain for selling that stock and it will be 3 cents.
E*Trade has a very bad Finical situation and you can check with stock market. Dont put yourself in a big chance of losing your everything with E*Trade with merging account. I had a margin account with them and since stock hit the lower price in last two weeks, they forced me to sell my stock or they will sell it without my permission. They dont tell you they have a charge and it calls malignance fee witch is $40 every 3 months. Anyway, Ive been told to not open account with E*Trade but I didnt lessen and now Im a loser. If they did transfer my wire money correctly at the first time now I wasnt a loser and I wouldnt buy stock again and they wouldnt forced me to see it or they will sell my stock to any price. I transfer money last Friday 11/28/08 but today 12/02/08 my money is not into my another account and when I called them they said it will take by next 2 more day.

Worst Customer Service

I thought dealing with my money through E trade would be easy! NOT!!I'm suppose to use a Security Device to access my account on line! That's fine if I have the device. Not recieved it yet through the mail!! How do I access my accounts now? I don't! Also for Customer Service there is no live person. All you talk to is one machine after another. My advice. Keep your money somewhere else NOT at E trade!!!!

After having an account with ETRADE for 2 years, I just found out that I have been charged $40 every 3 months for doing nothing but having an open account with stocks! They hid the fees so well, I couldn't even find them when looking at my account statement. The etrade sales rep couldn't either. I was even signed up for regular email alerts, and nothing was mentioned in them alerting me to these charges. You can't make money trading on ETRADE. ETRADE eats you alive. I've now got negative funds in my account and the account supervisor at ETRADE offered no relief.

I made a big mistake using these guys. When I closed my account because of the high maintenance fees and the horrible customer service, they tried to cross sell me for other products. Are you kidding me?? Their customer service reps, while polite, seem to have zero experience and talent. A month after I closed my account I called because I had not received my check for the balance in my account. I was told that it hadn't been sent because I never called to confirm that I printed out my final statement. What??? They then informed me that they had to deduct $10.00 to cut the check. I asked if the funds could be transferred electronically, they told me that I would have to set up a new account. Again....WHAT??? Stay away from this company unless you enjoy being nickeled and dimed to death, and like dealing with idiots.

THIEVES!!!! I must admit, that i was careless with my account. However, ETRADE reserves the right to SELL YOUR SHARES! With the last stock market meltdown my net worth went below $40.00, sad I know. Since the account had no activity within the quarter, I was charged a 40.00 dollar fee, which threw my account into a negative balance. ETRADE did contact me, call me, or e-mail me, they just went ahead and sold all my shares "in order to regain the negative balance." Again this without contacting me or giving me any type of warning. STAY AWAY FROM ETRADE, THERE ARE MANY STOCK TRADING WEBSITES THAT DO NOT CHARGE YOU HIDDEN FEES AND SELL YOUR SHARES WITHOUT CONTACTING YOU.!

Optionsxpress is Horrible. Optionsxpress sent me an email and told me via phone not to take action on my account to avoid a margin call. They stated that they would tell me in a following email if there was going to be a margin call. I called to confirm this information because I've been told the wrong thing several times by optionsxpress an been misled too many times to count. This time optionsxpress has cost me dearly. They told me there was no immediate need to add money to my account to avoid a margin call. About an hour after that conversation, they liquidated my stock when it was at its lowest point. Optionsxpress defrauded me out of $35,000 in seconds. About 6 hours later that same day I recieved an email warning me that there would be a margin call on the stock if I didn't add $1,500 to my account within 3 days. The problem is, they had already liquidated my stock positions. I've spoken with several representatives and managers and they agree that they made a mistake yet they do not wish to fix it. They told me that they were even willing to put me back in the stock position I had with margin and then said they couldn't because my account didn't have the same money in it. I wonder why. I invite anyone who has gone through the same thing to contact me. Any actions taken by optionsxpress that violate the laws of the federal government and/or state are illegal and unacceptable. I hope this helps others to avoid doing business with this kind of company. Please share your story so that others don't get ripped off by optionsxpress.

ATTENTION: I've found out the secret to getting a hold of cusotmer service: call from a phone that is not linked to an E*Trade account!

When I was setting up my account, I called them many times, and always got someone right away. Once my account was active, I was waiting 30+ minutes at a time. I tried calling from work instead of my cell, and PRESTO! They picked up before the hold music even started. Apparently numbers not linked to an account (i.e. potential new customers) get placed on a different (rediculously shorter) queue.

FYI: To bypass the menu, just press # repeatedly.

This is THE worst bank in history. I tried to send a $6,500 international wire and after ONE MONTH they are still unable to make it work. In the meanwhile my money is vanished, NO ONE gives me ANY explanation of what is going on and every day that passes I am losing money. It's been an ENTIRE MONTH of a bunch of idiots giving me retarded explanations to the absurd delays, and nothing being done about it. When I decided to do the wire with them, no person warned me that I was dealing with a circus of incompetent clowns that are absolutely clueless about how to do an international wire. 

We transferred $35,000 into Etrade several months ago. They have put a hold on our account for no apparent reason. We cannot tranfer any money or pay bills. They cannot explain why there is a hold on our account. This is crazy!

Etrade 12th day, following of the story posted on the 27th, they have received a notarized letter since 2 days now (dhl airway bill 3183265212), no access to my account, no news from them. The major day of the end of Ramadan was today in Pakistan and it will be holidays for the next 3 days. I am so amazed how irresponsible Etrade customer service, security and fraud department is. They say the correct words but they do not understand or even see reality. They want to see themselves as good people and they are uncaring, abusive and self centered. they just focus on a few dollars they are given as pay and their next bonus/pay increase. Management is non existent, their procedure weak and unimaginative. And under this environment, they are given authority by the government to enforce the fight against money laundrying and funds suppositly used to finance terrorist activities. And they focus on people operating abroad with small accounts, because big ones they are too afraid to lose them. Do you think a drug dealer or a terrorist group will manage balances under 10,000 dollars and withdraw money with a debit card at ATM machine 100 dollars at a time. They are living in a dream, but at the end who is authorizing them to do that, Etrade management Michell Caplan is the Executive board member, I have sent sent an email to him as well as Lewis Randall a non executive member. So they all aware, in fact I sent 4 emails already to them. So if they are aware of these situations and they have decided to do nothing about it. It just mean that their caring about customer message is just a scam, a must marketing speech with no real meaning or substance. I am a professional and I know " a policy not implemented is just a liar, nothing else". Good news these signs are usually marking the end of an organization. Wrong principles, leardership and uncaring employees, receipe for disaster. Meanwhile I agree with most of you, stay away because customer will suffer.

Pretty poor deal for an online broker.  Relatively expensive trades (more than Scottrade, Ameritrade, or even Schwab), poor streaming quotes if you don't have Power Etrade, and I can find better research tools for free on Yahoo or Google.

Etrade 7 th day, I am a business man 55 years old. etrade has retricted access to my account. I am in Pakistan on a business trip. my etrade account was my only source of money. I have requested for help, talked at least 50 times over the telephone with them requesting help. The want notorized proof of my identity when they have already verified it 50 times. They want a notorized letter which I send yesterday. It will reach them by express courier in a week (it is ramadan here). They want 2 to 3 days to process it. Then they want me to call again. Need urgently a lawyer to handle a prompt action. I cannot wait for two weeks so they may be reinstate access to my account. as of yesterday they disable my capacity to send them email thru their customer service. So i have no other way to talk to them than using the phone, when I call they always manage to drop the line under pretexe than they cannot ear me. Is anyone in the US can help? I need urgent help

Terrible company they take your money hold it for ever while they varify your account in my case they have yet to do it they keep telling me to fax in my drivers license and social security card then they say they have then the next person cant find it so fax it again.
All this time they wont refun my money. Finally they told me well you need to manually varify your account even tough I answer every question they ask me then then say not good enough you need to go to DMV and get a new drivers license with your current address and fax that to us then we will unfreeze your account but you still can ttrade till the end of the month... of course I would never have my new license from DMV in that amount of time.
DO not use E trade! they are teriible and the reps do not know what they are doing.

Etrade sucks, run away before they take all your money with their fees.
The only way Etrade makes money is by getting COMPANIES to force their employees to use them for their stock purchase plan. Horrific customer service! I couldn't get an answer to a simple question. I was not allowed to talk with a manager. When I closed my account, they tried to charge me a fee ($100?) even though this fee had never been disclosed to me before. Go with Fidelity or Schwab. Stay away from ETARDS !!!!

I recently closed all of my accounts with Etrade after about 8 years as a customer.

Website: 5 stars
I believe that there website is excellent. May be the easiest and one of the quickest that I have used. Bill payments were a sinch to set up and the site provided a projected balance in 7 days (excellent for those of us that don't like to use check registers). Their online trading platform was just as easy to use. Best of all most of their accounts have very little fees attached.

Customer Service: -2 Stars
Unfortanely, customer service has recently went down hill. It seems as if they have outsourced most of their customer service reps. Their customer service reps often leave you on hold for 15+ minutes while coming back on the phone to apologize every minute or so (hold time might not be so bad with out all of the apologies).

I attempted to get a corrected 1099-R from them. i tried several times, and was always told that it would be completed to only later receive a message that my request had been canceled.

The last problem I had with them regarding a debit transaction caused me to to switch all of my accounts. I received an erroneous debit out of our checking account. The transaction was not made by my wife or I. I spoke to a customer service woman and was told that the debit card was swiped. I explained that we haven't used the card in several months and have never purchased anything from the company that charged us, but she said that the card swiped and she couldnd't tell me anything more. It was only $50 so I gave up after about an hour or so and switched my accounts. (by the way this was the second fraudelant transaction on my account, the first was a month or so prior, made from Sigapore, which Etrade resolved).

If Etrade fixed their customer service I would consider returning as a customer of their banking, but my brokerage acocunts are staying with Charles Schwab and Fidelity.

I have been with Etrade for nearly 10 years. I was always able to speak to someone in the U.S. Now I get either an Irish or Indian who can not manage the account without putting me on hold for average of 17 minutes and apologizing continuously for being inept.
IT IS TIME TO GET OUT. they are going to go bankrupt so it is a good time to get out. The CEO got out why not us the customers. I have no loyalty to this company if it has ceased its service to me.

If I could give E*Trade less than one star I would. They made no issue when I deposited a large sum of money in my money market account (from the sale of a house), but froze the account when I tried to transfer the funds out a month later (to close on a new house). Trying to get access to the funds was difficult. Each person I talked with seemed to not really know how the company worked as a whole. I was given a wrong fax number by one person, and then E*Trade can't find the fax and route it to the right department, even though the fax number just belonged to another one of their departments. When I asked to receive confirmation that the issue had finally been resolved, I was told *I* would need to call them! They said they have too many requests to do that: yea, too many requests that they are not handling competently! I'll be closing my accounts with them asap.

Etrade is the worst online Broker. I setup my online account and there was a discrepency on my mailing address and address on my driver's license. They asked me to send documentation stating the reason why and so I did that. Weeks pass by and still my online account was not active. My wired money was there but my account was not active. I called and they told me to send my documentation again. I did and still there was a restriction on my account. I once again called them and they said they are working to resolve the problem asap and that a representative will call me back. Guess what, no one ever called. Every time I called they either didn't receive my documents or keeping giving me false promise that someone is working on it. That was my last straw. I ended up signing up with Scotts Trade. Price reasonable and great customer service. Whatever you do, don't go with Etrade!

I do not recommend doing business with this company. Their customer service is inept and their policies and procedures make doing business next to impossible. This is especially the case if you have any changes in life events like marriage or changes of address. After 4 calls to customer service and 2 faxes w/ info sent they still insist on holding $4600 hostage.

I am amazed by the amount of negative reviews of ETrade. I have been their customer for almost 8 years now and never had any problem with them. Other than the fact that they do not contact customers with issues regarding their accounts (to be fair, all issues are posted as alerts on the accounts and users should check those alerts at least once a day) I believe ETrade to be a good, reliable and courteous brokers.

I called three times and got three different answers to the same question concerning the opening of a new account. That should have been a warning sign already, but I filled out the application and even FedEx'd for 10:30am delivery. I waited the five days I was told before it was opened and then was told they have no record of every receiving my application. I gave them the tracking number as prof it was received. And the answers were ludicrous - the rep said I sent it to Virginia and he's in New Jersey. I reminded him to look at the website to see that overnight mail must go to the Virgina address. He told me I should call back in a few days so they could mail it to him. I reminded him that its called E*Trade for electronic, and all there databases are connected, just as when a trade is executed. I knew it was futile talking with this underpaid rep and asked for a supervisior. He came back five minutes later and said I would be on hold for 10 minutes at least. I gave him my phone number and asked that "Miss Holly" call me back rather than my waiting. He said she might call me tomorrow. "Might call me tomorrow", I couldn't believe was I was hearing. He said she has meetings to go to and I asked what was more important, assisting in a resolution to this case or her meetings. I said I will waiting until the end of the day to give "Miss Holly" time to call, all though I told him I already felt it was unlikely she would call - she never did. I didn't know about the frequent change over of CEO's. One of which, former CEO, Mitch Caplan, might be going to jail. The things you learn AFTER the fact. I wish I had read the reviews posted here before I sent them my transfered funds, that they now can't find any record of.

I opened an account with Etrade 10 days ago. While they took my money from my bank ten days ago, it just cleared today for trading. I opened the account ten days ago because I wanted to trade ten days ago. (I also opened a Scottrade account nnd was trading in five minutes, and have had very friendly, local customer support) Today I tried to transfer my money back to my bank and close my account at Etrade. Etrade wouldn't let me transfer my money out because they said my email address wasn't verified (although they set up the account...and took my money). I was told how to verify my email address, but I would have to wait ten more business days to transfer my money out. They told me they could do an instant wire transfer for $25. Those cocksuckers took my money and wanted to hold it for almost three weeks. I paid the $25 to get my money back now. They cannot even say their practices are industry standard because they are not. I didn't want to yell at the woman helping me as it was not her personal policy, but I let her know I was very angry and asked her if she had similar complaints. She quietly laughed and said "all day".

I opened an account with Etrade 10 days ago. While they took my money from my bank ten days ago, it just cleared today for trading. I opened the account ten days ago because I wanted to trade ten days ago. (I also opened a Scottrade account nnd was trading in five minutes, and have had very friendly, local customer support) Today I tried to transfer my money back to my bank and close my account at Etrade. Etrade wouldn't let me transfer my money out because they said my email address wasn't verified (although they set up the account...and took my money). I was told how to verify my email address, but I would have to wait ten more business days to transfer my money out. They told me they could do an instant wire transfer for $25. Those cocksuckers took my money and wanted to hold it for almost three weeks. I paid the $25 to get my money back now. They cannot even say their practices are industry standard because they are not. I didn't want to yell at the woman helping me as it was not her personal policy, but I let her know I was very angry and asked her if she had similar complaints. She quietly laughed and said "all day".

E Trade used to be a great tool for stock trading and investment - and was free aside from the $10 transaction fee. Now it has turned into a mess after trying to add as many useless features as one could image. I don't have a problem with useless features, but when they charge an annual account fee of something like $160 it's a lot worse than useless. I hadn't checked my account for a while, and when I did, I figured my lowered account value was due to the horrible market. Nope! It was becuase I was being charged a quarterly account fee.

AVOID - horrible customer service has only gotten worse after the layoffs earlier in the year! Right now all incoming deposits by EFT will be subject to their OWN internal clearing which may be anywhere from 10-30 business days!!! YEP, THAT IS RIGHT - plan on waiting up to three months to get your cash - heaven help you if you think that transferring $ 10K from one bank to another that is done simply at EVERY OTHER BANK is that simple like I THOUGHT!!!!

E*Trade Banking: insanely incompetent. I am not a complainer, nor incompetent user (I am a high tech corporate businessman), so I don't say this lightly: in my 50 years I have NEVER experienced such idiocy - and this is in a financial institution (shudder)!

I spent 3 weeks TRYING to give them a deposit, begging them to email account status to me, and spending over 2 hours arguing with customer service personnel. I spend another week begging them to close the UNOPENED account (just to seal off my sensitive personal information, like social security number). All I've ever received is "I'm sorry, there's nothing we can do because of the Patriot Act."

I am not a violent person but it seems that this type of behavior is what causes violent behavior. At very least this is a fat, ripe class action candidate - for fiduciary malfeasance!

Now: keeping in mind that their high yield rate is a desperation act following their crash ride in the mortgage market, and with likely banking investigations, lawsuits, and other fiascos - do you want YOUR money in this looney asylum??

See plenty, plenty more at http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/0/312/RipOff031 2993.htm

Hi last week etrade flagged my account with more that 55K. They deactivated my account i cant log in or see any of my stocks, they would not tell me the reason, all they say if i have anything to ask, ill have to do it in writing. Please tell me what should i do?

Beware the almost unbelievable slowness of fund transfers. My old broker allowed me to electronically transfer funds in by next business day. With E*Trade I electronically transferred funds via wired bank transfer to E*Trade on 9th Feb, it's now Feb 19th and they have yet to show in the account. This is 'to be expected', it's their normal transfer time. If you have a date window, transfer at least three weeks in advance!!

I still have an etrade account..the service was never great but the past year; it is HORRIBLE..no answers, never the same answer, deposits missing (?), customer service reps never now a real answer..it actually took me three attempts to order checks over a period of 45 days and about 7 30 minute phone calls..and that is the best experience I have had..am changing this year..glad I only opened checking and did not move any more money

I tried to set up an account at E*Trade's bank. I wish I had read more of the reviews first. It's almost as if they don't want me to set up an account with them! I've been met with nothing but resistance at anything I've tried to do. Fortunately they don't have any of my money, at least not yet. Unfortunately I already linked my checking account to my (apparently unactivated) E*trade account, so it's possible that they might start pulling funds out of my checking account.