E-TRADE'S offshore call center.

[Lakewood90712]

Have'nt needed to call in a couple of years , and this time got connected to the new call center in Delhi (I think ) . The attitude was they have a script to follow, no interest in the company or customer , and could really give a rat's ass.

I found the number for one of the us "investor centers" , you know , a place you can walk in the front door , and got actual customer service.

E-Trade took over Harris Direct and Brownco last year, and like in many takeovers, some of the worst parts of both companies takes control. Brownco went to offshore customer service years ago , but actually was very good service.

Overall , this 6 year customer of E-Trade is PISSED!

And the worst part , with the server down , I couldn't even whine about it!*

[lazyday]

From what I've been reading, you might want to consider Fidelity, Firstrade, or Vanguard instead (or perhaps Siebert or Wellstrade) depending on account size, investments, trading, price consciousness, etc.

On average, I've probably had better service offshore than U.S. but either can be great or terrible. The whole script thing drives me crazy, worse than using a website for help. I guess that's what they want you to do.

Maybe someday, we'll have banked minutes of customer service. Like, so many minutes of human service for free depending on account size. If used up, cust service costs you so much per minute (but perhaps less than the actual cost to the company).
That might allow a deep discount company to provide good service.

I think some companies are already logging how much customers are costing them with things like long service calls, and acting on this info. May end up benefiting those of us who call infrequently, but expect help when we do.

[CybrMike]

I use Ameritrade. Not sure how much your investing with, but I have a personal rep and never have to wait more than one minute on hold.

If your have more than $100K they will upgrade to Apex and you get a bunch of features that normal accounts don't.

They just bought TD Waterhouse and I'm told that you'll be able to go into a TD brokerage office soon enough.

[cute fuzzy bunny]

I had ameritrade apex, and they reported my dividends on my mutual funds wrong to quicken and turbotax for 3 years, while I complained quarterly. Didnt seem to care much about that rather significant problem. But they offered me lots of free trades to stay when I was transferring my money out.

[brewer12345]

Let me put in the obligatory plug for Schwab. Not the cheapest, but competitive, and I cannot ever complain about service. If I wanted a personal butt-kisser they would give it to me, but I personally have no interest in being assigned to someone who is dumber than I am.

[justin]

I've been happy with Fidelity. I had to switch out of my old brokerage and move 7 or so accounts to them. Lots of complications due to marriage, name change for wife, etc. Fidelity was very helpful and thorough. They did a good job of following up on things - I had a rep assigned to each "issue" who would call and take take care of things. I've done an IRA recharacterization - painless. I disposed of some worthless securities - the rep called once to let me know it was in process (it was december 29, and I had to get it disposed of by dec 31) then he called again to let me know the transaction was complete. I've been on hold a few times for a while, but I usually called at night and/or on weekends, so I don't mind being on hold so much. Oh yeah, there reps are here in america and they speak english. Very friendly too.

[CybrMike]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cute n' Fuzzy Bunny I had ameritrade apex, and they reported my dividends on my mutual funds wrong to quicken and turbotax for 3 years, while I complained quarterly.* Didnt seem to care much about that rather significant problem.* *But they offered me lots of free trades to stay when I was transferring my money out.

Do they report incorrectly on 1099s or tax forms they send you?

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Nope, but that wasnt too relevant when I was using electronic tools to automate my finances. Really irrelevant when a company reports information incorrectly and doesnt do anything about it for 3 years. I guess if I have to box check every number between the software and the 1099, either the software or the service provider isnt of much value to me as a custoemr.

At one point one of the service droids pointed to a line on page 334, paragraph 9, subsection 64 that said something like any and all financial information reported by ameritrade was not guaranteed to be accurate. Thats when I decided to go with someone who felt like they didnt need a disclaimer like that.

After I hit the roof, some senior IT manager swore to me that he'd take ownership of the problem and resolve it. A year later, still not fixed. Emailed him back about it. No reply.

Granted what I was doing that caused the problem likely didnt affect a majority of their customers. My mutual funds owned with ameritrade paid out their dividends in cash rather than reinvesting them. Ameritrade reported this electronically to quicken as a zero dollar dividend reinvestment. No report of the dividend being paid out. If I manually fixed it, the next time I did a sync with ameritrade quicken 'unfixed' it for me.

To be fair, I never received any sort of response or action from quicken either.

[CyclingInvestor]

Quote:

Originally Posted by brewer12345 Let me put in the obligatory plug for Schwab. Not the cheapest, but competitive, and I cannot ever complain about service. If I wanted a personal butt-kisser they would give it to me, but I personally have no interest in being assigned to someone who is dumber than I am.

I agree. I transferred to Schwab in 98. The couple of minor problems I have had were quickly
resolved on the phone (with no waiting). They had a personal buttkisser call a couple of times
in the beginning, but after I indicated that was not necessary I just get a once/year "is everything OK"
call.

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Do you get to talk to Chuck?

[brewer12345]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cute n' Fuzzy Bunny Do you get to talk to Chuck?

Not so much, but I did write "him" a letter a few years ago indicating how pissed I was that they kept raising minimums, fees, etc. and asking why they seemed so determined to drive away their loyal customers. I got a polite response (not from Chuck), and I must not have been the only one complaining because within a few months they fired Pottruck, put Chuck back in charge and Schwab started lowering minimums, dropping fees and adding free goodies.

[SC]

One nice thing about Scottrade is that they still have brokerage offices in most cities. When I need to ask a question, I call (or visit) the nearest broker. I hope they don't offshore those too...

[Nords]

Quote:

Originally Posted by CyclingInvestor They had a personal buttkisser call a couple of times in the beginning, but after I indicated that was not necessary I just get a once/year "is everything OK" call.

Brokerages use those phone calls as electronic "happiness letters" to indicate that you're delirious with pleasure at the exceptionally superior service they're providing.

If you ever have a problem in the future and end up in mediation/arbitration, those happiness letters are produced to indicate that you were happy with them for all this time and suddenly turned into a raving lunatic.

When Fidelity calls, I tell them that I won't discuss my finances with strangers who cold-call me. Then I ask them to notify our personal butt-kisser of our unhappiness...

That's assuming that the call is even coming from your brokerage, and not some outsourced survey firm or a social-engineering phisher. We got a call last week from "Bank of Hawaii" to check my FIL's happiness with their services. (Apparently this was the one guy at BOH who wasn't told that my parents in law had moved into their own home nearly five years ago.) Something about his accent didn't sound right and I asked where he was calling from. He said "Right here at BOH, from our Bishop Street address." I replied "Eh, brah, where you get da bess kine loco moco there?" He had no idea what I was talking about...

[bpp]

Regarding customer service, I've found TD Waterhouse to be reasonable, though their price rises a couple of years ago were annoying.

Regarding loco moco, the Royal Host chain restaurants in Japan offer it now. One can even get it as take-out.

Bpp

[Nords]

Quote:

Originally Posted by bpp Regarding loco moco, the Royal Host chain restaurants in Japan offer it now.* One can even get it as take-out.

I bet it's directly correlated to rising Japanese obesity & mortality!

[thefed]

WTF is loco moto

[Nords]

Quote:

Originally Posted by thefed WTF is loco moto*

It's local cuisine and it's yummy. You can almost feel the cholesterol choking off your carotids...

http://whatscookingamerica.net/Histo...ocoHistory.htm