e*Trade

eTrade acquired Brownco and told to all account holders that everything will be same as it was with Brownco. With Brownco, we never had any margin call or any other dispute. Right from day one after acquisition, we got the margin call. We inquired the reason for margin call but no one from eTrade will tell us the reasons. All my orders forwarded to back office, who manipulated the account. eTrade did not let me move the account. If I do so, will not let me trade and it may take weeks. Within a span of four years, all my money is gone due to insider's manipulation. I complained to SEC and FINRA. SEC will not investigate for individual investor and FINRA will not investigate because SEC opened the file. This matter has been going on since March 2006. It appears that there is some God Father in SEC or Congress who is protecting eTrade. Any suggestion on what to do? I can see it was a daylight robbery but no one wants to look into it.

I have some preferred shares of Openlane. The company was sold and all monies paid out on October 20, 2011. I have not received any monies for my 50 shares. I have contacted eTrade on several occasions and have been told I will get my money in a week. I have even ask to speak to a supervisor. I was put on hold for more than 20 minutes. I have been told that the holding company hasn't paid them yet. Although they have paid out all other stock company. My kids have the same stock and were paid by Fidelity on October 20th.

Today, I went online to see if the money was there and to my surprise they had charged my account $20. I don't know what for they haven't done anything. They did sell my common stock a few years ago for non use of my account. I felt that was illegal but didn't do anything about it as it was a very small amount. They couldn't sell this as it wasn't negotiable at the time. I still don't have my money. It is only around $390 but still it would come in handy. Can you help?

Flawed evolutionary technology. Everything I state can be supported by screen snapshot printouts; unfortunately, I cannot attach hard copies to this post. Part of the exhibits file is a few videos. Please click on the below URL link. ASIC is after a 9-month process and they are going to make a decision as to whether or not to launch a full investigation. The tabled findings is my gift to all TopStockers who have previously gave feedback.

I am the only person in Australia to have thoroughly examined the revolutionary electronic technology, having gathered over a five-year period exhibits into an extensive file at a cost to the ASX of more than $125 million with WebIRESS as the contractor installing the Integrated Trading Systems (I.T.S.) hardware to all 97+ stockbrokers to convert from manual to fully automated financial market. However, the ASX/SFE and WebIRESS never tried and tested this evolutionary electronic technology under normal trading conditions during ASX business hours before being imposed upon 5 million paying Australians.

This experimental electronic technology was implemented in the same way that manufacturer's of faulty heart pacemakers only bench-tested these devices for a complete electrical circuit before global sales. When it came to the practical application of surgically fitting these devices, the body dissolved the electrical joints to render the heart pacemaker useless. Neither did Dow Corning examine the effects of silicone in the body after silicone breast implant ruptures--now replaced with saline solution. Hardings, asbestos may have shifted company base to Norway to fall outside the US and Australian courts' jurisdiction and secret experiments conducted on the commercialization of nicotine addiction by tobacco companies knowing that nicotine causes serious health issues and death from cancer.

I have discovered and can show that the Australian financial market is run on the back of flawed evolutionary technology and chip set faulty algorithms for processing. For decades, free to air television has been available (a continuous unbroken streaming data we receive to watch television; a similar live streaming technology was not developed for the Internet Investing via Telstra's telecommunications until 2006) to watch the same TV programs--an example is YouTube. This flawed live streaming electronic technology is not exclusively used by all major global stock exchanges, stockbrokers, derivative traders, etc., also by our defense forces, commercial aviation, national shipping, banks and other applications for computerized processing which, from time to time, go belly up. Do your own research. See Web for Quantas and Virgin computer glitches and NAB or Commonwealth bank glitches.

Please type the following into the Web bar: **. Inevitably, with millions of trades executed on the ASX/SFE each day, two or more client orders are sent simultaneously as electronic data over Telstra's telecommunications infrastructure and/or the same data transferred between millions of chip sets within a computer. A collision of data occurs the same way two vehicles enter at the same time an intersection--irregularities, anomalies, glitches or whatever term the reader wishes to use for corrupt financial market data and trading systems programming malfunctions that cause financial losses--and to be deprived of a trading income through no fault of our own. One investor posts on the forum, "I am experiencing technical difficulties with a stock while another investor trading the same stock does not." The reason for this is that Commsec and E*trade have 7 telecommunication lines for trading between them that leads into the ASX--one line is infected while other lines are not.

Teams of ASX/SFE and stockbroker technicians are constantly placing patches over the technical hardware problems (site closed for maintenance) that can never be fixed--like Microsoft has to constantly download automatic upgrades to our PC's operating systems XP, PRO, Vista and Windows 7 to keep our PC's from becoming unstable and unreliable. Whenever the term latency is used for the measure in time taken for electronic data to travel from point A to B over Telstra's telecommunications infrastructure measured in milliseconds, the same data is transferred in nanoseconds for processing between chip sets within a central computer. There will always be a collision of electronic data which is the inherent flaw of the evolutionary electronic technology. And it does not matter what names the ASX, banks, shipping, aviation, etc. call their systems--the underlying technology remains the same.

In relation to the file of exhibits, screen snapshot printouts exhibits include YouTube videos. Five years ago, there was an obstacle to first hurdle before I could print these screen snapshot printouts as all major stockbrokers like Commsec, E*trade and DirectShares have inadvertently left out printing provision facilities from their online trading platform. Corrupt financial market data and trading systems programming malfunctions can be seen on watch lists, market depth, course of trades by tens of thousands of investors. I estimate that the ASX, Commsec, E*Trade, DirectShares etc. are each sitting on hundreds if not thousands of investor complaints and unsuccessful claims for compensation. Most rationale persons take their losses and move on. I strongly recommend not one share be bought or sold without first buying a printer (<$100 eBay) as cheap insurance.

Too far from the current market price, I have been given unauthorized access to hundreds of thousands of dollars to trade as my own or cash to transfer out of the stockbrokers systems which does not belong to me and vice versa. Buy, sell orders in the the market which fail to trigger and execute as trade when the prevailing market price reaches that market order target price. For example, in a market downturn, a share holder is denied selling a portfolio to preserve its value. Third party price ASX company announcements which cannot be opened and viewed, while on other stockbrokers' sites, the same ASX ANN can--a non-level playing field! Bundles of traders with their orders disappear from the market depth and vanish into thin air creating an imbalanced market depth resulting in stop losses and selling into a market depth with limited buyers or sellers resulting in artificial share prices. Market orders which are denied price amending or cancelling, which means that there is possibility that clients' orders are executed against their intention, and incurring excessive churning of trade commission fees to correct.

QBE and WPG share prices devalued in seconds by -1,000 and -800% percent respectively or -$20.1 billion dollars. Insufficient funds facilities programming malfunctions where purchases are made in error without available funds to pay for those shares. Chess clearance malfunctions causing excessive delays to customers' orders in entering the market, resulting in part those orders executing at the wrong share price and/or not executing as a trade. E*trade redirecting clients' share holdings to the wrong company market depth and incorrectly processed (see "YouTube Etrade's Faulty Consumer Product and other examples that cause financial losses and to be deprived of an income through no fault of our own). Glitches which are not reported by the ASX and all stockbrokers to ASIC or ACCC for reasons that the ASX and all brokers including super funds business models are commission-based and not based on share price performance.

I could find many references to Faulty Consumer Products in sections of the Fed Trade Practice act (amended). More importantly, what binds these sections is ASIC's conditional provision in the issue of stockbrokers' licenses that the financial product is not to be of financial detriment to the general public; if it is shown and proven that ASIC provides, a stockbroker has no indemnity from liability. The financial services guide cannot be used to circumnavigate around a stockbrokers' liability.

Stockbrokers charge platform rent and trade commission fees, a contract is created the same way it is between a tenant and landlord for a dwelling fit for habitation. I am entitled--share traders, investors and the general public are entitled to a glitch-free trading platform. If I place a buy order with a stockbroker and it executes at the wrong price, a stockbroker's defense cannot be in not paying compensation, "we provide no guarantees the financial market data will be accurate." ASIC, the ASX and all stockbrokers must have adequate and proper preventative measures, such as trading systems maintenance, cancel and invalidate erroneous trades and place trading halts to reverse those erroneous trades. ASIC must be notified within 45 days of anomalous trading so as to issue general public notices. Please type in the Google bar "E*trade's faulty consumer product" to view the video content.

I opened an account with e-trade with zero dollars in February of 2011 with the intent of maybe making a stock purchase for me and my wife when got our taxes. However, we received our taxes and due to bill and do not have money to do it. So I said I would close it and not worry about it. I received a phone call from e-trade and was told I owe them $46,000. When I asked how, I was told there was $80,000 something put into my account. That's impossible. So I want to know who took it upon themselves to use my account and hide the money there. So I have filed a police report, contacted the IRS and the Federal Trade Commission, Social Security office and a lawyer to help with this battle. So please warn everyone out there. This could be a legal fight of a life time. If they want a fight, I will give them one.

My husband works for ETrade here in Sandy, Utah. I just have to complain how they continually treat their employees without the same caliber as their customers. Even then, the turnover is so high at ETrade that the information passed on to the customer is not always correct. The HR needs to get involved to build up the morale at ETrade. In this economic time, investors don't want to hear that their brokerage firm cannot hang on to employees due to bad vacation policies, metrics and so forth. ETrade should raise their bar on employee appreciation, get organized with their scheduling, and managers need to be an advocate for their teams.

I bought Amazon stock in January 2000 as a long term investment. I understood the $19.95 transaction fee. I admit I went a while without checking my account but when I did, I found etrade closed my account and sold all of my shares to pay for inactivity fees. Now I have NOTHING LEFT! How is this legal? I am going to see if my lawyer can help me here.

E*Trade have stolen my life's savings including a mortgage of $47,997.61. For four and half years, I have gathered 35 different screen snapshot printouts of corrupt financial market data and trading systems programming malfunctions into a file of exhibits.

I got wrong share price percentage and price change calculations. My market orders and trading account finances would disappear and vanish into thin air. I have been given unauthorized access to hundreds of thousands of dollars to trade as my own which does not belong to me; market orders which fail to execute as trades, bundles of traders with their market orders vanish from the market depth creating an imbalance weighted depth and an avalanche of selling into a depth without buyers creating artificial share prices. It was a perfectly valid market order instructions declined from entering the market with E*Trade providing screen notices giving the wrong reasons as "Too far from the current market price" and unable to make market price amendments or cancellations etc. The sort of glitches that cause an investor/share trader to incur financial losses and or be deprived of an income through no fault of our own.

The Australian Financial Market is unregulated or rather self-regulated, an avenue were untried and untested revolutionary computer technology is imposed on the general public as human paying genie pigs.

In 2006, the Sydney Futures Exchange (SFE) and ASX phased out the ASX Click Systems which was used by the SFE and ASX financial market and replaced by the next evolutionary computer technology, for the first time, our PC's could be used to watch TV movies, ie YouTube, Financial market data and broker client orders instructions can now be sent over the internet in a continuous unbroken electronic data called live streaming.

The words Click used in E*Trade's ASX Click system referred to an action required by all market participants having to manually refresh ASX financial data by manually Clicking on a tab on our PC keyboard, the new technology the ASX I.T.S was fully automated and could process up to 100 times more market data and broker client orders in the same time the old ASX Click systems and like a TV set-top box is required to convert analogue signals to digital signals, a set-top box related ASX I.T.S is required to process data and orders. At a cost of $125 +mill dollars to the ASX, WebIRESS a publicly listed company was contracted to install the ASX I.T.S Hardware to all 600+ Australian stockbrokers and Chess Clearance.

Both the ASX Click System and ASX I.T.S is experimental in nature, in that the ASX I.T.S was never tried and tested by WebIRESS under normal trading conditions during normal market hours. When the ASX I.T.S was first switched on in October 2006, stockbrokers like E*Trade issued alert PC notices to all client PC screen monitors requesting feedback from clients to fine tune the ASX I.T.S for technical trading difficulties, glitches, irregularities, anomalies, etc or whatever other term the reader wishes to use for corrupt financial market data and trading systems programming malfunctions. Since the ASX I.T.S inception in October 2006, the ASX and all 600+ Australian stockbrokers at random repeatedly crashed opening a floodgate of complaints and unsuccessful claims of compensation. These events are well recorded by international and local newspapers and media.

This evolutionary technology is not exclusively used by all major global stock exchanges, stockbrokers, hedge funds, derivatives traders etc. but also in other commercial applications such as our National Defense Forces, aviation, banks, our national shipping etc. computerised logistics tracking which regularly go belly up. On a rare occasion, the integrity of the computerized trading systems are so severely compromised that without human intervention, may bring about the complete collapse of any nation's financial markets as recently witnessed by the Dow Jones DJIA -1,000 point free fall.

Inevitably, with millions of trades executed each day, client order instructions to the exchange via E*Trade are received by the exchange simultaneously, these client orders collide into a mishmash tangle of fused electronic financial data and sent back to investors/traders via E*Trade's ASX I.T.S harware as corrupt financial market data and trading systems programming malfunctions and it cannot be predicted which part of the trading systems will be affected as each chipset and algorithm relies upon another.

Intel's faulty evolutionary chipset faulty algorithms imply that where something is faulty it can be fixed, it is just that this technology used by ASX, DJIA , brokers hedge funds for a different purpose that what Intel designed. There is not a technology that has been created or developed to prevent collision of data. Inadvertently all 600+ Aust brokers like E*trade have left out provisions for screen snapshot facilities from all share trading platforms where corrupt financial market data and trading systems programming malfunctions can be seen. The vast majority of victim investors /traders complaining are unable to take screen snapshot printouts as evidence to successfully support an argument for compensation. They simply take their losses and move on. Do a search on internet investment forums to see there are thousands of complaints who have raised issue with E*Trade's Faulty Consumer Product (ASX , DJIA)

There is a new mentality or civil racketeering where exchange and stockbroker personal commit fraud upon the client and financial ombudsman to obtain judgements, in covering up the revolutionary new technology and to protect record profits created by the same faulty product. I have clearly identified at least seven complaints is lodged with the financial ombudsman.

My claim for a refund in the amount of $47,997.61 plus interest against E*Trade's faulty consumer product is that feedback E*Trade and all brokers require to fine tune experimental revolutionary technology on the general public.

I received a letter from E-Trade informing me that my personal information had recently been changed (they are very good in doing this). The letter was to confirm that I am the one who initiated the change. The change was minor... a phone number had been added as a secondary phone. I did not add this phone number and I do not know who's number it is. E-Trade removed the phone number. I should be satisfied? No, I am not. My complaint is that this alarms me to near panic.

Since 2004 I have been battling Identity Theft plus the consequences of debt. I have suffered a huge loss of money due to electronic device fraud. I was pretty much held accountable by special forms that no one tells you to be filled out if you want the bank to reimburse. Accusations were made of giving my card to someone and my pin. This brings me to the heart of my complaint.

If I did not add that phone number someone did. My attempts to find out more details about the addition were met with being told that I must have given my pin to someone or password, even if I had I used a security token with my password. I did not allow anyone to use my token nor did I give it to anyone.

The day this happened, I used a friend's netbook to access my account to download my bank statements and print them at her house. She is getting her Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science Programming, Website building, etc.

Was she able to get into my account via the computer I was using remotely? E-Trade is treating this as if just removing the phone number is enough. I need to know how it was allowed to happen. So far as I can tell nothing seems wrong with my account. I get a VA Benifits award and SSN direct deposit every month. I have already experienced how fast that can disappear. The only damage so far has been my piece of mind. If I can not figure out how it happened, can I not prevent it from happening again?

This is an addendum regarding the E*trade's Faulty Consumer Product. E*Trade share trader/investor posts on an investment stating that they are experiencing corrupt financial market data and the system has programming malfunctions while another traders state that they are not experiencing these glitches on their trading platform. I explained that E*Trade have numerous financial data feed lines running into the stock exchange and one or more can be effected while the other feed lines are not.

Which is the best stock broker? E*Trade or Armatage? Choose your position, I say. I strongly recommend not one share should be bought or sold until a printer is attached to our PC's trading platform as cheap insurance against E*Trade's Faulty Consumer Product and download free the ScreenHunter 5.1.

ETrade froze my account and wouldn't tell me why until I finally got through to someone after about 5 calls. It was something about me logging in from my work computer that caused them to think there was "suspicious activity" going on. I'm not sure what sort of stone age technology a place has to use to be unable to handle my perfectly standard use, but apparently they were about 10 years behind the rest of the world on this one. I was still able to deposit, of course, but all withdrawals failed.

I had just opened the account, and was still exploring other savings account options, so I had no desire to stick with etrade, and tried to just close my account so the balance would be sent to me as a check. I thought I would at least be able to do that. I mean they just have to send the money in the account to the person and address that it was opened and funded with. I don't see how that could be remotely dangerous. But they refused until I verified I was myself, by going to a notary and getting a letter notarized saying that I was me, I lived at the address on the account, and I wanted the account activated.

What's with all the security questions and other identity verification info? Couldn't I have simply given them everything over the phone with all the security question answers, my account password, my account #, my social, passport #, my name, address, phone #, date of birth, past addresses, favorite color, etc?

They're super annoying. Especially because this was right after being laid off, when I was considering starting my own business and might have needed to have quick access to that money, which was most of my savings, since, after testing it with a few small transfers back and forth between etrade and my checking, I had just gone on to put most of what I had into it. Luckily I didn't need it, but it was frustrating regardless, and I was blown away that a bank could let me open an account, fund it, and then freeze it and refuse access to it (or even the ability to close it! ) until I jumped through hoops to prove something that I can't understand how it wasn't already proven.

Still trying to figure out what they could prevent by this silly process. I guess I could have opened the account, and funded it with someone else's stolen account info... but then me sending in a letter saying I'm me doesn't resolve any fraud going on there. Or maybe someone else could have opened an account in my name but with their address, funded it with my stolen checking account info. But then they'd end up with a check made out to me. And if they had my checking account info, why not just directly access that? ** etrade; they're essentially thieves in this situation.

So when putting cash into an etrade account, just be aware that at any moment they could seemingly arbitrarily decide to deny you access to it until you send them a notarized letter in the mail (approximately a 10-12 day process to get access again). Your assets in there might not be as liquid as you want.

ETrade froze/restricted my checking account without contacting me. I called them after my check card had been declined, and they refused to give me any details regarding my account and my money. I have called 5 times in the past 36 hours and have not once received a return call from the "investigator."

This is theft. Because my balance is under $1760, it's illegal to freeze an account. I am changing banks as soon as I can. I don't understand how I am not allowed access to my money. What a sick system. I am unable to purchase food or clothing due to my account being locked.

We opened an account with E-Trade several years ago with the intent that the stock we purchased be a long term investment. At that time, there were no inactivity fees. Later, we were notified that they were changing their fee policy and would be charging a $40 quarterly inactivity fee. We decided to change our account to Scottrade, which does not charge such fees. When we closed the account, they deducted the inactivity fee retroactively, and charged it as $40 per month --not quarterly as their notification clearly stated.

In addition, they kept several hundred more dollars as fees with no explanation at all. These people are thieves and I don't know how they continue to get away with this. I would like to mention that we could not be happier with Scottrade. They go the extra mile for their customers, even for such a small account as ours.

My mother had a CD IRA with Etrade in the amount of $120,000. When the interest rates fell below 1%, she decided to transfer to a different institution. That's when the games began.

Etrade put up every roadblock and inconvenience imaginable to either frustrate the process. The goal is that you will eventually give up and leave the money where it is. After twenty phone calls, submitted numerous unnecessary forms, changing routing numbers, and other time-consuming roadblocks, I decided to call my mother's lawyer. After I informed the lawyer, I decided to give it one more shot. I called again and go the name and direct number of the customer representative. I told him that I wanted the money released now or my lawyer would be in contact. I also told him that I read the numerous complaints on the consumer affairs website about their unethical practices.

Well, things changed almost immediately. He immediately began to process my request to wire the IRA money to my mom's bank account. I was then put on hold while he said that he needed to have the transfer approved by his supervisor. I had his name and direct phone number so I would not be cut off. Sure enough when he came back, he apologized for all the inconvenience and said that the money would be wired today and he would call me and let me know when it was done. I had to practically threaten a lawsuit in order to get them to do this.

I haven't gotten the money in my bank account yet so technically, this nightmare isn't over.

Etrade offered a range of index funds such as an S&P500 index fund (ETSPX), a Russell 2000 fund (ETRUX) and an international fund (ETINX). I was heavily invested in these funds and Etrade exited the mutual fund business without giving any prior written notice at the very bottom of the market (March 2009). They could not have picked a worse time to sell everyone's shares and they did not notify any investors. The following quarter, the S&P had one of the best quarter's since the 1930's and since exiting the mutual fund industry, many of the underlying indices are up as much as 40%+.

I noticed one very horrible fact about Etrade since I started day trading about five years ago. The horrible fact is that every time a stock takes a pretty good jump, etrade states that the stock split, reverse split and any other reason not to give you the thousands of dollars you would have made. For example, I had a 1000 stock (etrade's own stock) that I purchased for about $1.30, the stock jumped to $14.00. I thought that I would have made $14,000 but the stock did a split or reverse split that decreased the number of stocks I had from 1000 to 100.

Is this right? I do not believe because it happens every time I am suppose to make thousands of dollars. I called Etrade and the only answer I receive is the company has the option to change the value of its stock. I call a foul and smell a rat on this. One time maybe but every time is pretty questionable. How do you tell a consumer who has lost money with your company that when they finally should make money the stock changed? The bottom line is "the game is not fair". How can you make money if terms and conditions can be switched at a moments notice? And if the companies can change (stock split, reverse split or whatever) whenever they want do you really think they are going to allow the consumer to make thousands of dollars.

I lost thousands of dollars on several stocks. I have proof of all the stock splits, reverse splits and etc. It should be looked into not just for the money but the practice, this is not fair at all!

I found out that the stock valued at $1000 was sold in April. They took all the proceeds for fees because the account was inactive. I Invested $2000 with e-trade and while the stocks lost value, they took $1000 for fees!? I'm liquidating, and I am left with about $600.

I opened a cash brokerage account with E*trade back in 2006, cash account with $6000 in securities. I was never told about quarterly fee of $40.00, but they have been hitting my account for $97.00 per month for a "cash call" on a cash account? This was an account to teach my 13-year old son about the stock market most securities have been sold off and I guess they just wanted me to go away. I never checked the balance on the account because I figured the securities were safe. After all, I paid cash for them! Little did I know until last week that the deceptive E*trade was slowly siphoning off my account. From all the complaints I see here and online, I guess this is a common practice for them.

Investigation of E*Trade's illegal Margin Practices: **. The law firms of Moody and Warner, P.C. (Chris Moody and Repps Stanford) and Nicholas and Butler, L.L.P. (Craig Nicholas and Alex Tomasevic) announce an investigation into E*Trade Financial Corporation 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 widespread, a class action lawsuit seeking compensation may be filed. If you have information on any of these issues we want to hear from you!

I was a customer of eTrade US coming from Webstreet Securities. In May 2010, eTrade forced its (maybe only foreign) customers to change legal entity to eTrade U.K. As I did not agree, I did not answer the confirmation form.They threatened me to lock my account when not filing the agreement. Then I tried to fill out the online form and to say no, I do not agree. Surprisingly, it was not possible to complete the form with saying no, I do not agree. As a consequence, my account was locked for nearly one month (May 2010) and I was not able to do any trades. As a consequence of that I lost about USD 500 by not being able to sell stocks that I wanted to sell that time.

I complained many times by the secure message of eTrade and got nothing-saying-answers! I even informed the US SEC office of that arbitrary behavior of eTrade. The only thing that happened was a short message in writing to eTrade via SEC and I got a formal letter from eTrade again saying nothing in fact. Now, that I sold all my positions on eTrade, I wanted to withdraw my money to a German bank and eTrade wants a so called "wire-fee" of USD 25 just for getting my money back! This is crime! And nobody seems to care!

Are there any other customers out there who want to claim a collective law-suit against eTrade US? I am just thinking of informing the president of the USA, Mr. Obama.

This is a crime! I put in 200 dollars into Etrade two years ago to "play the market" and definitely was not made aware of this 40-dollar handling fee per quarter they charged. I called today, August 2010, to check my balance and I had negative 85 cents. They stole my money. I gave it in good faith that I bought stocks, not service fees. They basically stole my money.

This company is the worst. I really do not understand why nothing is being done to shut them down or fine them. As others have mentioned, they randomly and without notice shut down my account. As this is the account I use for various living expenses, this has caused a definite issue in my life. I have spoken with over 9 representatives, all who don't seem to be able to do anything to resolve the issue. Being told by one person that my account was closed due to accessing it through an "IP address that isn't familiar to us" is ridiculous.

Haven't they heard of mobile and wireless access these days with a dynamic IP? Furthermore, their representatives are rude. After spending almost an hour on the phone with Jose in Manila (why, if this company is so concerned about security do they have an out of country call center?), he hung up on me when I requested to speak with his supervisor. Although I reported this to e-Trade, there has never been an apology from any of their representatives. Every day now they make up another reason for something they need documented so I can "prove" it's me. I have spent well over 8 hours of my time and I still don't have access to my account. The moment that the account is reactivated, I am moving everything over to Ameritrade, Scottrade, or anybody else. This company is just so uncustomer focused it's ridiculous.

Someone needs to get a class action lawsuit against E Trade. Unknown to me, there was a $40 service fee issued per quarter for non-activity to my account. I rarely check my account nor have activity on it. When I opened the account 11 years ago, there was no service fee. Now, the fees they are charging me for letting them use my money is totaling over $540. They will not issue me a refund. I think it's so ridiculous that the fees equated to so much and they won't do anything about it but give me a refund of $40. Someone please tell me there is a lawsuit going on. I want my money back. I feel that they didn't do anything to deserve it. There is no way this is legal.

ETrade Nightmare continues. Serious violation of consumer rights and discriminates against other countries. The following is how ETrade "values" their client: They lock your account anytime they want and do not bother to contact you. As an overseas customer, I have to make the overseas IDD call and fax them documents twice. When I asked for alternatives (e.g. email), the customer service asked me to go to the nearest branch in Hongkong when I told her I am residing in Singapore.

I managed to find out they have a Singapore branch from their own website and made the trip to seek for help since they claimed the fax was not received. The customer service do not even know they have a branch in Singapore! The helpful Singapore branch employee assisted to fax over the documents to account activation dept in U and told me will call me at night after 10:30pm. Guess what? No one called me for two nights. When I logged in to the system to check their secure message, there is a message saying that they have received the documents and verified my identify. However, to know more details I am supposed to send another message to them and quote a 14 digit case number! How ridiculous!

Finally on the 3rd night, I called them and the account activation dept. took over. When I asked why the account was locked, she told me there was a log in from Indonesia a few months ago. I traveled frequently around Asian countries. Indonesia is one of them. Such log in restrictions was never communicated to clients like us. It is not only impractical but also highly discriminating. I am also very offended by such discriminating policies ETrade has against Asian countries. Wasn't Obama in Indonesia when he was young? Shouldn't he be locked away as a "security issue"? While my account was locked, my assets with ETrade were practically frozen and could not trade. This is a gross violation of my consumer rights and it has caused me to suffer financially.

I have had an open account with E Trade for the past two years. Upon opening the account, I was informed through the account agreement that the account had no fees associated saved for a transaction fee. My account has been in good standing since it was opened. I recently logged into my account and found that without notice, all of my stocks were sold and cashed out. Upon contacting the customer service department, I was informed that beginning fall of 2009, I was being charged a maintenance fee once per quarter and due to lack of funds, E Trade cashed out the stocks to cover the fee.

When I asked about the fee, the customer service representative informed me that the fee discontinued in the first quarter of 2010. The representative then directed my attention to the fees section of their website. The rep said that had the maintenance fee not been discontinued, I would have found the related information there.

They had no information to offer me regarding the supposed fee as it had been discontinued. I was not informed of the change to my account either via telephone, paper mail, or email. I was not informed that my account was going into delinquency due to these new fees. I was not informed in any manner that the stocks were to be sold or when they were sold. I informed the customer service representative and his manager that I was dissatisfied with their lack of contact regarding these changes to my account and their subsequent actions in selling my stock without notice. They not only did not offer to do anything to rectify the situation, they refused to offer an apology. I was also informed that in order to close my account, I would have to pay an additional $11.00 that was an outstanding balance.

Last week, I drove offices of eTrade in Phoenix,Arizona located on the corner of Camelback and Scottsdale Road. I went there in order to fill out some papers to change my account status. After some time and discussions with a broker about an upcoming IPO on Wall Street, the manager of eTrade approached me on my way out of the office and he said to me, "You have been in here before, we don't want you here, do not come back into this office ever again".

He continued to shout at me as I walked out on the street. I filed a complaint with eTrade on the phone and I immediately removed all of $3900 from my account with eTrade after the incident. I asked eTrade for an apology but I have yet to hear from them. I believe the eTrade office in Phoenix is an empty shell and the two employees working there have become deranged. I'm still waiting for an explanation from the company.

My eTrade account is locked due to security issues. I have to call from overseas to find out what happened. The helpdesk verified my identity over the phone and asked me to fax over some documents, which I did. Yet they claimed that they did not receive and gave me no alternatives. They just give me the same reply everyday when I inquire about the status.

eTrade is the worst brokerage house I have seen in 40 years of investing. I was involved with some transactions with my daughter, who had an account with eTrade because they handle stock options for her company. Below are my complaints: Their website for a person with stock options is very confusing and almost impossible to comprehend. Their "help desk" is a joke. They don't listen, keep repeating the same reply, not answering the question. My daughter had a simple problem; she was on the phone for 70 minutes! Their hours of help are a joke: 8 am to 6 pm Eastern time. So a person at work on the West Coast can not talk to them after the market closes.

I applied for a home equity line of credit with eTrade Bank. It was granted in 2005. When the real estate bubble burst, I got a letter from eTrade Bank telling me that my line was being suspended, even though I had never drawn on it, because they were concerned that the loan to value ratio was not high enough. Fair enough, but they would never tell me what that value would have to be. They said next that the only way they would reinstate the line was if I paid for a new appraisal and the value it originally appraised at. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to know that the original value was never going to be reached and my position was always that it's not about the original value, it's about whether it meets your loan to value ratio, which again, during numerous calls they would never tell me and I was sure it would be.

After a few years of this, I finally just asked them to cancel the line. They charged me a yearly fee to maintain the account the same year they suspended it and the final insult was that they refused to refund the measly $50 fee. I will never do business with eTrade again. They are a scummy financial company who will just blow you off and never return your calls or answer your questions. Avoid them at all cost. I lost a $100,000 line of credit that I never used, my deed was clouded for five years and they ripped me off for yearly fees.

On February 28, 2009, I deposited $150 into my Etrade account. This is an account that I'd set up more than 10 years ago when I did some short-term investing, but I haven't used it in several years. On March 6th, I purchased 125 shares of Citi stock with the intention of holding it for the long term. After this transaction, I didn't use the Etrade account, as I don't feel it should be necessary to check the account every month or so when I know there is no activity in it. Today, July 13, 2010, I logged into the account to check on the sell order I placed a while ago, in hopes that the stock would go up.

To my surprise, I discovered that Etrade has been charging my account $40 each quarter for what it calls an "account services fee". After scrubbing their site for over an hour in search of some explanation of this fee, I finally decided to call their customer service line. Dennis, the rep who answered my call after a 5 minute wait, informed me that this fee is for inactivity on the account during that quarter. Baffled by the concept of Etrade charging me $40 for not using their services, I informed Dennis that nowhere on their site is this explained, nor was I informed of it. He replied that the fee is disclosed on my quarterly statements but after it's been charged to my account already.

Upon pressing the issue and demanding a refund of the $160 Etrade has charged against my account, Dennis said that the only thing he could do was waive the last $40 fee. I plainly stated to him that this was not an acceptable solution and that I was prepared to escalate this issue as high as necessary. He offered to submit my request to some resolution group who would consider it and make a decision based on how much business I intend to do with Etrade in the future. And, after explaining to him that I'd never do business with Etrade again, for obvious reasons, he finally agreed to submit my request and said I should have an answer within a few days. I don't hold out much hope though.

I can't believe that this practice is legal, and, if nothing else, Etrade should be investigated for unethical business practices. From my brief research online, it appears that there are many others who have been taken advantaged of in the same way. With so many complaints, it's obvious that Etrade's disclosure process is seriously flawed. Yes, I should and could have caught this fee on one of the four quarterly statements produced since my initial investment.

However, as my investment was intended to be long term, I really had no need to look at the statements. Even looking at them now, they offer no information that couldn't be obtained by checking the MSNBC stock ticker, aside from the $40 fee. In the end, I felt forced to sell my stock and withdraw my money from the Etrade account to avoid any further charges, thus robbing me of the potential gains had the stock been owned longer.

I had or have two diverse trust funds that were bought by Dynamic Funds of Canada. Dynamic Funds are sold to only Canadian citizens, so my funds were sold (Dynamic agents told me this.) at the end of March when the transaction was complete. E-Trade told me at the time that it would be two weeks (the std agents reply when you can get one.) before the money showed up in my account. The agents at E-Trade are pretty clueless, hoping I guess that the computers will take care of this.

I am still trying to get the money and this resolved. I was just told last week it would be another two weeks. The funds are worth together $15,000 more or less. I was getting a 10% dividend from them every month ($150). I am paying them 8% interest on $22,000. So 10% ($150) plus 8% ($120), I figure more or less it is costing me $270 a month, until someone at E-Trade actually takes care of it.

I have been trying to transfer my Roth out of my Etrade account since January and they keep coming up with another problem so I cannot get it out of that account. I have talked to many agents at Etrade telling them I wanted my money now. They always put me on hold and then come up with a story why I need this paper work or that paper work. Here we are nearly June 1 and no money yet. I have a 10% bonus for my new investment which has now gone down to 8% and the investment has also gone down from 8% to 7%

Ten years ago I bought $2,000 worth of stock and I have been follwoing it by reading the newspaper. When I went to check my account on Etrade, I discovered that my stock had been sold. When asked why, I was told that there was a $40.00 account services fee that was not paid by me and my stock was sold to pay for it. So now I have no money left. I don't know when this fee started and I feel this was grossly unfair not to notify me of this fee. Now I see this happened to many others too. Is there any recourse to recap this money? When I called Etrade I was notified that this happened and there was no service recovery, no concern for my loss, or satisfactory explanation of why they did not notify me. I have been feeling very despondent about this issue and shocked that this happened to me and many others.

I was persuaded to place funds in Auction Rate Preferred products during the approximate timeframes of August 2006 through to November 2006 by individuals employed by ETRADE which is where my account still resides. My original inquiry with ETRADE was to discuss placing funds in a possible higher yielding savings, money market or certificate of deposit. The Auction Rate Preferred Securities were described to me as a similar type of product, that they were triple AAA rated, the funds would be liquid every 7 days and the products were completely safe and risk free.

In January of 2008, I requested to liquidate some of the Auction Rate Securitied and was subsquently informed for the first time that the products were illiquid. Even more ironic, when I had been in communication with ETRADE during December 2007 and January of 2008, I was being targeted to invest in additional products with no additional notice to me that I should possibly consider liquidating the Auction Rate Preferred Securities since the mortgage industry was in serious trouble and that market was in the process of collapse.

Unfortunately, I had NO IDEA at all that there was ANY risk associated with any of the Auction Rate Preferred Securities or that there was any link with these products and the mortgage industry as this was never discussed with me or communicated to me in any shape or form at all. To say the least, I am beside myself and do not know what to do or where to turn. The funds that I have tied up in these Auction Rate Preferred Securities are a lifetime of my savings. It's so hard for me to even comprehend that this has happened and that there is very little I can do. In particular, I am interested in E*Trade where my account still remains in which the following Auction Rate Preferred Securities remain illiquid.

The products are as follows: (1)Gabelli Divid & Income TR Auction Rate PFD SER E 36242H609, (2)ING Prime Rate TR PFD 44977W304, (3)ING Prime Rate TR Auction Rate PFD SER TH N/A 11/10/2004 @ 1.85 44977W502, (4)Nicholas-Applegate Conv & Income Fund Auction PFD SER B 65370F309, (5)Nicholas Applegate Conv & Income FD II Auction PFD SHS Ser C 65370G406, (6)Pimco Corp Opportunity Fund M 72201B200, (7)Pimco Floating Income Fund W 72201H306.

This is a continuing stressful situation, not only for me but for many others who still have illiquid funds in Auction Rate Preferred Securities. As I mentioned, this is my life savings and I am hoping that Consumer Affairs can be instrumental in getting this resolved sometime in the near future especially, since this first became a problem more than two years ago now.

Please help!

I wanted to start investing with a small investment and called eTrade to start an account. After explaining what I wanted and that I was a first time investor, they referred me to what I thought was the appropriate department to start my account. I purchased $1,000 worth of stock and planned to keep it for the long term, just watching it. Somewhere along the line, they started charging me a quarterly $40 "inactivity fee" and $2 for paper statements. I was never informed about the inactivity fee, or about the ability to get "online" statements to avoid the $2 charge. I began to see the - (minus) balances appear on my statement, but being the inexperienced investor that I was, I didn't understand what was happening. I thought it was money now "available" due to the stock price rising? I honestly didn't know or understand.

When the minus fees got to be almost half of the total investment, I wrote to them to ask what was going on. They never responded. I then called to talk to someone about what that amount was and was then informed about the "inactivity" charge. I immediately demanded to speak to a supervisor who basically dismissed me after saying they could only refund the previous quarters $40, but then told me that they were going to do away with the fee at the end of this quarter if I wanted to leave my money there and my account open. I pitched a fit and said if they knew it was bad and was going to do away with it, then they could make it retroactive. I then wanted the names and an address of someone I could write to complain to. I was then told that if I initially had set up a different type of account that I wouldn't have incurred these charges. But, remember, they directed me to this particular type of account. I was doubly mad now that I had intentionally been directed to the type of account would generate $40/quarter for them, for nothing. I told them I was not finished with this and would be contacting corporate offices with a complaint as well as the SEC.

The next day, someone called from corporate investigating my complaint. When I explained to him what had happened and what I intended to do, he said he'd investigate and get back with me. Later that same day, he called to say that all of my monies had been refunded to my account and that I could choose to leave it there or move it back to my checking account and close the eTrade account. I closed my account and moved my money back to my personal account.

I was persistent and was successful in retrieving my money, but what about all those that hasn't? I believe that eTrade, intentionally direct people to those types of accounts with hidden charges and have probably collected tens of thousands of dollars in these types of charges and should be investigated. I believe that all monies like this should be retroactively refunded to everyone who has ever incurred them! Let's make it happen. I want the SEC to investigate.

All went fairly well, except I was told that I needed: Declaration page of the Master Insurance Policy indicating the association as the named insured, proof of building coverage in the amount of 100% insurable replacement costs and liability insurance must be at least $1,000,000 per occurrence. If not included in the master insurance policy, borrower to provide an HO-6 insurance policy providing coverage in an amount that is no less than 20% of the condominium unit's appraised value with a maximum 5% deductible.

All paperwork was sent in as required, but eTrade told me that I still needed to purchase insurance at 20%. They were wrong. She stated that no paperwork was ever received from my Homeowners Association, but I know for a fact that they were. On a side note, I was told that I would have online access. Through many hours of calling and sending emails, I finally gave up frustrated. I would have never taken a loan with a company that did not provide me online access. Simply poor service. Not horrible, but they reeled me in and provided me totally inaccurate info.

E*trade offered a range of index funds such as an S&P 500 index fund (ETSPX), a Russell 2000 fund (ETRUX) and an international fund (ETINX). I was heavily invested in these funds and E*trade exited the mutual fund business without giving any prior written notice at the very bottom of the market (March 2009). They could not have picked a worse time to sell everyone's shares and they did not notify any investors.

The following quarter, the S&P had one of the best quarter's since the 1930's and since exiting the mutual fund industry, many of the underlying indices are up as much as 40%+ If I were able to, I would sue the pants off of Etrade. I am going to move my money elsewhere. I will never see the money I lost, but I am not going to keep my money with these people. It made me realize $50,000 in losses and I was not aware that I was missing the upside in the market until I realized I had been sold out of my positions.

E*Trade's Auction Rate Security Fraud. I am over 60 years old, and in the fall of 2007, I was lured by E*trade's ad for a JP Morgan money market fund for an IRA. In Short, I called to purchase this money market fund, (the trade could not be placed on-line). I was transferred to their "fixed-income" department and was solicited to buy Auction Rate Securities, for which the market has been frozen since Feb 2008.

E*Trade, in my opinion, knew the risk of this soon to be illiquid market, yet pawned them off on me and thousands more of their "clients=victims". They have been totally uncooperative, intransigent, rude, threatening, and unwilling to accept responsibility for their fraud and lies perpetuated by their agents back in late 2007. They offer no solution to help assist those of us caught in this mess, and they continuously deflect, deny, and defend their lack of accountability and irresponsible stance.

They have effectively stolen my 50,000 in an IRA no less and they only put up a smoke screen with low rent mafioso like attorneys. E*Trade from my experience is pure pond scum, and has zero ethics, and morality. Who on Wall Street does? They are the worst of the worst. Run, don't walk away from e*Trade, They will ** over financially given the chance and are totally untrustworthy to be a custodian of any one's money.

Use e*Trade at your own peril. I worked 20 years for my IRA money, and E*Trade does not have the honor, integrity, and lacks any accountability of the smallest scintilla of nil honesty. They solicited Auction Rate Securities as a safe cash equivalent investment, the same as a money market fund. E*trade was warned and aware this market was a scam. Their former CEO a Lillien, was urging his brokers to sell the junk out of their house account.

And that they did. They have committed legal theft and have been all but the last broker (other being Schwab) to make their investors whole. If you want high blood pressure, anxiety, frustration, rudeness, untrustworthy, then E*trade is your broker. If you value your sanity stay away from E*Trade. They, in my opinion, are thieves and wolves who will eat your account alive if you give 'em a chance.

I am trying to spare others the angst and intimidation that you would incur if you have a brokerage account with them! Regulators do nothing, that is; FINRA, Congress people, SEC, state AG's seem useless. I wrote even Pres. Bush and Obama to no avail as expected. America is a financial fraud, that protect the elite, and FINRA is a kangaroo Court. Keep you money out of Wall Street, and especially 'E'*Trade. The 'E' stands for Egregious.

e*Trade's Auction Rate Security Fraud - I am almost 62 years old. And in the fall of 2007, I was lured by e*Trade's ad for a JP Morgan money market fund for an IRA. In short, I called to purchase this money market fund. The trade could not be placed online. I was transferred to their "fixed-income" department and was solicited to buy auction rate securities for which the market has been frozen since Feb 2008.

e*Trade, in my opinion, knew the risk of this soon to be illiquid market, yet pawned them off on me and thousands more of their "clients=victims". They have been totally uncooperative, intransigent, rude, threatening and unwilling to accept responsibility for their fraud and lies perpetuated by their agents back in late 2007. They offered no solution to help assist those of us caught in this mess and they continuously deflect, deny and defend their lack of accountability and irresponsible stance.

They have effectively stolen my $50,000 in an IRA no less and they only put up a smoke screen with low rent mafioso like attorneys. e*Trade, from my experience, is pure pond scum and has zero ethics and morality. Who on Wall Street does? They are the worst of the worst. Run. Don't walk away from e*Trade. They will screw you over financially given the chance and are totally untrustworthy to be a custodian of anyone's money. They have the principles of a criminal or rouge rabid wolf.

I have had to postpone my son's college by a year and apply for loans now. Additionally, when I was planning on retiring, I will have to work more years when e*Trade has my money and I cannot get it. They break promises and tell untruths. The regulators seem intimidated by them. At least Ameritrade did the right thing by its customers in the end but e*Trade steals people's money and denies taking it. They have taken two years of my life and made it miserable. I have to hire an attorney to get my money back from these thieves.

In 1997, my wife and I invested $1000. I kept the money without prior knowledge that we were being incurred a $40 quarterly maintenance fee. Last year, our account was zero. We were never notified of maintenance fees being charged after 2002. Because I put the account in my wife's name, they will not speak to me about this matter.

I purchased 5,000 shares of stock for $1,000 back in 2008. I was told by a friend that I did not pay any fees unless I bought or sold shares. I went online on 3/10/2010 and saw the account was closed. I looked at previous statements and found the 5,000 shares had been sold.

I contacted e-trade on3/10/2010 to see what happened. I was told that there was a minimum balance requirement of $10,000 and since I did not meet the requirement, they started charging monthly fees until there was no money left to collect against. They sold my 5,000 shares (for $275)! Since the shares were in my name and my son's name, how the hell do they have a right to sell something that is not theirs?

They allowed me to open the account and never said a word about the $10,000 minimum. They never sent me a statement. My son and I looked at this investment as one for future use, since it was a new product and would not gain much for a few years. Avoid E-trade at all costs!

Starting in 2009, Etrade financial began charging a $40/quarter fee that was not communicated to me at any time. Devan ** agreed to refund the last quarter's account debit to my account so the account could be sold and closed. After the refund was not processed as promised, Tiffany ** alerted me that the refund could not be processed and that I needed to sell my remaining securities to pay off the balance of fees. I specifically requested to receive paper statements, yet no notification of the account debits was ever provided.

I have been unwillingly charged $160 on my investment of $1,000. Only electronic non-email based notifications were issued regarding the account debits. Etrade removed the cash balance from my dividends and now has a negative "cash call" on my account.

I am filing this complaint on behalf of my client, Mr. Jerry **. His mortgage loan is serviced by E*TRADE Financial. Mr. ** went to E*TRADE requesting postponement of his foreclosure sale date for 2/16/2010. Mr. ** has not been able to collect all the supporting documentation pertaining to his income and banking information requested by his lender in order to stop the sale since he has been taking care of his ill wife who is in the hospital suffering from terminal breast and kidney cancer. Due to deteriorating heath issues and inability of locomotion, Mrs. ** can no longer secure employment due to her illness. She is on the edge of death.

The ** relies on her disability income and his self-employment income. She needs help from her husband who is next to her bedside taking care of her to be able to survive. Her illness has significantly increased their medical expenses. In addition to her cancer, her adverse reaction to the anesthesia has resulted in neurological issues requiring further treatment and care. Mr. ** has contacted E*TRADE Financial personally and through, Certified Financial Protection Group, LLC, to postpone the sale date until he can come home and collect all the documentation pertaining to his income, financial status, banking information and every piece of supporting documentation and information they have requested. His income information is with his accountant and this person is out of town. The rest of the information needed is in boxes since he has been packing in case he needs to leave a short notice.

He has called numerous times asking for at least 2 more weeks in order to have enough time to collect this information and care for his wife at the same time. I have tried to complete the financial interview with E*TRADE representatives and I am told that the client has had enough time to do this and that at this point they will continue with the scheduled date knowing that he is moving to collect this information as fast as he can given the current situation. That is cruelty. Other than that, no specific reason is ever given. I am always told that the client should've collected this information beforehand; ignoring the whole reason why we are requesting a bit more time to submit paperwork for his modification request.

Mr. ** truly believes that some sort of handicap discrimination is taking place since he is asking for just a little more time. His health is also failing and the stress of this seemingly endless lack of care, cooperation and understanding with this financial institution is taking its toll. E*TRADE has done nothing to address our concerns, or repeated requests for just a bit more time to collect the modification documentation requested by them. We need your help intervening on the borrower's behalf. Supporting documentation is available upon request.

I have had POA for my mother's accounts for 2 or 3 years. Her funds are exhausting with the expenses for her medical and assisted living. I had opened a brokerage account for her with silver and gold shares. The bank accounts were joined with E-Trade in both of our names. The time came I needed to cash in her shares. The bank said to send in a notarized POA and letter from the doctor. My mother lives in assisted living 45 minutes from my house. To make a long story short, this is the 4th set of notarized documents including the formal POA I have had and 3 times notarizing their POA.

I have had to use mobile notary service which really adds up. Today, I called to see if they are addressing these last documents sent to them and they would not speak to me. They wanted me to put my mother on the phone. She is very sick and I have already made a totally separate trip there to be with her and put her on the phone which I felt cruel of them. This is a redundant task. I have POA and have already done everything asked. I asked to speak to a supervisor. She put me on hold for quite a long time then told me there was no supervisor there. She said that they need to speak with my mother yet again. This is unlawful, cruel and unjust.

On December 09, 2009, I opened an investment account online with Etrade Securities LLC hoping to earn some money in order to survive and catch up with bills in this striving economy we are in today. I had set aside less than a thousand dollars to invest. On December 10, 2009, I received correspondence from Etrade Securities congratulating for opening the account and instructions on how log on to my account on line to begin trading.

"Wed Dec 09 17:17:08 2009 Funds Transfer Confirmation. Your request (Reference Number: 11086286327) to transfer $900 from Eastern Bank-3615 to Etrade Brokerage-6353062 was successfully submitted for processing on 12/09/2009 at 17:17:08 ET."

On December 11, 2009,I was in receipt of a letter from Etrade, telling me that the account was closed for no specific reason whatsoever and just that "firm has decided to exercise its discretion" and also requesting me that "no longer look to Etrade Securities to assist with my financial needs". To this date, I have not received my money or has it ever been transferred back to my savings account. Kindly to look into this matter and help me recover my money that I really need to get by my daily living.

I got a notice from e*Trade saying that the company was breached and they were going to issue new credit cards. When I got my new card, I activated it and basically the old one cancels. My problem is that e*Trade did not transfer all of the funds that were on that card they left around $100 on it. I have called to have them transfer the remaining from the closed account to the new one, and they said alright. So next month, I noticed it was not complete yet, and that's when I opened a claim to have the dispute office of e*Trade investigate the situation in October 2009.

From that day to present, I keep getting a runaround story--how it's going to be fixed, but it's like each person I talk to keeps lying. My late fees keep getting higher and higher, I and the people who live in my house are being harassed by credit collectors from the company, and my credit score is greatly being affected which will hurt me in many ways. And one is that I need a new car to get to and from work. The last person I talked to was Judy, and she works in the disputes office.

I got a call today, January 19, 2010. My mom picked up the phone. It was e*Tade, and she told them to hold on a minute. As soon as I said hello, they hung the phone up on me. I consider that harassment. It got to a point in time when I got so sick of the harassment, I just called them and asked if I could pay it all off while they straighten out the problem and fix it. e*Trade said sure.

A while later from that point, I got a call back from them saying I can't pay it off while it's being disputed and they will send the check back by mail. I came to find out they put it towards my current active account without my permission. When I spoke to the lady Judy from e*Trade, she told me that the only record on their file is when I requested to have the rest of the balance transferred to my new account. She also said that the dispute was not on record, which made me really upset. Hopefully, you guys can help me out with the trouble their giving me, because they keep lying to me by saying every week it's going to be fixed but they wasn't.

E*Trade ripped me off by charging me $132.00 on a purchase of 8,000 shares of Fannie Mae. I had always paid $12.99 and suddenly, they charged me $132.00. When I contacted them, they said that they can legally change what they charge at any time--it's in their contract. Unfortunately, I did not have a magnifying glass to read the small print.

I was hoping to find a way to reverse 5 years of inactivity fees which they started charging me once I turned off paper statements. If I had been getting a paper statement, I would have done whatever it took to stop these exorbitant fees. I only had 2 stocks with $2000 in the account and actually forgot about them until I wanted to transfer them to another brokerage account. They have been stealing all of my cash dividends which I have been paying taxes on for five years and still charging me $40 a quarter for an inactivity fee! Now before I can transfer these stocks I have to pay over $800 in past inactivity fees and $60 to transfer and close the account. If I don't pay them, they will sell my stocks without my permission and/or turn me over to a collection agency.

Could this really be happening? A year ago i received a letter from ETrade where I have a small brokerage and money market account saying there was a problem with my social security number. I called and found out that somehow they had an incorrect number attached to my account one digit off my number. A simple typo I think. I sent them a letter at there request saying that one is wrong this one is correct.

Then this year I received another letter from ETrade same thing. This time they said I had to go to the Social Security office (ever been there really nice) and get a form such and such to prove that the incorrect number was not my own. Although there is no form that proves a number isn't yours I got the form they asked for and an affidavit as to what my ssn is. OK send it in.

I then try to transfer the contents out of that account to another firm. This is denied. Why? Because ETrade doesn't have a W-9 on file for the corrected ssn. OK I fill out the W-9 and send it. They confirm they have received it. Hurrah you say oh no. Now i figure I have a checkbook from ETrade, regular checks they sent me a long time ago in a regular checkbook.

So, year end is here and I am making my end of year tax credit donations to charities as allowable under Az law. I think I'll use the cash in this account for them to spend it down. I write the checks and send them to charities and today find out that Etrade is bouncing the checks because THE CHECKS HAVE EXPIRED! Nothing on the checks or checkbook says that these checks have a use by date like milk.

I now ask Max to contact ETRADE because I am so mad I am about to loose it. He does and they tell him about expired checks and how yes, the issues will most likely have to pay fees and I cannot write a check to clear the account. I sold my last security, supposedly today and they say they will send more checks. Really one should do it. My friends if you have an account with these people run don't walk to close it. This is one of the worse companies I have EVER done business with. I have four outstanding checks to charities that will now bounce because ETRADE will not honor them.

i closed my etrade account 2 months ago and have called them and written them more then 25 times for a return of my funds - still nothing! I am so angry and frustrated and need help. it is not much but is the difference of food and no food

E*TRADE has mishandled four requests to transfer stock shares to charities. In every case the transfer was not completed until I called customer service to see why it had not moved in WEEKS. In the most recent, they charged my account the transfer fee, but they did not transfer. After multiple calls, they transfered 37 days after the fee was charged. Meanwhile the share price had dropped significantly. I registered a complaint and asked to be compensated the loss from the day they charged the fee. The response was that although they had made an error, those things happen and they don't compensate for share losses. They refuse to take responsibility for their errors. I appealed and got the same petty response. I AND THREE FAMILY MEMBERS ARE LEAVING E*TRADE.

I had bought some stock unbeknownst to me they charge a 40 dollar fee per quarter when is sold my stock market value 522.00 I received 296.85. Never received statements to such.

my debit card that is linked to my brokerage acct was not working for a month , after being on the phone with them many times to sort this out. i have been told that it wasnt their fault...that it was visas. i would try and withdraw money and it would debit my acct immiedieatly, and not give me cash. the balances would take up to a week to be corrected. i was lied to many times but their call center staff and the supervisors at these call centers telling me... "go back and try now it should be working"...only to find out that it didnt work.

as of today my balance on my atm is double whaty it is showing in my acct. i was going to open a position today but i cant cause the balance on my screen is showing half. etrade tells me that they do not have a direct line to visa, which i believe is [lie].

i cant believe after seeeing all these complaints that no action has been taken against them. it is obvious to me that they hold back these funds from 1000's of investors in order to collect the interest on these funds....horrble service and complete fraud and mis representation. i cant imagine what is going to happen when i try and switch brokers.

`On 9/28/2008, E*trade simply liquidated, at a considerably lesser value, and without informing me, the shares I had bought on 3/15/2000 for $1,107.45, in order to pay for the accumulated $25 "account maintenance fees" they had started charging me at some point in time.

I thought I would sell my shares these days, and get at least a fraction of my money back. I have nothing left. In addition, E*trade maintains that they sent me regular statements. The statements simply stopped coming after a while. If I had any idea my account was getting regularly depleted, I would have sold everything immediately to reduce my loss.

I filed a complaint with Finra. E*trade responded on 10/16/2009 with one of their boilerplate letters: account inactive; they started implementing a quarterly fee schedule, etc.; they sent me statements I know I did not receive them etc. So, according to Finras response, E*trade has adequately addressed the issues raised in my complaint.

I had 3 college savings funds (Coverdell) ESAs invested in ETRADE's S&P index fund. ETRADE Liquidated the fund this past MARCH at the absolute bottom of the market. After more than 10 years of saving, saving, saving, and buying more and more ETRADE stock, they sold it at the absolute worst possible time, and DIDN"T INFORM ME. I check in on the funds in June and to my shock and horror discover that the stocks were sold and the accounts languishing IN CASH! I totally missed the upside of the market and lost 40% of what I had worked and saved for. I immediately then ATTEMPTED to transfer the funds and they delayed and deceived and defrauded me every step of the way. I only got the last account transferred last week! This is an account where the "Request to Transfer" (to the new account) had a discrepancy because the New account listed my daughter's full middle name, and the old etrade account had her listed by middle initial. To add insult to injury, they charged me $60 to transfer each of the three funds for $180 after the thousands they cost me.

I have accounts with E*Trade for more than 10 yrs. On 10/08/2009, I called the firm to withdraw money from my bank on phone (account service). And they refuse to do so; the reason is they can not identity that whom is on the phone even I gave all necessary myself information (DOB, SS#, email, Phone#, address, etc.). Than they block my access to all service. Now I can not trade stocks, access my bank money. I called E*Trade than they ask me to fax driver license to them, but I remain unable to access my asset.

There are other companies that don't charge for this type of account. My full brokerage account (with an adviser, etc--old school brokerage account) only charges $50 a year for an account with a similar balance. How do I fight this?

This still made no sense, as the projected -- but not shown -- debit was still too high for that amount even. It did all wash out right eventually, but it took about a week and a half. I've never ever dealt with a bank so slow. And they're online!!! This happens repeatedly if I forget and use my Etrade card to pay for dinner.

2. Twice now, transfers of money to my landlord for rent have had massive problems. I won't go into too much detail, because it would take too long to read. Basically, the first time it happened, they said they transferred the money but didn't. A week later, the same thing. Finally, I had to call them. A rep on the phone told me I must not have hit the confirm button. I HAVE BEEN DOING ONLINE TRANSFERS FOR OVER TEN YEARS. bs. I know how to hit the confirm button.

Further, the second time I put it through, I noticed there wasn't any confirmation number. So, I emailed their "online customer service." You know the end of this joke. Two days passed, some guy wrote a generic email about how to turn on transfers, etc etc. I was furious. Finally, when I talked to the girl on the phone, she transferred the money. But she couldn't give me a confirmation number for it! I couldn't believe it.

The second time I had problems with the money transfer was just one month later. And it took them over a week to transfer the money. The receiving bank had not actually received the money from Etrade until 2 days -- weekdays -- after Etrade told me the money posted. This is digital information, people. And again, I've been doing online transactions with my money for a very long time. I've not had this etrade account very long. And I hope I don't have the same problems other people do getting my money away from them. I'm done with them.

Think about it. Why does a bank need to cling to your money for just another couple days, just three, just four, five, tops. And lie to you about it. Hide it? Something is amiss.

Prior to the 10th of every month, I electronically transfer $900.00 to cover an $882.00 payment due on the 13th. They require 3 days for the funds to be available. E -Trade charged my account $25.00 for supposed NSF on the very same day that there were excess funds in the amount of over $300.00 in the account. Their explanation was that the funds were withdrawn on the 12th when they have never been posted before the 13th going back to July, 2005. I have never been late with a payment and yet they refuse to credit the $25.00.

Their unreasonable and unfair response and lack of understanding is appalling. The refusal to transfer me to their superior is arrogant and represents the worst example of customer service I have encountered in years.

We have been trying to rollover an IRA for three months now. After a month with no progress (we were traveling abroad), we called and were told that they had the forms and that the rep had no idea why nothing had happened. He assured me it would happen immediately. Several days later, seeing that the account was unchanged, I called again. This time, the rep said that a medallion signature guarantee was missing. He suggested liquidating all stock, then just transferring the money into our checking directly without bothering with the forms. I liquidated the stock eltronically, then found there is no transfer option for an IRA. I reinitiated all the forms and waited. Three weeks later, still no movement of the money. I emailed Etrade to ask why the transfer had not occurred. Rather than emailing me at my email address, they responded to a Security Message Center at the Etrade site and said, the only page they received was the front page! The forms were sent by snail mail, not FAX!! How could they have lost all but the front page? Please note that throughout all of this, ETRADE has never initiated communication. If something was wrong with my forms, THEY should have contacted me. I am eager to move all of my money from ETRADE. I have contacted the SEC. I wonder if I will be able to transfer my money out or if they will just dance around the request as they are doing with the IRA.

I just cant believe how etrade can get away from all these complaints.....i had similar issues..Etrade leqidated my funds and stopped my brokerage account..For the past few weeks I haveb trying to reinstate this they have been asking for many requests and I have provided these information.. however, they keep requesting for same information!! as if one agent does not have any idea what was the communication trail was!!! Suring the process they stopped my account stating unusual activities. I was a regional Vice president and I travel with in my region and accessed the account (to check email s from e*trade, as they have not activated the brokerage ac)....It the most horrifying experiance of my life..They agents are so unprofessional and it a complete waste of my time.. Etrade still hold 5000USD for the past few years and toddate I have not been able to either get these funds back not activate my brokerage account!!! I wish some gov body can investigate as Etrade is not Ethical!!!

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 didnt make sense at all, like requesting my source bank to promise I am the account holder. But E*trade didnt 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 customers money as long as they can. Very unethical and disgusting.

Etrade liquidated my IRA holdings in its SP500 index fund at the bottom of the stock market without informing me.

Well, I opened up an account with Etrade and purchase some stocks 250 shares paid $1.89 ea. total of $472.50 stock symbol FOHE on 06/09/2008, Penny stocks, well that stock started declined and on 09/16/2009 I tried to take a loss and sell and at least get $180.00 out of it bu the rep I spoke with (i should have gotten names) talk me into keep it open and hope it climbs back up, well now 07/14/2009 I check my stock and I owe them money my stocks fell low and they did not explain to me they have a $40.00 service fee they sold my stock with out my concet to cover their service fee and I owe them money?

Most recent problem; E*trade claims that my joint account was setup as joint-community property and has placed a hold on the account until they receive a very long list of stuff. I claim it was setup with joint survisorship. I can not find any paperwork and E*trade appears not to have any either. I have had nothing but problems with this company and will try to close my account if I can ever get it resolved. I can't understand how any company can get by with soooo much !!!!

I opened an account in Dec 09 since opening the account there have problems and inaccurancies. I have sent many letters to the company and talked with just about everyone there, after 6 months of this I decided to close the account. When I tried to use the debit card it was inactive. I called to see what the problem was and was told it was because I had stopped my direct deposit to the account. They said if I could answer personal questions that they could allow me to withdraw my funds I agreed but, none of the question were about me so I didn't qualify for the withdraw. The next step was to send a notarized letter which I have done 3 times so far and even though I have a signature from Fedex Etrade stills denies recieving it. Every person I talk to reassure that they will give this their personal attention and resolve in 24 to 48 hrs that has been about 4 months now. I have written letters to the SEC but they are usless they have there on agendas, they are to busy overlooking all the ponsie schemes.

After my account was locked out, I read about the user complaints on a number of websites -- and I got worried! Fortunately, my experience was a lot smoother. My account was locked out because I was trading through my friends' computers in different countries whilst traveling. The computer system detected ISPs from four different computers within three weeks and restricted its access.

After calling the customer reps in the US, I too was given the same answer that I had to get a letter certified from the notary public. Unfortunately, there are no other ways to skip this process once the system flags any suspicious activity. I think what could have helped expedite the process was that I sent TWO copies of the notarized letters, one copy was sent to E*TRADE's local relationship manager who has met me in person and knows that that I am the bona fide account holder. He and his other colleagues based in Asia helped to expedite the process.

On my part, I additionally enclosed (i) two sources of government issued identification that contained my home address; and (ii) statements issued by E*TRADE with my name, home address and account number. Finally I explained to the account activation department that I logged into multiple computers because I was traveling and there are two computers in my study. My account was reactivated with 48 hours after I was locked out.

Would have made some if the I wasn't locked out, but that's fine. I would rather have a false positive in this case than risk having my account hacked into. My account rep said that I could have asked for a security token to prevent similar issues from happening. If you didn't get one it'll be wise to ask for it.

My wife and I have an E*TRADE Home Equity Line of Credit. On 3/25/2009, we needed to access our credit line. Before writing the check from our LOC, I went online to the E*TRADE website to determine how much was available. The available amount exceeded the amount I needed, so I wrote the check. Several days later, we were notified via mail that they returned our check. On 4/3/2009, I logged back into my account and it still showed that the available amount exceeded the amount of the check.

I called E*TRADE to figure out what happened. The first customer service representative explained that there was a block on my account because of my depreciated home value and I should have received a letter. I explained that I used their online tool because that had the most recent information and if my account is blocked - why would it show an available balance. She understood my concern and passed me on to her supervisor. I explained the situation to the supervisor and he asked me to fax him proof of my claim. I did so immediately while we were still on the phone. I thought he was going to fix my problem. I waited for him to confirm receipt of the faxed E*TRADE web statement. When he received it, he said -- I had you fax that to me because this is a problem that we thought was happening; but our technology team said it was not. Now we have proof to give them so they can fix the problem. -- Great, they acknowledged they have a problem.

I then tried to work with the supervisor to fix MY problem (bounced check). Brian explained that I should have used information on my December 2008 statement and not the online information to make a decision. I asked him if that made sense to him: - Who makes decisions based on 4 month old information. Don't you provide online tools with near real-time information to help your customers make timely decisions. Basically, he did not have the authority or desire to do anything to help me. I've had nothing but negative experiences with E*TRADE.

As a consumer, I find it totally unacceptable that they provided access to incorrect information that is going to cost me time and money to fix (still incorrect even after my call). What liability does E*TRADE have in this? Has anyone else experienced a similar problem? They claimed that I was the first person to be able to produce documentation of this problem, but they also acknowledged that they have heard similar stories from other customers.

TIME & MONEY - Bounced Check Fees - Negative Impact to Personal Credit - Time to research / investigate - etc.

It appears that I am not the first that this has happened to. I was just informed by a trade confirmation thru the US mail, that E*Trade has sold ALL of my stock, which was purchased at approximately $15,000 to pay for a quarterly maintenence fee of $40.00. Granted, the stock was not worth much as of today, but I have been holding on to it in the hopes of it coming back sometime in the near future. I am hoping that someone, perhaps I need to, persues this and files a class action lawsuit against them.

I TRULY had NO idea that this would take place. I was NEVER informed that they would be putting in a sell order, obviously I would have paid the $40 fee and avoid lossing a potential tens of thousands of dollars in the future! There was never an email nor an alert sent to inform me that this would be taking place. This has tremendously hurt my family and our future income! The economy is bad enough right now, my husband has recently been laid off, and we are desperately trying to survive on my income. This was our only savings that we were praying would come back sometime in the future to help us with our kids future. Please let me, and others on this site, know if there is anything we can do to E*trade for their actions.

This will seriously hurt my family in the future. This money was invested and unfortunately the stock has plummeted, but we have been holding on to it with the hopes of it coming back to help us. My husband, who is in the construction industry, has lost his job of 15+years with the same company, and this investment was our only hopes of having anything at all for our kids in the future. I am livid and hope that there is someone out there who can help. PLEASE contact me if you can help us! thank you very very much.

ETrade has pushed their ETrade index funds for years as an inexpensive way to diversify. They recently decided to close these funds out, forcing everyone who owned shares to cash out. In the email sent by management, they indicated that they had been considering this for some time, however, they never disclosed this to investors. They continued selling shares during a market decline knowing they might close the index funds and cause investors significant loss. Although I expect they are within their legal rights to close the funds, it clearly demonstrates a lack of concern for their customers and I would advise anyone considering using Etrade to go elsewhere.

I lost almost $6,000 in having to cash in the funds at near the market bottom. I had planned on holding for several years until the market recovered. I hope the SEC investigates or a class action suit is initiated to combat their deception on investors.

I opened an account with etrade and was able to trade just fine, but when I requested some of my money, the transfers failed twice, and the third time my account was frozen due to unusual activity I called them and my call was forwarded overseas somewhere where the english was not good.They told me I needed to send a notorized letter stating who I was and why I wanted my account opened.

I spent 17.00 in postage and they gave me a po# where to send it. There was nobody there to sign for the letter I sent because it was a post office box number. I called and told them about this and they gave me another address so I had to go get another letter notorized and spend another 17.00 to do that. I had no problems with them until I wanted some of MY money back, and I suspect that they are running some kind of scheme. If I dont get my money back I promise they will regret it. If I knew then what I know now, I would never have got involved with etrade.

Im sure my blood pressure is up. I have 7800.00 that they have tied up because they have blocked my account

In February 2009, E Trade sold all of 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'm so mad. I urge everyone taken by these guys to file an SEC complaint!

Lost an initial investment of over $11,000.00 for maintenance fees

I have a Rollover IRA account that I want to tranfer to another institution but they will not transfer my funds. I have tried 3 times and they refuse to transfer my funds to the other financial institution. I tried to transfer it to Third Federal Savings Bank and they said that third federal bank does not have the proper medallion signatures to allow them to transfer my IRA to the bank. I then tried to tranfer my IRA to Countrywide bank and they refused to transfer it again. I then tried to transfer it to GMAC and they refused.

They always find a reason why they can not transfer the funds. It is because they want to hold on to my funds as long as possible. It is now 6 months later and my money is not accruing any interest and they have use of it and refuse to give it to me. I now have to do an indirect transfer by withdrawing the money and paying fees and then sending it the funds to the other financial institution myself and then later have to prove that it was not an early withdrawal so I am not penalized on my taxes. E-trade is the most incompetent company I have ever worked with.

During this 6 months process, I have spoken to at least 8 or 9 people. Whenever you call, they always tell you that someone is always going to look into the problem and get back to you and address the issue but no one ever calls you and it is up to you to keep calling every week or every 2 weeks to find out if it was taken care of and they always tell you that just about everything takes up to 7 to 10 days to process so if you call before the 10 days and they realize they have not addressed the problem, they will always tell you that the 10 days are not up and someone will call you and you just have to continue to call and call until you are so beside yourself that you just want to tell all of them to go to hell and just take your money out and never deal with them again no matter what kind of fees or what penalty you will have to pay.

I have lost 6 months of CD interest.

I have to pay IRA withdrawal fees (although I am not withdrawing the funds but I just want to tranfer the funds to another financial institution)

I have to pay $25 for them to cut me a check for the account balance.

I have to pay an account closing fee because I am so disgusted with them that I am closing all my accounts with them including my checking & savings account.

I have spent hours and hours and hours on the phone trying to resolve this issue.

My blood pressure has gone up dealing with a bunch of the most incompetent people I have ever seen in my life.

I have a Rollover IRA account that I want to tranfer to another institution but they will not transfer my funds. I have tried 3 times and they refuse to transfer my funds to the other financial institution. I tried to transfer it to Third Federal Savings Bank and they said that third federal bank does not have the proper medallion signatures to allow them to transfer my IRA to the bank. I then tried to tranfer my IRA to Countrywide bank and they refused to transfer it again. I then tried to transfer it to GMAC and they refused. They always find a reason why they can not transfer the funds. It is because they want to hold on to my funds as long as possible.

It is now 6 months later and my money is not accruing any interest and they have use of it and refuse to give it to me. I now have to do an indirect transfer by withdrawing the money and paying fees and then sending it the funds to the other financial institution myself and then later have to prove that it was not an early withdrawal so I am not penalized on my taxes.

E-trade is the most incompetent company I have ever worked with. During this 6 months process, I have spoken to at least 8 or 9 people. Whenever you call, they always tell you that someone is always going to look into the problem and get back to you and address the issue but no one ever calls you and it is up to you to keep calling every week or every 2 weeks to find out if it was taken care of and they always tell you that just about everything takes up to 7 to 10 days to process so if you call before the 10 days and they realize they have not addressed the problem, they will always tell you that the 10 days are not up and someone will call you and you just have to continue to call and call until you are so beside yourself that you just want to tell all of them to go to hell and just take your money out and never deal with them again no matter what kind of fees or what penalty you will have to pay.

I have lost 6 months of CD interest. I have to pay IRA withdrawal fees (although I am not withdrawing the funds but I just want to tranfer the funds to another financial institution) I have to pay $25 for them to cut me a check for the account balance. I have to pay an account closing fee because I am so disgusted with them that I am closing all my accounts with them including my checking & savings account. I have spent hours and hours and hours on the phone trying to resolve this issue. My blood pressure has gone up dealing with a bunch of the most incompetent people I have ever seen in my life.

my husband and I purchased 800 shares of sirius (siri) for$1650 in june of 2003 from Etrade. I just found out they sold MY stock for $484.00 to pay for $40.00 a quarter Maintaince fee that started in 2006. Apparently when they wanted the money they just sold the stock without notifying us. This was done with NO notification and this company is a modern Thief. BEWARE! Outright Crooks.

Besides losing $484 , we now do not have 800 shares anymore and we called to buy some more at the lower trading price. Amazing ripoff.

I have had an account there for 8 years, supposedly fee less. I had small stocks worth about $2000.00 in June. The market tanks as does my balance. I had planned to let everything sit long term and let the stock ride.Three weeks ago ETrade liquidated my shares with no notice to me and stole what little my shares sold for to pay maintenance fees that I had no idea I owed. Who are these crooks and who can stop them.

10,000 shares of stock sold for .01

I placed a trade at market value, it did not immediately go through. After 5 minutes, I tried to cancel the trade. E*Trade would not allow me to cancel, saying it was pending. I tried for more than an hour to change or cancel the order, to no avail. I left for a class, returned 3 hours later. The sale went through at 13:37:49 eastern time, more than an hour after I had placed it. The problem it sold for 1/10 the price for the day! The market never went lower than what I had paid for the shars, but E*Trade sold them for 10 cents on the dollar, wiping out my account. Supposedly they will verify, but I know they never admit being wrong.

Sold shares for 1/10 of lowest pric of day. Wiped out my account.

I opened an account a few years ago with $1,000 in it. I did not plan on doing much, just to see if it would grow.

I kept an eye on the investments every month and do not remember anything about a $40 penalty for not trading.

Afte about 4 years with Etrade, my statement said I only had $10 left in it. Etrade sold my stock and kept the money for their fees.

There was NO WARNING that this might happen. I am sure there was some fine print somewhere that I missed. Bottom line, I BELIEVE THIS IS AN INTENTIONAL STRATEGY TO ROB PEOPLE OF THEIR MONEY.

Would we put up with an electric company that never sent you a bill them turned off your electricity without warning? ETrades policy is liked to that. I wish I had never heard of ETrade.

They sold my stock for over $700 and kept it all without ever warning me or sending me a bill.

On December 10, 2008 I received an email from E*TRADE Securities stating they had liquidated my stocks and closed my account. I immediately called them to find out what was going on and was told they closed the account because there was no money left in it to pay the quarterly maintenance fees. I asked the customer service representative what he was talking about. My account didnt have any fees. He said that there was a $40 per quarter maintenance fee that they had been taking out of my account for some time and (coupling that with what the market had reaped of my stock holdings) there was no money left in the account to pay the fees. I was livid! I opened that account with 285 shares of my company stock on or about January 25, 2000.

I only opened that account because it was a fee-less account and I had planned on doing nothing with the stock until its value rose sufficiently to recoup some of the losses it had already incurred. Because of this I very infrequently checked the account--maybe once or twice a year--and then only to see what the stock was worth at that point. What I didnt realize was that somewhere along the way E*Trade began charging a maintenance fee on the account. Unfortunately, I did not discover this tidbit of information until I made the call as to why they closed my account. At no point did I ever agree to a fee-based account nor did I ever sign anything agreeing to such a change. I dont have any fee-based accounts and I certainly wouldnt agree to one for an account that I was just sitting on until the time was right to liquidate and close it.

It's apparent from this site and others that E*Trade has deceived many others in this scheme. Some say they are trying to put together a class action lawsuit against E*Trade, but I have yet to find any link or contact information on how to join the suit. In the mean time, I filed my complaint with the Texas Attorney General's office and the SEC Complaint Center and I highly recommend anyone else who has fallen prey to E*Trade do the same. E*Trades tactics are nothing short of larceny as far as I'm concerned and they not only should have their license revoked, but the management who trumped-up this deceitful and illegal money-grabbing scheme should be thrown in jail.

Had I been made aware they were going to start charging a maintenance fee on my account I could have, and would have, liquidated the account then. At least I would have gotten something out my stocks.

This was my letter to E*TRADE:

I know why the baby throws up in your commercials.

We opened an E*TRADE account for our daughter in 2000 with $1000 deposited to a money market account with no minimum and no fees?.

Your company later changed the rules and switched this to a $10,000 minimum and started charging $40 a quarter in inactive account fees?. Our daughter was never informed of this major change, and with moving three times lost track of this account.

In January she found out this account had been drained down to $180. I personally think this is unethical. This is a very hard lesson for a young investor.

Your customer service? representatives were very rude to this young woman when she called about this account. Then your company even charged her to close the account you had almost drained to no money left.

Your company has done this to thousands of forgotten accounts as shown by thousands of internet complaints.

After spending millions on Super Bowl commercials, I now see that you are hoping for billions in federal bail-out money. I have written to my U.S Senators and U.S. Congressman with my thoughts on this money for your company.

I also have written to AARP Magazine, Consumers Reports, Money Magazine, Bob Brinkers show Moneytalk?, The Clark Howard Show?, and Neil Cavuto, anchor and managing editor at FOX Business Network. Someone will break this interesting story.

I really dont expect an answer, or that you will do the proper thing and refund this account.

I've opened deposit accounts with ETrade Bank 12/10/08, transferred in about $90K. The moment I've scheduled a transfer out they put my account on security hold, requested a Notarized letter of Authorization, denying my right to talk to any supervisors or managers. I've been charged $25 fee for the failed transfer. Now they're researching my letter breaking all own terms as they promised 2-3 business days. Next they'll ask another Notarized letter, stating that the first one was from me.

In fact, they literally stole my money, will hold & use it until I'll get a court subpoena & bring in US Marshals to get my money back. Stay away from ETrade, let them to go bankrupt.

The only way to find information about fees is to type in fees into thier website search form. A clickable link doesn't exist.

E*Trade started accessing $40.00 / month fee for inactivity (minimum number of trades). They charge $60.00 to transfer to another brokerage. Only other way to close account is to sell all the securities or have stock certificates sent, which generates a fee.

I was told my account has been suspened due to address verification so i sent the apporiate documentaion in to to verify I have been going thru this for the last 5 weeks they have been giving me the run around and I do not have access to my account so I due not know how my money is dueing I have $20k with them invested and they are give me the run around. I need to make transactions on the market but i can because they can not get right iver there. I need to do something because I'm gettein no where with them

I do not kno if I'm losing money or not and if I am I do not have access to my account to sell my shares. this is very frustrating please help!

I had $190,000 in mutual fund plus $1000 in Stocks, when I transferred an additional $1000 electronically from my checking account. A few days later I found my checking account empty because eTrade initiated 2 $1000 transfers instead of one. I called there help desk and they politely said they would reverse the second transfer and reimburse me for the overdraft fee.

After about a week with no returned funds, I called again too find a different attitude and little cooperation. Since I could not keep my checking account empty and etrade not cooperating I called my bank to inform them that I did not authorize one of the transactions at which time my bank Wells Fargo promptly credited me $1000 and a few days later cleared the funds.

When I logged onto eTrade I found my account gone including its records. which to me must have been some federal law violation. I called eTrade and was told they didn't want my business and I had to write a notarized letter instruction them how to process. I went to TD Ameritrade which helped me file the paperwork and told me storied about other eTrade customers. By the time I got my funds to TD Ameritrade, I had lost $45000.

Bought stocks after they reached a dow of 7,500 sold at a profit, put my money in their savings account. The account is worth over $70k and I have had all the troubles these other people have had. They have 24 hours and I will hire an attorney and sue the crap out of E Trade, and take this as public as I can.

It ruined my Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays and i just had a heart cath.

Bought stocks after they reached a dow of 7,500 sold at a profit, put my money in their savings account. The account is worth over $70k and I have had all the troubles these other people have had. They have 24 hours and I will hire an attorney and sue the crap out of E Trade, and take this as public as I can.

It ruined my Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays and i just had a heart cath.

Had an account for 5 years. Just received an email regarding a trade. I did not initiate a trade - went into the account to find they sold all my stock to pay for quarterly maintenance fees I knew nothing about. It appears many people experience the same treatment.

Etrade has gotten horrible and careless with not posting/holding direct deposits to my checking account. I have regular direct deposits from my employer and when I first opened my Etrade checking account, I was always able to access my funds immediately. Over the past couple months, however, it has become quite a challenge to do so. My account will show my direct deposits 'pending' but $0 available for use or withdrawel for days at a time. Each time they hold my funds it takes me at least 2-3 days of making several lengthy phone calls to them before they are willing to release my money.

For example, on wed Nov 26, 2008 my payroll deposit was made by my employer as a courtesy so we all would have it for the Thanksgiving holiday. WELL Etrade held my deposit illegally! There haven't been any issues with my account as to why my funds would be held and it's a regular direct deposit from the same employer bank. When I ask them WHY my money is being held I get different excuses, a variety of "Technical issues" Also, with their unreliable posting of my direct deposit, I've had to cancel my auto bill paying with other companies because I never know when my money will be available and Etrade will decline any of my autopayments done on payday, the day the direct deposit is intially made. Then I get hit with fees from the other companies.

I've had enough!

E-Trade sold 3 of my small shares without my consent or even asking me to send moneies that my account was in the arrears, also this really gripes me, this yeat E-trade charged me for a reverse split charge that was 40.00 for a stock total that was under 4.00 total for all my reverse split stocks, this is wrong.

Now I am having trouble trying to close my accounts and soon to transfer two other accounts to TD Ameritrade

I opened an account with Harris Direct (now Etrade), when I opened the account the lady told me I wouldn't be charged monthly fees because I deposited so much money, I would only be charged for each trade; after purchasing stock and letting it sit, they unkowning charged me fees because the balance had dropped below a certain amount.

I had a margin account for roughly $3500. When times were good this was not a problem at all. On Friday, 11/14, I received an e-mail that I would have to liquidate $1100 and add to the margin account, which I did.

On Monday, Etrade apparently decided that they wanted ALL their money, as they decided to liquidate stocks on their own valition to cover the margin. I had no input whatsoever.

Basically, I started with $5000 and now have $300 thanks to Etrade. We all know the market will recover, but apparently, they do want to wait.

Working two jobs and scrimping and saving--this was my savings. Here is another example where corporate America apparently can just run over the little guy.

I hope other people don't get run over. Avoid Etrade! I look forward to the day they fail!

Lost entire savings-from $5000 to $300.

Letter to ETRADE -

As per our conversation, this letter serves as authorization to close CD AC #69 when it matures on 11/11/08. The funds are to be wired to Hudson City Savings Bank Routing # xxxx IMMEDIATELY and any delay will result in you paying me additional interest for each day late. As per previous conversations with (I have the names/dates/times held separately in case an investigation is done) reps at E*TRADE, I was told to fax a letter giving the account number that the funds are to be wired to; then another rep told me now you needed my drivers license. Then another rep told me to get a notarized letter thqat must be mailed! Why wasnt I told this the first time?

Each conversation with a different rep told me to do something different. They also asked for my banking information over the phone and nothing better happen to my funds with my privacy being invaded in this way by so many individuals. I never do banking over the internet so everything is completed over the phone. I had instructed E*TRADE on several occasions that a pets name should never be used as a password. I faxed and mailed for this to be taken off the account (copy of letter will follow but I doubt it will help me as the great incompetency and lies that are told by Etrade is reprehensible), but nothing was done.

Still you serviced my account without dropping the pet name nonsense. I never gave a pet name as we dont have one. I never gave this info but you still allowed me to invest in CDs anyway and still conducted business with me. Now that I want to wire funds out of your poorly run bank to another of my banks, you have given me an extremely difficult time; furthermore, you want to charge a wire fee, whereas any other bank I invest with never does that to me.

I want my money NOW. Customers routinely forget passwords and they are allowed to produce other ID and get their money. Your banking practices and that of your personnel are clearly in question. Also,

You are to remove any pet name/password MY OTHER ACCOUNT for AC # xxxx IMMEDIATELY.

I HAVE MADE 27 CALLS regarding the pet name nonsense - they screwed up and now they are relunctant to pay me my money!

I am am E*trade customer of 8 years. I had a margin account and was issued several margin calls in Nov 07 and Dec 07...Each margin account was sent to me by way of the account on my E*trade web site and it always stated in bold: DUE BY CLOSE OF MARKET 4 PM ,DATE On 1/08/08 I received a margin call at 11:49 am on of all things E*trade stock, it read as all the previous margin alerts read (as above.)

I called E*trade at 11:54 (phone records show) to let them know I would wire money into cover my position and I wanted to hold my position of 53,700 shares of stock. I was mislead and held up by the rep taling the call who could not find my account, after 11 minutes I was disconnected.

I called back to spend another 40 minutes with 2 more useless clueless untrained reps who again dropped my call after a transfer. I called again now thinking the company may be closing down that day due to the behavior of the reps answering the phone. And the fact the stock hit an 11 year low that day...

At 12:40 I called again, I was told my position was sold off without my knowledge, while I was on the phone with an E*trade rep, yet no one told me, and the margin call with due by close of market 4pm 1/08/08 was not honered. I was on the phone thinking I had 4 hours to wire funds to cover based on their alert sent to my account.

I filed a complaint with E*trade then FINRA,I then hired an attorney on Jan 12th 2008, and a hearing was set through FINRA on 10/07/08. E*trade came to the hearing and ignored FINRA's motion to comply certain evidence such as phone records, the screen shot of the margin call...they also deleted my first two calls to their 800 # I made on 1/8/08 from their records (although I had them on my phone records in full) They also erased the portion of the 3rd recorded phone conversation which I was told the stock position had been sold off. E*trade then went on to lie to the panel at the hearing and stated their margin calls do not go out with a due at market close or date on them.

They also lied about the amount of money it would cost to produce a screen shot ($200k they stated) which show the margin call and time due. E*trade is the only broker who issues margin calls (or did anyway) with the close of market 4pm x/x/xxxx. on them, no other broker issues a time due. This time due caused me to be conditioned to react within the time of that day by 4pm, and although I called at once, within minutes, the inside staff was incapable of even finding my account, never mind putting a note on the account that I would be wiring funds in within a few hours.

This experience has cost me thousands of dollars in legal fees and loss. E*trade modified their margin agreement with me by sending a due date and time on the actual margin alert , which I have a copy of. E*trade then relied on their agreement to worm their way out of the deadline on the margin call. FINRA heard the complaint, a panel made up of 3 75 plus year old gentleman who could barely stay focused on the issue during the panel hearing. The panel ruled with E*TRADE,and I was beside myself. They produced false and misleading information, withheld evidence, modified evidence, lied at the hearing,ignored the panels request to produce the screen shot and missing phone records....and then just walked away.

Oddly they had me listed as a 'HIGH QUALITY CUSTOMER'within their rankings of customers. FINRA IS NOT THERE FOR THE LITTLE GUY. The panelist are more concerned about getting another hearing job on a panel than listening to the case and making a correct decision. Also the FINRA panel brought a defective tape recorder, so the hearing was not taped at all. I also had an expert financial witness which was going to show proof of my trading experience showing a 30% gain in the prior 3 months trading mainly financial stocks...which is why I owned E*trade stock, 2 weeks after my stock was sold, the stock doubled on the news of two fed rate cuts in the last week of Jan, which was what I was waiting for to sell, the rate cut came lat in Jan, most expected it by Mid to late Dec 07,...E*trade being a bank I knew the stock would go up on news of a rate cut, and it did, from $2.37 on 1/08/08 to $5.16 by the first week or so in FEB, and even slightly higher thereafter.

My expert witness was not allowed to testify do to objections from E*trade. I WAS RIPPED OFF BY E*TRADE. It was the perfect storm of corruption, stupidity, misleading and wrong information of their inside reps who could not take car of a simple request.

it is a very large number,...and growing. FINRA is a dead end. This was an outright robbery by E*trade.

I've opened an e*trade account about 5 yrs back and bought about 3K worth of stocks. Let it sit for years and all of a sudden I find my stock values have gone down to around $950. When I sold the stocks and asked e*trade to close the account, I find only around $160 left in my account. Reason: They've charged $40 inactivity fee and who knows what else. The worst part is the online account access doesn't show all these charges that have been accruing... They also have a $2000 minimum balance for a non-margin account. There are other companies now offer no or less minimum balance and don't change inactivity fees. But they have their own pitfalls. So, customers bewarned....

The reason I phoned in to them today was to place a trade, they denied me and I even lost 4% on the trade I wanted to make.

Do not trust this company, they cannot back up any promise they make. Get your money out and run to another brokerage.

Lost several hundred dollars and was on hold for about 7 hours total so far.

I had the same problem with Etrade keeping my money, but I got it back.

I'll tell you how, but first I'd like to say that before I got it back I was wondering if any of you got yours back, how long it took, and what steps you took. For the people who just lost their money to Etrade and are totally stressed, please let everyone know how it turned out.

Etrade had $5K of mine and when I asked for the account to be closed they said they would and I would have the $ shortly. It didn't come, I called back, and the second person said the account had never been closed. He said he'd close it and I should have the money soon. It never came. I called a third time and asked to talk with a supervisor. He said it would be sent in 1-2 weeks. I waited a week and got nervous and then looked up these complaints.

I THEN FILED A COMPLAINT WITH THE SEC.

You can easily do this on-line and the SEC will require Etrade to respond to you withing 2-4 weeks and provide a copy of their response to the SEC. It works like the BBB.

I then called Etrade and info'd them of my complaint with the SEC and told them it might be in their best interest to have my $ back to me before the SEC contacted them. The $ didn't show so I called Etrade again and, after a 54 minute hold period, I was told that no one at Etrade was allowed to talk to me because of the complaint but they would contact me in 2-4 weeks.

About a week later, I got a letter from Etrade stating that they would respond to my complaint in 2-4 weeks. To my great surprise, the wire transfer occured about 3 days after that. I didn't have to wait the full time.

I luckily was only without my cash for a total of a month and can now sleep again. Good luck to you all. I heard on the Patriot Trading Group radio program that there is 62 billion worth of money market funds currently tied up in this manner. People are bailing out of the market and my suspicion is that the money market fund managers have either invested our money and are milking the gains/interest, or they simply don't have it because they are paying off those who closed their accounts first.

I wouldn't suggest paying an attorney $5K to get $5K back. If it only collapses a little, I think that the SIPC might insure your deposit. I'm not real certain about that because I have also read on the Etrade site that money market funds are NOT secure.

Again, Good Luck to all of you who are blatantly being ripped off by the greedy and corrupt people who are taking this country down.

E-trade when i transfer money from my bank to E-trade, it is taking out the same day. But E-trade will not let you us it for 4 - 7 days while they make you leave it set so they can collect Interest on your money. And it is the slowest system I have every see.

I have lost out on some very good changes to invest in some stocks.

I opened an E trade brokerage account a few years ago. I bought some stocks and just let them sit. I put in over $1300. I just recently learned that they have been deducting a $40 account service fee . The account is now worth $122.

You can't trust them. The fine print may give the info. but don't trust them with your money!

Opened two CDs for my daughter last february much to my dismay. One was a 3 month. One a 6 month. We have unfortunately let them ride in etrade until i began reading the difficulty getting them out of ETrade based on numerous consumer complaints. Well that to light this week when one of the CDs came to maturity. Tried to call to close the account. On hold forever. Then they wouldn't talk to me because i was not my daugher (she's 2 years old mind you!). The accounts were opened as custodial accounts in february with my SSN, info, etc.

Finally this brainwashed employee gave me the runaround for 45 minutes until he finally agreed to wire the money from that account to our daughter's savings account less a $25 fee. Took all the information. In the midst of this ridiculous amount of time I became fed up and asked to speak to a supervisor 3 separate times...no luck there. Just kept coming back with info that would put all this to closure. Said the wire would occur within the hour or at least later in the day and the money would be available tomorrow in our daughter's account.

So i check my daughter's account online as e-transfers show up immediately with our bank though the money is not available until the following day. NADA. Check again today...NADA. So i call etrade back. They have no record of me calling for the wire transfer the day before. Zero record. This after i hand out all my info, SSN, etc. as well as my daughter's to some idiot (for all i know is an identity thief). So it again takes 25 minutes to finally receive a confirmation number for the wire transfer to my daughter's account.

If you're thinking about an etrade account due to their baitful interest rates...DON'T DO IT. They are slimey. And that is one thing you don't need from someone who holds large sums of your family's money. Can't wait until the other CD comes to maturity...i probably won't wait. Just disgusting.

We lost $25 out of the deal for the wire transfer which is acceptable. What is not acceptable is the fact that it is so difficult to obtain OUR money. As an american what i own is mine. If i choose to withdrawal my family's money then give it to me. Don't make me struggle to obtain what belongs to me.

I've found out how to contact E*Trade Customer Service! When I was setting up my new account, I was never on hold for more than a minute. As soon as my account was active, I was waiting 30+ minutes.

I found out the reason why: phone numbers not in their database (i.e. potential new customers) go to a different (shorter) queue. I called back from a phone not listed on my account, and the call was answered immediately. FYI: When prompted for your account number, just press # repeatedly.

can never close your account - even with a $0 balance they charge $40/month service fee. Multiple times, I have spent days trying to get through to E*Trade customer service for this basic request. I have been put on hold multiple times everyday for 20 minutes or more (then hang up).

I am confidentent at this point that this is a deliberate mechanism. The inital responder takes your information verification, your customer service need and then has to transfer you to a deadend of elevator music. This is purposeful and outrageous.

With the condition of the stock market, I thought that this would be a great opportunity to purchase some stock. I was looking for a expedient solution, and ETRADE looked like a viable option. I was ready to do some trades. I transferred $2000.00 into an ETRADE account this weekend. I did this via your online website. After making the transfer from my bank account to ETRADE (transaction complete) I found that there was a four day hold period on my funds. I wasnt too happy about that, but it was too late.

I contacted ETRADE today (10/08) and found out that there is an additional 7 day hold on my funds, though it was verified that you are indeed in possession of my funds as of today. In essence that gives you the use of my funds for another 7 days, and there are (to my disappointment) still no trades for me. It seems very unreasonable considering that we are in an age of electronic transfers that you would hold my funds for such a length of time. This is ridicules and bad business.

I had hopes of doing some trades, but you guys are so hard to work with. I also spent a lot of time on the phone to your representatives trying to sort this thing out. I was put on hold for a long time. You should release my funds immediately. I wish to close this account immediately. I expect to be refunded my money immediately. THIS HAS BEEN A HASSLE AND A BIG DISAPPOINTMENT. I will not recommend ETRADE to any of my friends, (all who invest heavily). Close my account and refund my funds. I will file an FTC complaint. This is a bad policy that needs to be corrected.

They will have my money for a while. They will not let me close the account.

I opened an account with etrade on 10-1-08. I depoisted a small amount of funds just to test out the service. I'm glad I didn't do anymore than that. Without trying to sound paranoid my funds are in limbo. Apparently my account has not been activated due to needing additional information to verify my identity. However, they had verified enough information to accept a deposit.

I called in the one (1) single time I've been able to reach a person, spoke to a man named Mike. He told me they needed a copy of my drivers license and soical security card. He gave me his personal fax line at etrade so he could resolve my issue as soon as I could get the copies to him. I sent them, and it has been nearing a week now and have not heard back.

I have tried to call them almost everyday, trying different times, holding for great amounts of time each, only to finally run out of time after 20-30 minutes. I have submitted an online help center request, they are suppose to be answered in 1 business day. Mine has exceeded that time frame and I havent heard anything back. I cannot withdraw my funds, use the funds or anything. They are sitting on my funds and I cannot do anything about it because I cannot get ahold of anyone to resolve the issue, or even close the account. I will say at I have had some bad experinces with different companies and different services. But atleast with all of those experiences I was able to atleast talk to someone to feel as if the issue was going somewhere. I do not even get that with etrade at this point.

This is by far and away the worst customer service I have ever encountered. For a big company, with such a big marketing machine, the way my experience has went, I'd think I just bought a real estate system off a late night infomerical.

I requested a stock certificate from Etrade and they charged me $40. I paid for it and am waiting for my stock certificate. Now, there is an additional $40 transfer fee for the stock that I already purchased and paid commission for.

When I called and talked to their representative, this is what they told me. When you actually purchase stocks, you aren't really purchasing the stock.

Oh really, then what am I paying commission for?

You are paying for Etrade to buy the stocks for you and keep the stocks.

So, in essence, I am paying you for you to keep my property, which is not my property, even though I purchased that property, it is not really my property. When do I get paid the holding fees for you holding my property?

Opened a new account with Etrade. Transferred $35,000 into account. Setup Bill pay to pay off credit card. Etrade claimed insufficient funds. Confirmed funds. Setup second Bill pay. Etrade claimed insufficient funds.

Called Etrade. Told me to call bk AM. Called Etrade. Researching. Call me. No phone call from Etrade. Called Etrade. 10 min hold/cutoff. Emailed Etrade. Told me to call. Called Etrade. Said to wait

Cannot access funds caused us to move money from other accounts and lose preferred rates.

E-trade liquidated my positions to cover their margin call without calling me. This was after I had already sent them a request 7 business days in advance to transfer about $10K worth of shares from another company in case the market fell more and my margin call increased. The first margin call was for $3200 and I had until the 10th of October. I fullfilled my obligation by liquidating close to $7500 worth of securities.

I called them twice last Friday (10/10) to follow up on my transfer request and tell them to give me until day end Monday. Without any regard to my request they liquidated my position at a loss of $14,000 to me. The shares were sold $3.30 below what they ended at. I feel really distraught. The worst part is my shares would have been up by $12,100. The margin call would have gone away even without me posting any additional money into the account.

Loss of $14,000. I would like to talkt o an attorney.

Their website keeps bogging down in the last hour of trading --- my orders sat and sat, couldn't get quotes ---what a fiasco.

i put a LIMIT order to sell 30,000 shares. 27,700 got sold. 300 did not. the stock went down. i tried to sell but their system had PROBLEMS and said i had no shares. the other page said i had 300 shares. i tried to cancel order. SYSTEM PROBLEM. i tried to change order. SYSTEM PROBLEM.

i called and spoke to etrade. we will fill your order at the limit price give us 30 minutes. NOPE. called again. we will fill your order at the limit price. give us 2 hours. NOPE! called a third time. Your order was rejected. tried to sell. SYSTEM PROBLEM. i lost 1000 because of them. the stock is in LIMBO. cant be sold.

I opened up an E-Trade Account and purchased Sirius Stock. I did not execute any agreement for quarterly costs. They say that I owe them for quarterly fees. When I signed up at E-Trade, I paid for the one online purchases of Sirius stock. E-Trade says I owe them for quarterly fees for nothing. They said they would Fed-X me an agreement that I executed regarding the fees charged. To date E-Trade has not provided the agreement - why - because I never executed one. They have robbed me and I intend to file a complaint w/Florida Attorney General and the BBB.

E*TRADE has been charging my father's account (who passed away on 9/11/07) $40 dollars a month for an inactivity fee. They have had the paper work to close the account since January 08, but have refused to close the account and continue to charge the account $40.00 a month.

Now they tell me (over year after my father has died) that they are still working on closing the account and they will not waive the inactivity fees and continue to charge it. I am the executor of the estate and need to get this resolved.

My CD matured on September 9, 2008. I called to have it closed and have the check mailed to me. I waited until 9/24/2008, and still did not get the check. I called on 9/24/08, and talked to a representative, Shannon, who told me I needed to put a stop payment on the check. The process will take 24 hours, she said. She told me to call me after 24 hours to make sure E-trade reissue a check and Fedex it overnight for free.

I called back on 9/26/08, and was told by 3 different reps, Eric, Michael, and his supervisor, Tarketia, that they had no idea what the status of the stop payment is. I told them I was told by Shannon, the process takes 24 hours. Now they are telling me it takes 48 hours. I decided to call back a couple of hours later, and this time I spoke with Amir, who told me I need to wait 3 business day to have the money credited back to the account. Tarketia, who claimed to be the supervisor said she was going to call me back after she find out what happened to the stop payment. I received no phone call from E-Trade at all.

I called E-Trade again on Monday, 9/29/08 and spoke to John, who told me the money is now available, and he requested that it be fedexed overnight and waived the fee. I got the confirmation number, and waited for my check. It is now October 1, 2008, and I still haven't gotten my check yet. I called and spoke with Leslie who told me she is going to research whether the check was fedexed or not, and said she or someone from E-trade will call me back the same day. No call yet. It's now almost 5 pm ET.

I called E-trade again, and spoke to Brian. Now he is saying that the check was mailed out regular mail instead of Fedex, which means there's a chance I might not get the check again. Is there any accountability on E-trade's part? Can we, the consumer sue them for our lost? See, if we send in our payment, and it was late, we got penalized. Why don't E-trade get penalized for all their incompetence?

I'm so stressed out over this issue that I actually got sick. Not to mention the monetary loss... I could have deposited that money and make a 5.35% interest at my local bank.

Etrade has just started charging a $40 quarterly account service fee, plus they charged me a reorganization fee of $20 for a single stock totaling $.25 which I NEVER PURCHASED.

Twenty dollars for one quarters worth of stock.

I have an official document for a 1 year CD that was purched 0n 10/25/2007 The maturity date 10/25/2008. Icalled to redeem the money and they say they have no record of my account I spoke to Bryan and he never got back to me I invested $5100.00 Please advise the next step to take

I opened up an E-Trade Account and purchased Cisco Stock on two occasions. I did not execute any agreement for quarterly costs. E-Trade has drained my online account and is refusing to issue me a CISCO stock certficate for my shares. They say that I owe them $887.00 for quarterly fees. When I signed up at E-Trade, I paid for the two online purchases of Cisco stock. Having only made two purchases, E-Trade drained my online checking account and now says I owe them $887.00 for quarterly fees for nothing. They are refusing to issue my stock. They said they would Fed-X me an agreement that I executed regarding the fees charged. To date E-Trade has not provided the agreement - why - because I never executed one. They have robbed me and I intend to file a complaint w/Virginia Attorney General and the BBB and as a federal employee, I intend to talk to the FBI and Postal Inspection Service regarding wire and mail fraud against E-Trade business practices.

I opened an account with eTrade in 2001 or so. I had very minimal activity after about 2005 and parked some stock there for several years. I logged in recently and see that the quarterly fees (I didn't know that there were quarterly fees of $40) + the interest charges on the quarterly fees had accumulated to $421.

What a surprise. eTrade has my $...do I have any recourse to dispute these charges. They tell me that I can't dispute the charges since they have the $. $421 owed to eTrade

I have a checking/money market account with Etrade. When I opened my account, I was told that I would get 100 free trades. After making my first few trades, I verified that I would get reimbursed. Several times they verified this for me so I did a few more trades. Again, I verified that I would get reimbursed. The last time, they told me that I should see a refund within 8 weeks. It has now been 3 months so I called them. They informed me that I'm not eligible for this promotion after I verified at least 6 times with customer service that I am eligible. They are just a bad company to deal with. I will be closing my account.

August 25 2008 10am. Called ERTrade banks 800 # to get cash for my two(2) matured IRA CD. (within the grace roll over period) They said, Send a signed FAX request to the number they provided. I did.

August 27, Called about status. They could not find FAX. They said re-FAX to a different Number. I did

Sept. 2. Call about status. They could not find any FAXes. I escalated the call to Sr. account manager Bryson, He said, He would personally look into the request & call back. He did not call.

Sept. 3 Talked to Sr. Account Manager Rob He said, He would follow up & call me back He did not. On the above 2 calls, I ask that the checks be sent FEDEX overnight.

Sept 4, 8am. The money disappeared from my account(on line) Sept 5, 1pm. I called the 800 # & ask for the FEXEX shipping #. Their answer was, They had 72 hours before they would send me my checks. Last night, I woke up wondering if this bank was in financial trouble. Was this why they would not send me my Money?? I hope not, but I am closing all my other accounts.

I lost interest$ because of this delay. Also,I lost a higher interest rate on my roll over CD.

I have a checking and savings account with E-trade. I called etrade for an unrelated issue and found out there was a hold on my account due to some discrepancy in our address. However, they had never informed us of this problem. As a result 10-15 checks that were written over the past month essentially bounced. If I had not called them for a completely different reason, who knows how long this would have gone on for. When I called them, they basically could not have cared less.

We will have to track down all the checks that were written and re-write them. I am not sure yet how much it will cost as I am not sure how many checks have bounced at this point.

ATM dispute. Charged four times for the same transaction, and no one ever fixed the problem. Never got my money back. ETrade is a chop shop joke.

I opened an equity line of credit with E'trade in 2004. When I sold the house in Apr 2006, escrow company paid off the loan and requested to close the loan. In Apr 2007, they reported that I had a late payment on that account. I disputed this through the credit reporting agency and also I called E'trade about the closed loan, and that how could they assessed a late payment of loan fee when they loan closed a year ago. They said that they did not close the loan.

If I was not honest, I could withdraw the whole line of credit after the house sold! I inform them of the house sold a year ago & the loan paid off through escrow company base on the pay off demand provided by E'trade. However, they never remove that negative reporting from my credit report.

After I sold that house, I bought another house in 2006. In Apr 2007, when I tried to refinance my current house (the loan rate was lower than what it is now), I did not get approved due to that negative reporting. I actually did not know about that negative reporting until the lender process my loan application.

Then I contacted E'trade. They still did not remove that item from my credit file. I would have to pay a higher mortgage rate with that negative info on my credit. If they fix it now, I still can not get the same loan rate as low as I should have it last year. But they still have not correct my credit file yet.

I have a Etrade account that someone was trying to take my money, I could get no help the bank took $300 in fees. I cant even find out whos name amount place wrote to. After 2 weeks no contact I called today demanding to speak with manager. I never got one. the guy told me for a hour he could tell me nothing or do nothing, I commit that I am disabled and paralysed from strokes. I dont leave my house but I would contact corporate and better buisness bureu. I hung up. I call back. ask to speak with super again. was told that they decieded not to do any buisness with me because I was not nice?

They took my money. I ahve 5 accounts there counting a brokerage acct. they said there closing them all. My disability will be return to social security, and they would do whatever they want regardless of my situation, I had like 9 each and each Charged me and I disputed immediatly. it took them 9 days to stop the debits. I have expensive medications and Mortgage check already mailed. if they close my accts I will lose everything for being persistant to get answers, there site garuntees $0 liability.

I was told I wouldnt get nothing back and it will be a while before I will have acess to my funds. My medication money is being held. they also have over $1000 of my bill money, a mortgage that will destroy me. I cant believe customer service can destroy your life cause they dont like you, I never cursed or raised my voice at all. I have been dealing with this for weeks. cant handle anymore of this, please someone help and act in my behave, My disabilities leave me help less

Etrade has blocked access to my trading account. I am not able to trade, access or view my holdings. I called and spoke with an Etrade representative, identified myself as the owner of the account and inquired as to what has happened. I was told that one possible reason for this could be a login to my account from a foreign country. Despite my inquiry I was not given a specific reason as to why my account was secured.

Explaining that I travel globaly 240 days a year also fell on deaf ears. I was then told that I would not be able to trade or cover any margin debts currently on my account until my account was reinstated. I was then told that a nortarized letter of Authorization is required within one hour from my phone call to re-activate my account however, after inquiring about what a letter of authorization is, I was not given an answer.

I further explained that I am in Iraq and do not have access to a fax machine and since emails with attachments are not allowed the only option available to me is the postal system which requires at least ten days for delivery. In this current stock market I am loosing several thousands of dollars because I can not trade. I attempted to draft what I thought Etrade might demand in an LOA and sent it via email despite their restrictions, a reply was received stating only that attachments are not allowed, please mail your request. To send the required letter requires a minimum of ten days and we are already long beyond that. At this point Etrade has offered no follow up, no assistance and no resolution.

Damages have not been determined at this time. There are margin interest cost that are rising but since I have no access to my account I am not able to determine this amount. The biggest losses come from not be able to trade stocks and given the current market condition this results in thousands of dollars per day.

Recently, I opened an account with E trade. As a first time trader ( I had a good tip- my stock has since climbed twenty points in forty days) I was excited to buy the shares I had a good hunch on. With the ''natural'' difficulty I had in opening this account ( June 5th, 08) and then verifying my identity, I have since requested the account closure and the return of my funds in the amount of 1000.00 USD On July 1st I called and spoke to an Adam Gardener and was assured that my account was closed and that I should find the return of my funds no later than the 3rd.

it is now July 16th and only until a 5th call on Monday the 14th was my request to have this account closed acknowledged; it was written on their books for July 15th @ 7pm! I do not feel that this is acceptable, efficient or a price I should have to pay considering it is not a trivial amount of money, it is a mortgage payment.

I have provided all the nessecary documentation proving I am the person who initiated the transfer of funds- such as a copy of my DL and passport and a w-2. I don't know what the proper procedure is on returning an account like this, but I do know that I am entitled access to my money and that it doesn't take 3 weeks to post a wire. I have no reason from them as to why the money has not posted, nor a wire number that states they have in fact issued it. Every time I have called, I get the same waste of time answer stating ''the money should post by today, if it does not, call tomorrow.'' or the really cute, '' I understand your frustration, I have done everything I can, the securities people that handle wires have gone home for the day.'' I have spoken to them (numerous times) well before 2pm and their incorrectly noted 7pm.

In 2002 I opened an account with E*TRADE after the company I was working for said I had to transfer my Employee Stock Purchase Plan to an outside broker. E*TRADE had no account fees so I moved the stock to E*TRADE. For some time (a couple years) I hadn't received any statements. I moved and called E*TRADE with the new address. My statements started arrived to the new address showing a negative balance.

Apparently in 2005 E*TRADE took started charging my account a monthly service fees. This was never disclosed to me. I called E*TRADE and basically told that they have the right to change the account conditions any time, and it was my fault not paying attention to the account changes available on line. An argument ensued with the bad attitude non helping creodont E*TRADE broker. I decided to cool off and wait for my next statement before dealing with E*TRADE again.

Surprise! When my next statement arrived, E*TRADE stole my stock and sold it. I never provided authorization for the transaction. I called again to discuss. They said I had to write to the complaints department. I did. A letter was received from E*TRADE shortly explaining that my account was closed due to inactivity and sold off due to the fees owed. Although the transaction didnt cover the total fees owed, they zeroed by account. Well thank you E*TRADE! I will file a complaint with the SEC.

The impact is based on principal. A private citizen owns property; in this case it is stock in a company. The government forces me to use a broker to hold this property; in this case it is E*TRADE. I consider E*TRADE to be in a contract and as long as Im alive my property is being managed by this contracted company. 1. You would think that something as important as changing a contract, not initiated nor in my benefit would be illegal. 2. You would think it to be illegal to continue to charge fees to an account beyond the balance of the account. 3. You would it to be illegal for a contracted company to seize my property and sell it.

I had many overcharges on my account with them, and the SEC even made them pay some back. I tried several times to cancel the account last year, and one time a customer rep said, well, let's see what we can do. I thought that the account was closed in December 2007, but they continue to charge fees and now it appears to be in negative. I wrote another letter last month with no answer. Please help.

I have lost thousands of dollars due to margin changes during the transactions. I continue to be charge fees.

I had many overcharges on my account with them, and the SEC even made them pay some back. I tried several times to cancel the account last year, and one time a customer rep said, well, let's see what we can do. I thought that the account was closed in December 2007, but they continue to charge fees and now it appears to be in negative. I wrote another letter last month with no answer. Please help.

I have lost thousands of dollars due to margin changes during the transactions. I continue to be charge fees.

During the subprime crisis of 2007, eTrade and I entered into a dispute regarding their handling of my joint account that they held. They ultimately sold all valuable holdings in that account to cover a margin call that could have been covered. Although I continue to dispute eTrade's handling of this joint account and their prior liquidation, in May 2008 I deposited funds into that account bringing the value positive.

Sometime during 2007 or 2008, eTrade intentionally and maliciously blocked access to my unrelated IRA account in which they are custodian. This is despite the presence of both equity and option securities that have time-value that, if not monitored, may loose value. I have called their company repeatedly regarding this action and they have intentionally withheld the access to these securities.

Instead, they have either disconnected my phone call (multiple, multiple times) or put me on hold under the premise that another individual was necessary to resolve this issue. I believe eTrade's actions are an intentional violation of the Securites Exchange Act of 1934 which requires they provide access to the securities for which they are custodian. I have filed a complaint with the Securites Exchange Commission.

Loss ability to sell declining securites and to sell securities with limited life (and to thereby sustain losses).

We are being charged inactivity fees of about 22% of our investment of about $10,000. This was never disclosed to us and when looking at the ETrade web site we could find nothing about such a fee. Had we known, we would never invested any money with ETrade.

We tried to transfer the $10,000 to another firm and ETrade refuses to do so and they intend to keep charging the fees for inactivity until the account is used up. We are senior citizens on disablity and social security. We both are suffering from life threatening diseases. $10,000 is a lot of money to us and we need the money to help pay medical expenses. We were inactive because the $10,000 was all we could invest. Now it appears that ETrade intends to steal our money because we can not afford to pay their inactivity fees. To all of you other people out there, stay away from ETrade.

My mother and my sister had a joint bank account with ETrade. My mom passed away last year and the account legally passed to my sister. Etrade has told her for three months that there is a hold on the account. She has called them repeatedly, she has sent a certified letter and a copy of my mom's death certificate to them, they refuse to tell her what the hold is and they in essence have stolen her money. Her district attorney and her attorney general have been no help. Beware before EVER investing a penny in Etrade.

No access to your own money, no one willing to do a thing about it! How many other people has Etrade pulled this on?

After losing money on my stocks holding which I was buying and selling through E-trade Canada for many years, on march 2006 I received an statement from E-trade Canada and it was showing $ 2254 net value of my outstanding account, on June 1, 2008 this value was $ 90. I asked e-trade what hapened to my money that I had in their trust they are not giving me answer.

I know depreciation of my stocks during this period was only $ 550, and I had received $150 myself but the rest is missing and E-trade is not telling me why they have taken my money. I want to alarm everyone to be carefull e-trade canada is taking moneis from your accounts by charging interest fees on loans you haven't ask them to give you and at the same time they are giving you credit or buying power that you never use.

eTRADE will do anything to delay access to your funds. Their inept call center is fatally flawed in that you have people with responsibilities who have no authority to execute. I was lied to, misled, put on hold, hung up on, stalled and finally gave up and closed my account. By the way, try closing your account at a REAL BRANCH location. The branches do not have a wire room like most stock brokerages, nor do they have a cashier. eTRADE is playing the float game with everyone's money. It is virtually imposible to contact anyone at corporate. Check out their revolving door management team. I predict they will go bust. Afterall, they are no Bear Stearns...The CEO et al should be indicted for malfeasance. Will someone contact the Attorney General and end this madness. I don't have the time or patience do pursue them. Just want to warn my fellow investors.

E-Trade initially said there would be a hold of 5 days before the funds ewre available for trading. During the week of 5/5/2008 I recieved 2 emails requesting I fund the account, plus a phone message from an E-Trade representative on 5/8/2008 to check to make sure everything with my account was satisfactory.

On 5/9/2008 I called E-Trade to ask when the funds would be available for trading. At that time I was told becuase it was a new account it would take 7 business days to have the funds available for use (i.e. 5/13/2008). Also at that time I was told there was a disable hold on my account because E-Trade needed confirmation of identity. I faxed that afternoon a copy of my passport, Social Security Card, drivers licence, Permanat Resident Card, Lease, Bank Statement, and another Investment Companies correspondence with me.

The following monday, 5/12/2008 I called to confirm that the additional ID was satisfactory. The representative told me that they were not received. At that time I realized that communication within E-Trade was very poor. Not wanting to send such detailed and private personal information again I requested that my account with E-Trade be closed, and that the $10,000 be transferred back to my bank account. The representative (Jason Moore) said this would be fine, and the funds would be transferred back within 48 hours. He could not give me a confirmation number, only his name.

48 hours later the funds had not been transferred as requested, so on 5/14/2008 I called E-Trade again and spoke with another representative (Fred Savvan), Jason Moore was not at his desk. I explained the situtatoin to Fred, and he tried to upsell me again and get me to send the ID information again. I refused, stating I had sent it once already, and had in fact requested that the funds be transferred and the E-Trade account closed. He checked his computer, and was rather vague but said the trnsfer had not been processed. He said he would handle the matter personally and arrange for the transfer in 48 hours. 48 hours later the funds had still not been transferred, so again I called ETrade on 5/16/2008 and spoke with Simon Moon.

Again I had to explain the situation, and again I had to refuse sending the paper copies of ID to enable my account.

Simon then said that the funds transfer request had not been sent to the department handling this, and it would take another 3 to 5 business days before the transfer was complete. I wsa quite irate, and explained I had already requested the transfer 5 days previously, and I wnated the funds transfered by the end of the day. He refused, and said the best that could happen would be that the funds would be transferred by 5/22/08. I requested that they review the initial request on the recorded record on the phone conversation (from 5/12/2008), recognize their mistake and expidite the transfer process. He could not help so I requested that his supervisor call me baclk within an hour.

30 minutes later Simon called back, and saidhe has re-requested for the funds transfer, and it would be 5/22/08 before teh funds could be guaranteed to be in my account. He had not reviewd the original phone call request, and could not explain why it takes so long to transfer money back, that took me 15 minutes to intially transfer into the E-trade account.

So far I am two weeks without access to $10,000, I have lost interest the bank account is earning, lost opportunity with several lucrative trades that I would have initiated in this time space, plus I have spent more than several hours trying to deal with E-Trade representatives. E-Trade, somewhere, has access to copies of many sensitive papers that relate to my Identity, and still, at the moment, have my money.

The invasion of privacy, the violation of trust, and the loss of money leaves a very sour and bitter aftertaste. I would not recommend E-Trade to my worst enemy.

I set up an Etrade savings account in June 2007. I funded the account with my Wachovia checking and set up this external account for free online transfers. I called first around September when every outgoing transfer failed several times. The rep said that the accounts were not connected to my username when I set up the account and that he had fixed it. I tried again several times and still the transfers never went through. I called again around October regarding this issue and after being transfered from department to department and mostly waiting on hold for 2 hours the last rep I spoke with said he could not even pull up my account and that I would have to write a letter to Etrade in Merrifield Virginia.

I wrote five letters and received no response. Each time I called the rep would tell me that I would receive instructions in writing and that all correspondence must be in writing. I finally sent a notarized fax April 16 and a certified letter received April 25 by Etrade requesting a wire transfer to close my account.

Finally Etrade sent me a letter. It stated that Etrade had decided to use its discretion to close my account. If I did not withdraw my funds they would be mailed to me. No time frame was given. Apparently it could take a century or a few millennia for Etrade to use its discretion to act on returning my funds. Meanwhile, I have no access and no information regarding my own money. It's frightening.

To date Etrade has not returned my money by wire as requested or by any other means. It has been almost a month since my faxed request and it is fast approaching a year since my first letter dated October 23, 2007, when I simply asked what the issue was and how to resolve it.

No access to my own funds for aperiod of over six months and constantly being told to write another letter or to wait for another letter and oh by the way your account has been restricted and i can't tell you why or advise you other than write or wait for anther letter has caused a great deal of anxiety.

And now that Etrade has said it will take its own time closing and sending the money back to me and when I call its either the restriction hasn't been lifted yet and the transfer can't go through until then whenever that happens or doesn't happen at Etrade's discretion, apparently or you will receive instructions in the mail (again?!!!) which I've already (finally) received. It has been disheartening being ignored for so long while I've been trying to resolve an issue that I've been given absolutely no information about and it's a real concern now that etrade has given itself an unspecified amount of time to close my account or continue to hold it restricted from my access according to its discretion. It is hard to sleep at night knowing that Etrade has decided to exercise its discretion and has complete access to my account whereas I , the account holder, have no access to my own money because Etrade has restricted my access with no explanation and no recourse with Etrade other than call and be rebuffed or write and be ignored. I am poorer than I was before I funded the account because I have no access to my own money and no real timeframe to expect it back.

My mother a co-owner on the account phoned E*Trade to discover that they never received a second check in the same envelope for $30,000.

E*Trade then began to question my mother on whether she knew what she was talking about, if the check had in fact been in the envelope, and questioned whether there was even a check for this amount to begin with. After speaking with three customer service representatives (of which names and employee IDs can be accounted for) she spoke with one representative who asked for the tracking number of the envelope.

I called this representative back with the tracking number and spoke with an individual who then also questioned whether I mailed the check. At which point she told me she would request a research on the account, which would take two days. My response to this was, You want me to wait two days while you find $30,000? Will I get any updates?? She replied with an attitude that it wasn'tt a big deal and there was nothing more that could be done, and that I would get calls with updates.

Not receiving any updates via phone or email I called in to speak with a manager for the status of the research the following day. I spoke with a manager in the banking department who requested I send a copy of the $30,000 check. I faxed him a copy of both checks that same day. The manager was then to call me when he received the fax. After not hearing from him I called the following day to attempt to reach this manager. After speaking with a representative who was hesitant to send me to this managers extension she gave me to a different manager, who then transferred me to the manager I requested. I left a voice mail and requested he call me back, he did in fact call back 20 minutes later confirming he had received the faxed duplicates of the checks. I was then told that I would need to wait two business days.

I called everyday a couple times a day checking on the status, still no updates were provided. The only response was that the research was still in process. I spoke with a different manager requesting I get back interest on the missing $30,000, he agreed and put a request in for this to occur. He stated that if it didn't happen automatically it would be manually credited to my account.

I also informed this manager that there was a signature request form on the front of the shipping envelope that I did not get returned to me either. I also informed him that I was doubted the entire time that I even had these funds, and wanted to know what would be done to make this right. He said he would give me back interest and immediate access to the funds once they were located, if they were located. He said the funds would be available the same time as the $10,000 deposit as they were supposed to be received by E*Trade at the same time.

February 22ND the $30,000 check was miraculous found somewhere in E*Trades institution. None of the representatives or managers I spoke with gave me an answer as to where it was, nor an apology. February 24Th I called E*Trade after looking at my account on line and none of the funds were available. I was then told the $10,000 would clear the next day (Monday 2/25/2008), but the $30,000 would not clear until Thursday or Friday.

I asked to speak with a supervisor regarding what I was told in the past about having immediate access to these funds. I was then left on hold for 25 minutes until I hung up and called back. At which point I was told to call the manager of the banking department the following day, and that their hours were 8a-12midnight.

The following day I called to speak with a manager, the representative would not let me speak with one. He said that it was a waste of everyones time since there was nothing that could be done. Bringing me close to tears I called my mom to ask if she would call and inquire about the issue while I went to class.

My mom then called and spoke with a supervisor named Jessette. Jessette told my mother that she would look into the problem of the funds not being readily available. My mother was very clear that a financial institution that lost funds and had bad customer service skills was not a place her and her daughter wished to do business. Especially when they suspected us of lying about sending the funds and then later not apologizing once they realized it was their error.

As previously agreed the funds were to be available and not held, so my mother informed Ms L that if the funds were not released by days end our financial business would be taken to another banking institution. Ms L assured a phone call regarding status and availability of funds by days end and promised back interest to the original deposit date within 24-48 hours. Neither have occurred.

As has been well documented by many others, I was also the victim of E*Trade's practice of severely delaying withdrawal of funds from an E*Trade account. The basic scam is: When you try to withdraw funds, E*Trade alleges suspicious activity on your account so it is placed on hold for security reasons. Then E*Trade insists on a ludicrous process of sending a notarized letter to them. This entire process is designed to insure maximum time delay. Generally it takes about 30 days to get your money if you are proactive in follow-up, otherwise, it may take longer. If you look critically at the process, you can see that its sole motivation is to create delay, not enhance security.

None of the Federal regulators (SEC and OTS in this case) get excited about a handful of customers who appear to have been treated badly by E*Trade in holding up their withdrawals for a few weeks before releasing the funds, based on E*Trade's bogus security concerns of accounts being compromised. E*Trade's explanation to regulators will be: Things unintentionally run amuck with improper supervision of the lowest level employees in an offshore call center, and unintentionally poor internal coordination. E*Trade should not be criticized for an overabundance of caution when it comes to security and fraud prevention in their customer's best interest.

However, given E*Trade's current precarious cash flow position, suppose this was a process orchestrated by upper management to be intentionally applied to thousands of E*Trade customers, rather than by accident and incompetence to a handful of customers? What if: An E*Trade executive devised a scheme to withhold meaningful amounts of funds from significantly more than a few hundred of its customers? First, what is a meaningful amount to a company the size of E*Trade? E*Trade claims on its website, in April 2008, to have $176 Billion in Customer assets, and 4.3 Million accounts. That is an average of $41,000 per account.

On Thursday May 1st I logged on to my ETrade account at 9:34 am to check my bank account balance, and had an available balance of $152.97. I made a print of this statement. When I checked my account later on I had a negative balance of $6.10 because ETrade had placed a hold on a transfer that I initiated on 4/29/08 from another financial institution (Bank Atlantic).

The money was withdrawn from BankAtlantic on 4/30/08. ETrade is wrongfully placing a hold on this money (even though it has been credited to the account) in order to purposefully bring the account to overdraft status in order to attempt to collect an insufficient fund fee.

Insufficient fund fees.

I have been a loyal customer of Etrade since they transfered my account from another brokerage. I gave them over $500 in commisions just for the month of April. I deployed to Iraq in Feb 2008. The account has worked fine until 3 days ago. I can log in but can't access the brokerage portion. I called the security center and answered all of their questions correctly but they told me I made a mistake and I had to send a notarized letter to unlock the account. I told them I am on a small operating base in Iraq and there is no notary here. She said there is nothing she can do - I asked to speak to a manager, explain to me why it was locked out, how I could prove my idenity in many other ways...she played the broken record game and said not without a notary.

I spoke to 3 other reps from this security department (plus two Etrade traders) and none of them cared if I had to risk my life or wait to go on leave in 6 months to fix this issue. Now I have to get my team of 10 to go on a special mission to a larger base to get a notary which puts all of us in danger from IEDs, small arms fire, and whatever else could be out there. I want to know if it is legal that they can lock my account and deny me access to my funds but unfortunately I do not have any means to fight this. I have written 10 messages explaining my circumstances and get a cut and paste reply I need to contact the security center. It's bad enough being in a war zone, but the fact Etrade will not even recognize that they are putting me in harms way and taking my circumstances of being in war is absolutely dispicable. Etrade should be embarassed on the national news.

Time, phone calls, potential enemy action, lost interest, stress, the list goes on.

I have an account with etrade which I am soon closing. I had it dormant for about two years because I wanted the stocks I had there to sit for a while. I logged in to buy another stock recently and noticed they had charge my account $280 which I learned was from not doing any transactions. How can I get this money back?

It took a year to transfer an account and required innumerable calls, emails, faxes, letters and submissions of documents. The average response time to email and letters was one month or more. After finally getting the account transfered, I tried to do an online trade today only to get a message that the account was not approved for trading and to call Customer Service (shudder). I did so and was told they needed a document that was sent to them well over a year ago.

After being put on hold for over half an hour, I was told they found the document (a major victory) but that it would take 2 or 3 business days to activate the account for trading and there was nobody I could talk to who could do it more quickly. ETrade has by far the worst customer service I've ever encountered.

Consequences unknown at this time. It will depend on whether the security I was attempting to trade goes up or down.

I was a manager of an investment club that decided to dissolve. We then divided our joint account into 12 individual accounts. Each account was opened with about 5k. Now we are hit with $160 per year in service fees. These fees were not in place when the accounts were opened. We I called to have the fees reversed I was told only the last imposed fee could be reversed. My account is now -$167.00. It contains 3 loser stocks that I was holding until they get above my purchase price.

E*Trades only offers to rectify the situation were for me to add more cash to the account so they could take out more fees. If I transfer to another firm they will assess me another $60. If I liquidate they will only charge $39. All though one holding is valued at less than the transaction fee. I am amazed that they don't notify the customer if there account goes into a negative cash holding. The only positive I see is that ETFC is down 70% since the started assessing me their fees.

I invested my money in a one-year CD with etrade. They never sent me a signature card and so when my CD matured the beginning of March and I faxed a letter saying I wanted my CD closed and my money sent to me, nothing happened. I had assumed they were taking care of it according to the instructions in my fax. About a week later I called etrade and thus began the miserable process of trying to get my money. They claimed they called me to tell me they needed a copy of my signature, but I received no phone call and no message was left. They said if I faxed a copy of my drivers lisence to them for proof of my signature with my account number and instructions to close out my account, they would do so. Again I waited and nothing happened.

I am a student and faxing costs me because I do not own a fax machine. I even got a thank-you in the mail from etrade thanking me for renewing my CD. I called etrade. I talked to a Christopher Bingham and he said I could fax it directly to him and he would take care of it. I called to follow up, not trusting they had received my fax, and I talked to several people over the next couple days. One representative said he spoke to Christopher and that Christopher had received my fax and was taking care of it. So I called the next day to follow up and got a different story. I spoke with a Johnny Shia and he said he could not get a hold of Christopher and did not have a record of my fax and asked if I could please fax it again. Obviously I was way beyond the grace period, but it was because of etrades ineptness. I consented only on the condidtion that Johnny gave me his personal extension. I was tired of hearing the same empty promise that the representative would follow up. Johnny Shia has been the only one to follow up.

I called etrads 800 number because I wanted to see if it showed that my account had finally been closed out and my money shipped. I spoke to someone who put me on hold for the longest time only to tell me he couldnt located my fax in the system (they supposedly scan them into the conputer becuae they have 3 locations). I then called Johnny to make sure my fax was received, and in fact it had been. Obviously their system? (if you can call it that) is a mess. He said it was being processed and he would call me when my money would be shipped. He actually did call to tell me they had sent my money Fed Ex, which I has specified in my fax. My money finally arrived April 24, 2008. Johnny was the only person I spoke to who actually does what he says he will do. Therefore, do NOT do business with etrade, but if you must talk to Johnny. In all, I had to send 5 faxes and wait a month and a half to get my money sent to me.

I attempted to call etrade to close my account. I was informed that I could not close my account because I had a ballance on my account. After selling my stocks, I had $25.97 in my account.

When I try to call etrade back, I am placed on hold for excessive amounts of time, never reaching a customer service representative, and therefore STILL can not close my account.

I need to close this account, but I am not able to close it because I can never reach a representative to close my account.

Etrade absorbed my $25.97 for a service fee and the account is STILL open.

The complaints about abysmal customer service are legion. I am now going through what many others have previously reported. Try to get access to the funds you have on deposit with them, and they will arbitrarily decide you are a security risk and freeze your account. You cannot get access to your account until you send them a notarized letter.

I have sent such a notarized letter which asks them to close my account and wire the funds to the bank account that they have previously verified. They are now refusing to do that because they have not yet authenticated my notarized letter. The first person told me it would take 48 hours, the last person I spoke with said that he will contact me next Thursday, which is 6 days after their receipt of my notarized letter.

This goes beyond stupidity, malfeasance and incompetence. Etrade has intentionally put in place customer service procedures to insure that any attempt to withdraw funds from Etrade will be very seriously delayed, which guarantees Etrade the use of your money for free.

Some advice to the people who want to sell stocks while they are going through this nightmare. As incredible as this may seem, while they are adamantly maintaining that they can't talk to you until you have authenticated yourself with this Notarized letter nonsense, if you tell them that you want to close your account with Etrade, they will conference a broker onto the phone call and let you sell all of the securities in your account, even though supposedly in their eyes you are not the authenticated account owner. This will not get you the use of your funds, but it will be helpful if the sale of all your securities will limit potential future losses.

How to explain this paradox? Since Etrade is intent on depriving you of your assets by retaining them for their own use, I strongly suspect that customer assets in the form of cash are more valuable to Etrade than customer assets in the form of securities, hence they are more than happy to let you liquidate securities even if you are not the real account owner. Their security procedures are designed to thwart only those potentially fraudulent transactions that would not unilaterally be in Etrades best interest. There seems to be no problem with potentially fraudulent transactions that benefit Etrade, such as turning securities into cash.

Hopefully what they are doing will turn out to be illegal, and the persons responsible for this scam will be awarded a sabbatical in a penitentiary.

Whatever you do, don't become an E*Trade customer. They charge you $160.00 per year (at least)in inactivity fees. Yes, that's right; they charge you for every quarter that you don't make a trade. This is MUCH higher than normal industry maintenance fees. They are extremely rude and sold all of my stock to pay for their egregiously high fees. You have been warned.

I wanted to buy shares yet i couldn't case these suckers did not make my payments available for 10 days and 7 days

I initiated a transfer from my e*Trade account to my bank. A list of verification questions was presented, none of which had any information that was related to me and therefore I was unable to select answers. I don't know where they got this information but it wasn't mine. The transaction failed. Then I tried a second time. A second set of questions was presented that did have information I recognized and I answered all correctly.

I got confirmation that the transaction was verified. Then my account was put into secure mode due to the incorrect answers to the 1st set of questions. This tied up my entire account. I called to get it cleared up. I was told that I had 1 hour to fax them a list of personal financial information including a copy of a government issued ID with my signature. I faxed it within 15 minutes of my call and had a successful transmission report. I called 1 1/2 hours after I faxed and was told that they did not receive the fax and that there was nothing more they could do for me since I didn't send them a fax. That fax option was only good for 1 hour. Then they told me that I had to get a notarized copy of the same information and overnight it to them, but they wouldn't give me an address where I could get a signature for the receipt...only a P.O. Box.

I was told that I could not speak to anyone else since I was not verified even though I had successfully answered all their questions and was able to logon to my account. Afterwards I checked online and found many similar complaints.

This has delayed funds that I needed urgently for medical treatment. They still are not transfering my money. I had to pay for a notary and because I have a disability and can't drive I had to spend $44 for cab fare to get the notarized information expressed to them. They took up 2 hours of my time while I was at work. VERY FRUSTRATING.

I have had lots of problems dealing with Etrade in the past, and when it seemed like they were going under I was very happy to transfer my money to another brokerage. I conducted the transfer about 1/15. In February, I checked on the transfer and found I had been shorted $43.38. It seems they waited to do the transfer until 1/31 when two funds paid dividends. The January account statement says they paid the dividends, but it never was included in the money which was transferred. Etrade says that the company that it transferred to should pay the dividends. I know that's not true. So I asked how the new brokerage was going to pay the dividend on Etrade Money Market Fund. They new I had them, so they promptly paid the 14 cents they stole (.0000000000000001% dividend). The other dividend of $43.24 has never been paid. I wasted 10 hours on the phone.

It seems there is some kind of racket where they can prevent their company from going under by outright stealing customers' money. I wish I could prove it. Even though the statement clearly shows they stole my money, they know I can't get justice without spending a lot more than $43.24. If there is a class action against this company, I will gladly join.

I opened an account with E-Trade in 2002 and invested $5000 in a speculative stock that slowly lost most of its value.

From 2004 to 2008 I did not use my eTrade account, and recently found out they had been charging $40 per quarter no activity, taking my account to negative $300.

Wishing to close my account, I mailed them a check to cover these fees bringing the amount owing to zero.

Upon phoning in and telling them I wanted to close my account, the operator handed me over to a new agent who said that a security restriction had *just* been placed on my account. The only way I can modify my account is to fax them ID verification and go through a series of detailed account history questions (which I very likely do not know).

The saga is still not over.

Roughly 10 hours of phone calls and hundreds of dollars spent to cover their no activity fees.

I have been trying to get my IRA CD closed and sent to me so I can invest elsewhere since it matured Feb 12, 2008. I have called, faxed numerous times, called some more, refaxed and been promised the moon. Today, Mar 10, I got a thank you from E*Trade thanking me for renewing my CD for another year. Not only did they illegally renew it but they lowered the rate from 5.26% to 2.85% even though it was supposed to always renew at the previous year's rate. I have all the documentation for all this communication but have no idea who to contact. I would think IRAs would be protected from this kind of abuse.

This is not the first time E*Trade has cheated my IRA. The last time it cost me thousands of dollars because they let a lot of money just sit for six months without transferring it to the proper place. I called over and over first to confirm they had received the instructions and follow-up calls. Every time I called they assured me that it was being processed. After 6 months they put it were it belonged but refused to pay the interest it would have been receiving. To the person that got turned down by E*Trade: count your blessings. Wish I had.

The funds are to be combined with other funds to make up a miminum deposit. Until this CD is received none of my IRA is being invested in the best way.

Due to my money being held I was fustrated and upset. With all the stress I have I really didn't need the extra stress from e*trade.

I spoke with a customer service representative, then his supervisor, Roger. Both told me the same thing. Company policy is to hold verified funds in a new account (regardless of history with the bank, or funds in other accounts exceeding the amount deposited) for nine business days following the date of transfer.

According to Roger, there is no way around this and it is irrevocable. Once the process is initiated, the customer is denied access to his money for the duration of E*Trades elective holding period.

Roger refused to connect me to his supervisor, refused to provide me his supervisor's phone number.

On February 11, 2008 I attempted to open a savings account at Etrade.com. I was declined due to information provided to Etrade by ChexSystems. I requested a report from ChexSystem. On February 15, 2008 I received a letter from ChexSystems indicating that conflicting information on my report and they were conducting an investigation. On February 18, 2008 I contacted ChexSystems for clarification. After several minutes on hold I was told that the letter was sent in error and there was no negative information on my report. A new report was to be sent.

I contacted Etrade with the above information and was told that the savings account would be opened once Etrade received a copy of the clean report from ChexSystems. On February 24, 2008, I faxed a copy of the ChexSystems report to Etrade. On February 27, 2008, I called Etrade to follow up on the status of my application. I was told that I needed to go online and resubmit the application. I did, and was declined again. I contacted ChexSystems who assured me that there was no negative information on my report. I called Etrade and was transferred to four different departments before I reached someone who told me there was nothing they could do. She said that faxing a copy of my report was of no benefit. I asked her what I should do; she offered no solution. I asked for a supervisor who told me that I needed to mail in an application with a copy of report from ChexSystems. She could not retrieve any information from previous applications and I would surely be declined again if I attempted to apply over the phone. I am a business owner. I would be appalled if a potential client of ours received this level of service while trying to give us their business.

I bought my home 3 1/2 years ago. immediately upon settlement e trade sold my mortgage to counrtywide. i received a letter from countrywide saying i would no longer make any payments to e trade. I never again heard from e trade and my morgage payments (i later got a home equity loan) are current. This week a letter was hand delivered to me stating i must contact e trade immediately. When i finally got through i was told that I owe them $18,000. Apparently, I got 2 mortgages when i initially bought my home and e trade neglected to sell the second one then took 3 years to figure it out. Now i actually have 3 mortgages, which most i have talked to said it rare. My contract with e trade states they will send me monthly statements which they never have. However, the fact is they do have a lien on my home & apparently i do in fact owe them $18,000. I am on a strict budget.

I do not have $18,000, nor will it fit into my budget. I feel e trade was neglectful on there end and find it perposterous that 3 1/2 years later this is dumped on me. The facts are they legally can sell my house at this point and there is nothing i can do. In addition, they can prevent me from selling my house which i plan to do in a year and 1/2. I have called many government listings and consulted with anattorney. I have a couple leads on how to correct this predicament, but nothing solid so far. Needless to say, this single mom of two young girls is completely stressed out! My credit is not at all as good as it was when i bought my home & to top it all off I am starting a new job in one week, which will also impact my ability to lend or refinance!

The stock I am going to buy has gone up 20%. If I could buy the stock 10 days ago, I would have earned another $2500 to $5000. I am now closing the accounts on ETrade and opening my investing account on Ameritrade or Scottrade. I have never felt so negative about a company.

Currently, my account still showing open and with negative balance. Also, the worthless stock that I requested to remove by filling out the worthless stock form and signed and sent in my passport to proof of ID...still wasting time.

On Monday, January 7th, 2008, I openned an account with eTrade.com online and used their Quick Transfer option to link my Bank of America checking account to my new eTrade account and proceeded to use the Quick Transfer to transfer a large sum to eTrade to fund the account. I read through the fine print to see that my money would show up in my account on the evening of the fourth business day after the transfer is made. That should have been yesterday, Friday January 11, 2008. The funds were, in fact, deducted from my BOA account on 1/9/08. This morning the funds were not in my eTrade account, so I called to their customer service line and spoke with a Gail Mooney. She explained that my funds would not be available in my account until January 21st! I asked her where their website stated that, whereupon she put me on hold, and returned shortly thereafter. My conversation with her lasted about 22 minutes, all of the while she was searching the eTrade.com website for the information about why my money would be pending for so long. She finally told me that it is corporate policy and could not explain further.

I told her that I wanted to close my account and get my money back. She told me that I could not get my money back until January 21st at the earliest. She explained that I would earn interest on the money while it was pending. I simply cannot believe nor accept that I could make a transfer to such a large brokerage like eTrade and basically have my money unavailable to me for two entire weeks. I just filed a complaint with the SEC and will contact BOA to determine if my transfer to eTrade can be reversed. Back in 1994, I walked into a major brokerage firm in Boston and wrote out a $3000 check to start my first stock account and I owned stocks that same evening. Flash forward 14 years and eTrade needs 14 days? Beware, I consider my funds hijacked by eTrade.

About 2 weeks ago I attempted to transfer some money from my eTrade account to my bank and was given a long list of questions to answer. Some of the were about people I had never heard of, so I dutifully replied that I did not know those people. In response, eTrade decided I was wrong about who I knew and blocked my account. When I called customer service, they asked another series of question, one was what year I had last closed on a mortgage. It had been most of 10 years, so I took an educated guess. They decided I was wrong again and further blocked my account. Their excuse was the information they were asking abut was public record. Unfortunately I was not in a position to run a credit check on myself to get this information. Customer service then asked me to fax in a copy of my driver's license, then I later found out they had lost it. They then asked me to send in a notarized note saying I am who I am. The search for a notary continues. While all this is going on, our stock hit a record high, but I can't get at it to sell it. This has been an ongoing disaster and eTrade continues to put the onus on me to fix their mistake. As soon as I get this fixed, I am done with eTrade. If a class action suit arises from this, I would be glad to get on board.

Unable to transfer funds out the eTrade to pay bills. Unable to sell stocks which are at a record high.

My company uses Etrade to deal with employee stock options. By default employees get a linked brokerage account. I activated this account and have been using it for over 5 years now. The last week, in December, I checked my account with no problems. I went back to work on 2nd Jan 2008 and when I tried to load my brokerage portfolio I get the 'you are trying to access a customer only feature'! It is now 7 days since I had access to my account with over $20,000 of stocks. The last two days the market has tanked and I have been unable to sell anything as I still have no access. I have lost thousands of dollars. I rang Etrade on Wed 2nd Jan to complain and was told it was too early to tell what had happened, they took my work telephone number and my email address and said if they could not contact me via these two methods they would use the message center. I am still waiting to hear ANYTHING from them. I called the next day and am told that she (Sheralee Thomas) has had no response from the queried department and I should wait! Now I don't know who to complain to. I have contacted them via their website mentioning getting a lawyer with still no reply. I am at my wits end with these guys and the black hole of communication they create.

I opened an account during the year 2000. I invested $1,000 dollars in two stocks. I bought fifteen shares of Dell for $800 and $200 of PCCLF which was a Chinese penny stock at the time. I would receive account balances usually in the sum of $750 to $650 for several years. My plan was just to leave it alone until I retire. I received a letter from E-trade a couple of months ago stating a discount for returning customers. When I contacted them for questioning they stated that they had sold my stocks because of inactivity. They insisted it was their right to sell my stocks even without my consent because of the $60.00 maintenance fee they charge per quarter year. I may have not read the fine print close enough, but how can they sell my stocks without some type of warning? I just don't understand how that can be legal in any format.

Therefore, I lost $1,000 dollars.

First, Etrade somehow messed up the online access to my account. After multiple phone calls, the only solution was to create a new user name. So now I have TWO user names with Etrade, but only one that goes to the correct account. The other one goes to... who knows where? It was obvious from this experience that Etrade has terrible customer service, so I called to close my account. And I called. And I called. And I called. And each time they transfered me and put me on hold forever. I eventually hung up. And, of course, the ONLINE bank won't let me close my account ONLINE! As of this writing I am STILL on hold!

Enticed by eTrade's online offer of 50 free trades if you opened up an IRA before December 31, I opened up an IRA online from eTrade's website a few days ago, while I was on my eTrade account.

I then logged onto my account and didn't see or hear anything about the promised 50 free trades. I wrote to their online Customer Service department from within my account. They said that the offer only applied if you opened up the IRA from within the promotional icon on their website. If you just went ahead and opened up the IRA on their website where they direct you to open it, the offer doesn't apply (you don't get the 50 free trades as promised.) Interesting-- I had read the fine print about the IRA promotional offer very carefully before opening the IRA, and it said nothing about this!

Secondly, they said, I was not eligible for the 50 free trades because another account with the same login ID had at some point been eligible for a promotional offer. I don't recall having taken advantage of any promotion offered with the account they referred to (my son's), which used the same login ID. Could this have been 6 months ago???!! Or never? Here they referred to the not available with any other promotion fine print of the open an IRA promotion to justify not giving me the free trades.

I can't believe this. I truly feel that I have been scammed. I am an intelligent and educated person, as I imagine most people using eTrade area, and I thought that eTrade was a professional service. I feel that this was a deliberately deceptive advertising campaign to get people to open up IRAs before December 31, with deliberately deceptive ways to create ways to not offer people the promised promotion.

I put a stop order on a trade on 12/11/07 for CFC for 1$2.60 but etrade waited until the price went down to $11.42 (five minutes after it touched $12.60). When I complained and showed them that their own stock chart was showing that the price was $12.60, they said I can complain to SEC and that I am not entitled to any adjustments on my losses. I got so ticked that I closed my account with them.

On November 12, 2007 I sent a $2000.00 check to e*trade to fund my RothIRA account. I was careful to put all information necessary for them to fund the right account. I waited two weeks for it to show up on my account. After that I called my bank and found the check had cleared e*trade's account on Nov 15 and my bank account on Nov 16. I called e*trade and they opened a reference to search for the funds. Four days later I called e*trade and was told my claim was rejected. I faxed copies of the check to them. I called three days later and was told they never received it (even though my fax showed a successful transmission). I faxed it TWO more times to TWO different fax numbers. This time one of the people called and verified she received it. I waited another week.

Called them 12/14 and was told they didn't receive any of the faxes. I gave them the name of the person who said she did receive it. They checked with her and yes they had it. Sorry, sorry, sorry for the difficulty. They would handle it personally. It would be in my account Monday 12/17. Well guess what? It's Tuesday evening and still no money. I'm at my wits' end! Their customer service is HORRIBLE. Too many people, NONE of them give a damn. I don't care how cheap they are this isn't worth it.

I have lost out on the interest my money was earning in my savings account before I sent it to e*trade and the stocks I wanted to invest in have gained in value in the 30+ days that I have unable to access my money.

On November 12, 2007 I sent a $2000.00 check to e*trade to fund my RothIRA account. I was careful to put all information necessary for them to fund the right account. I waited two weeks for it to show up on my account. After that I called my bank and found the check had cleared e*trade's account on Nov 15 and my bank account on Nov 16. I called e*trade and they opened a reference to search for the funds. Four days later I called e*trade and was told my claim was rejected. I faxed copies of the check to them. I called three days later and was told they never received it (even though my fax showed a successful transmission).

I faxed it TWO more times to TWO different fax numbers. This time one of the people called and verified she received it. I waited another week. Called them 12/14 and was told they didn't receive any of the faxes. I gave them the name of the person who said she did receive it. They checked with her and yes they had it. Sorry, sorry, sorry for the difficulty. They would handle it personally. It would be in my account Monday 12/17. Well guess what? It's Tuesday evening and still no money.

I'm at my wits' end! Their customer service is HORRIBLE. Too many people, NONE of them give a damn. I don't care how cheap they are this isn't worth it.

I have lost out on the interest my money was earning in my savings account before I sent it to e*trade and the stocks I wanted to invest in have gained in value in the 30+ days that I have unable to access my money.

We opened an account with etrade this month, and the first thing we noticed was that the funds were not immediately available even though they were immediately withdrawn from our bank account through the quick-transfer link. The second thing we noticed is that checks and a credit card were ordered without our knowledge or consent. The third thing we noticed was that in calling to close our account, which still did not have the funds available or even showing, we were told to wait until the funds did actually settle into the account and then transfer it back. THE CONSEQUENCES OF THAT WOULD BE A $25 TRANSFER-OUT FEE , WE STILL WOULD HAVE TO CLOSE THE ACCOUNT OVER THE PHONE. As luck would have it, when we called back, they were closed. we called our bank and we are having the initial withdrawal disputed and hopefully refunded without incident. We were also able to remove the link to our account once we searched through our account info page, so hopefully that means etrade cannot have any future access to our account without legal repercussions. We will have to call them tomorrow to close the account, and are hoping through explaining that we have intercepted the pending funds by unlinking our bank account - they will close it without incident or unwarranted charges of any sort.

So far, since we are still in transit of trying to get our money back, I cannot say for sure that there are any damages presently, but if things do not go as planned we could lose up to $300.00, which is the amount we transferred in hopes of buying stocks.

I have several complaints about e*Trade. Their system for executing Limit Orders did not work. The stock price was well above my sell price for two days and the transaction did not take place. I did a market order and ended up making a bit more, but the action I entrusted to them didn't happen. Their dividend reinvestment system didn't work very well either. I own an ETF that generates a monthly dividend. Every month I would have to call because the dividend would not get reinvested.

Then one day my account disappeared! I called and this guy who seemed to know what he was talking about assured me that it was a common system malfunction and everything would be fine within 24 hours. It was restored within a few hours, but the cash I had in the account disappeared a few days later. Another call and it was restored. Then I made a purchase using that cash. When it disappeared again my account went negative. Suddenly nobody was reassuring me. The reps were treating me like I was doing something nefarious. One young woman actually tried to explain to me that I owed e*Trade additional money. This lasted about two weeks before I got ahold of someone who bothered to look at my account history and realized there was a glitch. As soon as it was fixed I began to transfer the account to another brokerage. Guess what. The cash disappeared again and I ended up with a negative balance in my new account. Fortunately, my new broker dealt with e*Trade and in a few weeks had recovered the cash. It all just took a lot of time and caused a lot of frustration, there were no monetary losses. However, I was diligent, if I hadn't been paying attention who knows what would have happened.

We opened an Etrade account over the phone on Dec. 3, 2007. We funded the account by using the quick transfer. AFTER using the quick transfer, we were told that there was a five day hold on our funds and that we would not be able to trade until the following Monday. The following Monday we were not able to trade and were told we would be able to on Tuesday, the next day. On Tuesday we were not able to trade and were told we would be able to on Wednesday. On Wednesday, we were finally able to trade and placed an order only to be told that we could not buy stocks under $10 for the first 10 days. No one informed us of this either on the phone or online. We then decided to trade other stocks and were charged $12.99 even though we were promised $8 trades. In the meantime we missed out on approximately 40%-50% in gains while waiting to trade. This company is very disorganized and there are MANY HIDDEN FEES INVOLVED. BUYER BEWARE!

I lived overseas while Etrade began charging service fees. Upon return, the very confusing ETrade account statements were being monitored by my wife. The service charges appeared to be hidden in margin buys to which we have never signed up. What should have been around $800 in the account dwindled to $200. Etrade is the most pathetic of the financial industry who instead of creating good products, rather improves their bottom line by hurting customers with excessive service charges.

I lost about $600 and much time chasing reasons for the account being choked by service fees.

I have been trying to open a savings account with E-Trade since October 23, 2007. I gave up today (Dec. 6), in part thanks to finding this web site and all the other complaints. I called E-Trade for the final time today and ended up telling them to forget it. After my initial online application I received a phone call (10/25) from E-Trade stating that they needed more information. Since I then decided I wanted a joint account, they said to let the original application lapse, then re-apply for a joint account which I did (10/26). I never heard from them, and called on 11/5 and was asked to fax copies of social security cards and drivers licenses. This was done on 11/6; the account was never opened.

On 11/9 I called again, was told they would process a new application and that I needed to fax social security cards and a utility bill showing my mailing address as well as my physical address (they're different). They gave me a new account number and a different fax number. I complied on 11/9, and called them an hour later to make sure they had received the fax. They had. I spoke with a manager, who assured me he would call me back by the next day to let me know whether they had all they needed. He never called. On 11/15 I called again, spoke to a senior banker who assured me they had everything they needed and it was ok to process the account, and that he would call me by the next day. He never called. He had also given me his phone extension, but was never available when I tried to use it.

On 11/20 I called again, asked the person I spoke with to have the senior banker call me asap. He did not. On 11/26 one of their representatives called me, asked me and my husband a few questions to make sure we were who we said we were, then told me the account was approved and would be opened within 2-3 days. It was not. When the account was still not activated, I called again on 12/3, and spoke to an account specialist. He said he would have someone call me with a new account number by the next day. Guess who never heard from anyone? On 12/5 I went to E-Trade's web site and emailed their customer service dept. this entire scenario, complete with the names of the people I had spoken to. Their response? They sent me an email, and told me to call them to settle the matter! I did call them today, and when the person on the other end of the phone again told me they had no record of any account in my name, and that the senior banker was not available for me to talk to him, I finally told them to forget it, that I had found this web site and was going to post my story. I've joined the apparently large crowd of people who will NEVER deal with E-Trade again. Thankfully I didn't lose anything but time and paience.

The frustration of being treated this way, of giving my personal information to so many incompetent people so many times, of being made to feel like I was being interrogated. This was the WORST transaction I have ever experienced in my 62 years on this planet. I am on disability, and this experience has caused me so much stress that my fibromyalgia is acting up again.

I tried to open a Saving Account online with Etrade Banking in order to take advantage of their higher interest rates and consolidate my savings and brokerage accounts. When I opened the account, I tried to set up a quick transfer from my banking institution to my new Etrade savings account. While verifying my bank account type, I accidentally clicked on a savings button instead of the checking button. Upon verification that the account was set up, I transferred $100 from my banking institution, but Etrade denied my transfer.

After calling Etrade to clarify the issue, they placed blame on the banking institution and told me to call them. However, my bank did not find anything wrong. I called Etrade again, informing them of the situation and was told to attempt another transfer. That transfer was denied and this occurred three times. To date, Etrade has blocked my account and no representative is allowed to speak to me except through written letters. They have not responded.

My husband and I are in E-Trade Nightmare Hell. We have nearly a half million dollars invested in an IRA there. Two years ago, my husband called to purchase a $100,000 CD within the IRA account, our only one with E-Trade. It took two hours, which should have been a sign. (The other sign was E-Trade taking over three weeks to open the IRA with all this money without notifying us--a common complaint, I see from these boards. Just found my desperate letters on that.)

Anyway, some idiot moved the $100,000 out of the IRA money market without my husband's permission. Mind you, we weren't surrendering the IRA funds-- just wanted to transfer the hundred thou out of the money market into the CD within the tax-free IRA account.

Fast forward to last week. The IRS sent us a bill because we hadn't paid taxes on the interest on the $100,000 CD!

Turns out they moved the money from the IRA and misregistered it as a regular account. We cannot get any satisfaction from their outsourced Philippino help line, nor from the local relationship manager who was unbelievable rude and had a real blame the victim attitude.

In four separate phone calls to four separate people, we were told they would solve the problem within 48 hours. It's been a week. Every phone call says something different, but one of their people said: We can't do anything. You just have to pay the tax until the CD expires in 2010. Unbelievable.

I am in the process of pulling out all the other funds and putting them at another brokerage. We may hire a tax lawyer. E-Trade has not been able to produce anything historical that shows the money was moved out of the IRA. We have statements--new account number, true--with the IRA statements, so didn't realize until the IRS notice that this money was invested outside the IRA without permission. They are so horrible.

Consequences kick in soon unless we can resolve this because the IRS says we owe them tax on 2005 interest gain and presumably will continue to do so until the CD comes due.

Until I read the other complaints on this site I was starting to get paranoid that I was on a list generated to cause less lucrative clients to close their accounts because their bungling is so outrageous. I have had Checking, Saving and HELOC account for 2 years but I keep very little in them and use E*TRADE to move money between all of my other accounts with tranfers to and from. I have direct debit from checking to pay the HELOC. Once last year they failed to take the HELOC payment from my checking account stating I had insufficient funds - I did not, and charged me $25 that I had reversed.

This year in Feb they just slapped a $25.00 dollar insufficient funds charge on for no apparent reason and I called and had it reversed. I noticed it again last Friday and called in and had the charge removed and then yesterday (Sunday) I got a call on my cellphone from a third party organization - not E*Trade, wanting to know why I haven't made my HELOC payment this month - it is showing as being already taken from my account 10 days ago.

UGgggh, I feel trapped, I hate E*TRADE. I only have the Checking because it gave me 0.5 point deduction on my HELOC with direct debit. I can't afford to pay off my HELOC right now.

The result was that the stock $ value that I thought was stable was being siphoned away by Etrade without my knowledge over the course of years. So, my stock value of $841 is actually worth $341 after Etrade collects its cash calls which are actually $40 quarterly fees for nothing (no activity on my part).

E*trade sent ME email and asked me to call in for important account matters. I called and after giving them all my personal data, including the challenge question that they had asked me before for security reason, they told me that it was still NOT enough to verify my identity! Then they asked me lots of questions that they said a third-party company came up with through searching on public records, I believed I had answered correctly since I was really ME, but according to E*trade, I failed! TWICE! They chose to believe someone who got info from public records (guess it was just somebody with the same name as mine) and NOT to believe ME who had done business with them for over 10 years! Well, they will never have to verify my ID since I am closing all my accounts with them!

During the period I did not have access to my funds I lost the opportunity to purchase stock options that increased 30% before I could make a buy through ETrade. I told them which stock I wanted and how many shares and that they had my money. They refuesed to allow the trade.

Opened an ETrade 'account'--MM; Sept. 26/07 1k, which was 'swiped and deposited' that day. Three days later, still Zero in the account. Was told after a phonecall to a 'different rep,' (Mr.Sullivan did not pick up) that it would be 'another five days before I'd be credited.'(Oct 2, if I count correctly). Still Zero on that day. Oct. 4 I called again, and a very disgruntled Mr. Sullivan answered, saying my account would be blown off to seven days. (Mind you, the check was cleared and shows on my personal bank records). I read through three more hrs ETrade's fine print, and learned of a nine day hold, and then of an ll-day hold, All for no reason. Me thinks this is ramped up each time I 'log in.'

I look for this to be a long process, but there are other options such as smallclaims court (in CA, they're rather stringent) and filings with the SEC. Other undisclosed snafus are ordering checks sans telling you the cost + ordering a debitcard sans disclosing cost(s). One thing I do is call each day lodging my concern at high decible levels--that the individual will hear and get sick of hearing me. The advantage is that there is a physical office in the vicinity.

There is no resolution at this writing and I expect a protracted effort-that this company thinks that I am a woman sans support. ETrade needs to rethink its policies regarding consumer treatment, especially in the era of 'blogs.'

mailed in an application requesting a custodial saving account.One week later I recieved two messages requesting proof of address and providing E-Trades fax number. I was advised to call customer service if I had any questions. I called customer service and the rep could not find any of my information in the system and did not seem to know what I was talking about. I blew it off and faxed my proof of address.

The following week, I called customer service and asked about the status of my account. I explained to her that I faxed in proof of address a week ago. She said that my information was not in the system and that my application had not been receeved yet. I told her that it had been received because two reps. had left a message requesting more information. She did a search using my child's name and still could not find anything.Her only response was that sometimes it takes 10 days to process information (10 business days had already passed).

I took the hint and paid $50 to have my bank issue a stop payment on the check.

I put a large amount of money into an E*Trade CD with the explicit understanding that on the 30th of the month, my interest money would be transfered into my checking at another bank. First off, they entered the account as quarterly payout. I didn't receive the interest payout the first month and even after they corrected it to monthly (my representative at E*Trade initially screwed it up) they would not send me the money until the next month.

When it came time for the next payout I was informed there's a three day hold on the funds before it can go to the other bank, which contradicts what I was told by at least a half-dozen people at E*Trade.

This company is so disorganized, one part of it doesn't know the other is doing and they will lie to cover it up. Every customer service person will give you a different response.

Apart from not getting the funds on time, due to that, I had $100 of bounced check fees.

We lost over $6,000.

I opened this savings account online and initiated the ACH transfer of the initial balance from my checking account. 3 days later they took the money from my checking account. It did not post to their account. Per their agreement the account is not fully open until they have a signature card on file.

I received said card and returned it to them 3 days later. Over a week passed and still my money did not appear in my savings account. I sent an email. The response was, Unfortunately, using the information provided in your email, I was unable to locate an account in your name. However, we may need to use different identifying information to locate your account. Please contact us at the number listed below so that we may further assist you.

I called the 800 number and spoke with a representative who spoke so little English that she absolutely could not understand me or why I was calling. I asked for a supervisor. After a VERY long wait, the same rep comes back on the line and says there are no supervisors available. I terminated the call and sent another email letting them know that this is unacceptable and requested to close the account. No response. I drafted a letter ordering them to close the account and return my deposit and put it into the mail.

I also Googled to see if others had this sort of problem and was dismayed at what I found! I hold out little hope that I will ever see my money again. Fortunately it is only $25.00. I am now extremely concerned that I will have close my checking account to keep E*Trade from making illegal transfers from it. I have my direct deposit and all my automatic payments for things like my utilities attached to that account. Closing it and opening a new one will be a hardship. I can not tell you how sick I am about this. Yes, I do accept my responsibility for not seeking out this information in the first place.

My initial research was into the savings account itself, not into problems with E*Trade and that search turned up good reviews including that they have outstanding security features the main selling point for opening this account.

I obtained online approval for an e-trade mortgage. I paid the fees required, had a closing date established for the property I was buying. On the very date of closing, just before I left for the attorney's office, I rec'd a call from E-Trade, stating that my rate would be different (higher, of course) than the paperwork already signed. I would need to agree to the higher rate for them to fax the req'd documentation to my attorney's office.

I told them that this seemed to be a 'bait and switch' operation, and that everything was prepared to go. The supervisor stated that there is fine print in the paperwork stating that they have the right to change anything, even AFTER closing. I stated that I would postpone closing over the weekend, while I thought about all this.

My submission fee was returned by E-trade when I backed out of the deal. However my attorney fees for all work done to that point(title search, time, etc) approached $1000, which I had no recourse to request a refund. Incidentally, the E-trade mortgage supervisor stated 'your attorney shouldn't charge you unless you proceed with the deal' and when I stated that no attorney would prepare all this (weeks of phone calls with online department and so forth), she stated 'well I've only been doing this for 10 years, so I guess you know more than me.'

I was correct about the attorney fees, and never rec'd any apology or credit from E-trade. I also had to fight to get a partial refund of my real estate deposit, as I was considered to be the one in default by the seller. My total out-of-pocket, in addition to losing the deal itself, was approx $2000.

My loss is almost $6000. I am disgusted.

I placed an order with Etrade on Aug.16, 2007 around 10:30 EST. the order number was 235 I wanted to sell 30k shares at a limit price of .13 cents the stock closed at .135 and my order was not filled (to me that is a red flag). They told me that there system went down and they would do a trade inquiry. The next they tell me that the trade stands. I told them that does not make sense since the stock closed at .135 cents.

I said my order should have filled. There response was they don't know what happened and that it could have been an institution that did this trade in house. My response was to have them send me level 3 quotes and as of this evening I still have nothing.

I continue to find it extremely difficult to sell stock and collect my money. etrade charges $50 if you would like a check or 7/10 days to establish a transfer to my bank. This process is unnecessarily complicated - I am forced to use this with my employer and am frustrated that I can't get access to my money!

Without explanation our Etrade accounts were suddenly frozen. This includes 3 separate Etrade accounts for my husband and me, 3 accounts our adult daughter has with Etrade and an investment club account, where I am the acting president. We have sent letters to Etrade corporate, requesting information and a time frame to release our funds. We have been told our accounts are under review. Exasperated and unable to withdraw funds or even learn the balance. We have sent two letters with our phone numbers and email address. No reply.

Since we do not know the balance or even if our current stock positions are still there, we do not know of the losses in our account. We certainly have missed chances to buy/sell stocks. The most perplexing issue is WHY?

Having read their promotional material, I applied for new accounts for myself and spouse on March 6, 2007 with E*Trade Canada. Since then I have been subjected to such a continuous series of incompetent bungling as to cause me to decide not to use this company. I have received repeated telephone messages stating that E*Trade cannot open my account because they are missing information. When I call back, the representatives are not knowledgeable as to what E*Trade has in fact received, and in every instance they already have the information. I am then promised that the account will be opened within 2 days, or 48 hours. The process is then repeated. A seemingly endless do loop.

It is now April 26th, and today I got another such message, again asking for information that has been delivered long ago. I have repeatedly demanded to speak to a supervisor, but have been ignored. I have sent numerous e-mails to their customer Service department, but the response has been more of the same---need missing information that they already have. This firm is so incompetent they should be put out of business. I cannot trust them to handle my money! I now have a one inch thick file of telephone logs, e-mails, and letters----all to open an account??? Unbelievable. If anyone is thinking about opening an account with E*Trade and would like more information, please contact me and I can make copies of correspondence available.

I have wasted hours and hours of my time in trying to do a simple matter---open an account and give this company business.

I ran into a situation where I needed to pull some funds out of my ESPP. So I logged into my etrade account and sold off about 46 shares. It even allowed me to setup a direct link to my bank for transferring the money. After waiting for about a week for my account to be settled and have the money show up in my etrade account, I was ready to transfer it to my normal bank account. After logging into their secure website, I clicked on the link to make transfer. Immediately I was hit with two pages of security questions. All of which was information never offered to my employer or to etrade. I'm talking questions about my family members and from my past like a vehicle that I owned and paid cash for (never financed).

I answered each question accurately and it still said that it couldn't verify who I was and to call their 800 number for verification. I did and got the answer you have to send a notorized letter saying you are who you are. I'm like NO! I've been put out enough. First, I have to wait a week for the stock I sold to go into my etrade account (which I guess anyone can access my account and do). Second, you allowed me to put my bank information in and set it up for direct transfers with no security questions (again, I guess anyone can log into my account and do that). Third, you have (without my knowledge and consent) did a background check on me to decide what personal security questions to ask me which only I am supposed to know and the answers I correctly gave, you said were not correct (I don't know how). Forth, You make me call a 800 number for the security department and you ask me for my social, my address, my father's middle name (challenge question) to verify who I am and are able to talk to me about my account over the phone yet they still won't allow me to transfer my money because they say that anyone can access my information. Hello!

If that is so, then Etade is not a secure site and my information is available to anyone. Also, I have spoke to several associates with etrade and they all say that have no manager or no supervisor I can speak with and that I have no choice but to comply and send a notorized letter saying I am who I am. Which to me, seems less secure than the measures I took in the beginning. After yelling and screaming at Etrade people, I pull a little truth out of one of them saying We have to protect our client's interest...meaning my employer.

I understand that to a certain degree, but I told her that I was not cancelling my account but just withdrawing some funds from it to help me with another situation. And that they needed to realize that the money involved was not my employer's money, it was not etrade's money but it was MY money! Because I had issues with thier handling of the situation, they promptly locked me out of my access to my accounts, disabled my etrade checking account and my etrade debit card to keep me from pulling my money out. All because their 3rd party security team didn't have my personal information correct (which I didn't give consent to have).

I was very dissappointed with their handling of this entire situation and as a result, I have decided to cancel my contributions to Etrade and opt out of my ESPP with my job.

Because I was unable to transfer my money from that account to my personal bank account, I ended up bouncing checks and incurring alot of overdraft fees and NSF fees!

This was last year, but I see recent complaints with the same result so I thought I present my experience. I had etrade many years ago, but frustrated wit the poor service I transferred to Harris Direct. Then recently HD was acquired by Etrade. First problem was the day the accounts trasferred and a new online access to etrade was provided - didn't work. I tried to call in and waited like an hour and a half on the phone. Couple days later I called back and waited like 1 hour. I decided this was the old etrade! Even with a future promise I could have a direct number of a person the call for any requests, I decided to tranfer the account (smart move). It took more than a month to transfer the accounts - another problem in the transfer when only a small part of the cash trasferred. Bottom line, I learned my lesson. Do not accept poor service, change providers and move on.

I applied for a promotional offer giving me Morningstar access for one year if I deposit a certain amount of money. I apply for the offer, deposit the money, and then proceed to get a myriad of unrelated and inaccurate reasons why they won't fulfill their obligation, starting with the classic 'it takes 8 weeks'. If you have a certain amount of money in the account, they offer access to a free financial advisor. I called the guy with questions about portfolio allocation, and the like but all he wanted to do was sell me a Goldman Sachs adviser fund with a front-load and heavy expenses. Give me a break!

He kept calling, but when I told him I wanted to make a portfolio of cheaper funds he wouldn't return my calls. Go figure! At the moment, I'm sitting here on hold on the phone with them an unusually high load of phone calls... But it seems like every time I call it's unusually high. They need someone who can do math to figure out the definition of 'usual'. That's what I like, bankers that can't do math.

On 2/20/07 I responded to a savings account promotion with an initial deposit of 2 checks with a detailed cover letter for the distribution of money in a one-year CD and a savings account. On 3/5/07 I contacted a Rep to find out why no accounts were opened. He stated he would check it out and get back with me but he never did.

On 3/6/07 I canceled the accounts and sent a confirming email 3/7/07 with a request my funds be returned.

On 3/9/07 I noticed the accounts were opened but the distribution of funds was very different from what I had written in plain English on the applications originally sent.

Since 3/9/07 I have contacted about 13 Reps, one supervisor, sent 2 Faxs and one letter to a Sr.VP with NO RESULTS

Mr. Jarett Lilien in Arlington VA is the president of ETrade. Mr Bob McDonnel is the Attorney General of VA. These two will be meeting soon if I do not get some action by 3/21/07

I have lost several hundred dollars in lost interest and several hundred dollars because of interest rate changes during the month. The stress of dealing with these people is greater than combat

I have talked to a dozen customer service reps via email and phone calls, personally talked to 3 traders and spent over 4 hours on hold trying to close my brokerage account prior to getting additional service fees. I have been doing this for weeks and weeks with no success. Every time I call I get a different person, who tells me a different story of what I need to do to accomplish this account closure.

They tell me they are going to send me emails with specific dates and times when action will take place, I never receive them. They REFUSE to let me talk to a supervisor or manager, and any time I ask I get put on hold for a minimum of 20 minutes.

E Trade Customer Service wait times exceed 90 minutes.

e*Trade changed all of their ABA routing numbers several months ago. To inform customers that there checks would no longer be valid, they say they put a pamphlet in with account statements. They failed to use their own account alert system which would make logical sense.

I used a bad check to pay my property taxes. After receiving my check back as a closed account I incurred over $300 in penalties and fees.

I am the treasurer for an investment club. We maintain a portfolio valued in the low 6 figures. While not large, I would think this size account would merit decent service from our broker, Etrade, but it does not. We did not choose Etrade, they acquired us when Harris merged with Etrade. During the merger we were sent information related to accessing the new website and account feature but we were not provided with or requested to complete any new account applications for our existing account. In spring of 2006, we changed officers and sent a letter of instruction and club resolution to Etrade indicating the individuals who were to be named as agents for the account. These documents included signatures of the new agents and the club's officers.

Over three months passed with no action or response from Etrade. We called to inquire about the status, we were informed that they received the letter of instruction but did not do as instructed because they need us to complete new account forms. Of course they did not inform us of this situation. We requested the forms, we completed them, had a question about a particular line on the form so I called the help line, through this call I was informed that the forms I had been sent we out of date and they would send me new ones. Pretty inconvenient, as a club, we have many members, getting the signatures of all members on an application is time consuming and difficult, to be told the three pages of signature I had were on the wrong form (which I got from Etrade) is inexcusable, but I got the new form and obtained all of the signatures again.

It is by now Fall, the completed brokerage forms, along with a bank account application and a new letter of instruction requesting a transfer from the brokerage to the new bank account were sent to Etrade, all in one package. The bank account was opened, the money transferred, however they will not allow our club’s agents to access the new account or the old account because they say they never got the application (that was in the same package). So they removed money from our brokerage account and placed it into a bank account but will not tell us what the account number is or allow us to access it. And customer service is helpless to assist, they claim to have not received the package (thought they have a copy of the first sheets and acted on the last three sheets of what was in the package) and they suggested that I complete new application forms.

Faa, like that is going to happen, we are closing and moving to a full service brokerage. By comparison, in one month, working with Charles Schwab, I have successfully opened three trust accounts, two college saver accounts, a Rollover IRA account transfer, a trust bank account and transferred several stock Drip account balances with only two phone calls and sending forms once.

I deposited $2000 from my bank via on line transfer on 12/29/2006 with the plan to buy some AAPL stock before they made their announcement at Mac World. The money was taking from my bank with in 2 days but didn't show up in my account for 12 days. the first time I saw the money in the bank was after I complained 3rd time by this time it was too late. The person I talked to the for the first time told me that it would take 4-5 days but took 13 days.

I've had an etrade account since 2000 and I moved and the statements did not follow me. Suddenly, when I updated my records I had a long list of accumulated account service fees. I contacted the 800 number and the representative told me ways that I can avoid them, but would not give me any credit for these fees.

I have accumulated $474.36 of fees that had I known that this were to occur, I would have ended my relationship with E*Trade.

Why open an account with E*Trade? Biggggg Mistake!! I've been with E*Trade since 1998 trading stocks and options. I've seen it all. From their 2000 IPO distribution scheme to call waiting time of anywhere from 15-45 minutes to higher commissions! Even I place my orders online, still have to call in when there are problems with order executions and face the long 30 minutes wait.

I quit trading in this account because of all the problems and now E*trade has started charging me what they call inactivity fee of $40 dollars every three months. Finally I decided to close this account and transfer my securities out. It has been over a month and I am still going in loops and having problems with them closing this account. There are some worthless stocks in the account and even though I have filled the proper form they have not cleared the account so it can be closed. Ever time I call, the call is redirected to offshore customer service like Philippines , and after waiting more than 30 minutes you get disconnected! As much I have had bad experience with E*Trade , I enjoy doing business with Ameritrade, Fidelity and Scott Trade.

Initially when we moved 6/05 I put in a change of address to e-trade via online. Recently I phoned at least 12 times and got no answer I finally got someone. A James Gray. He tells me my 95,259 shares of BICO was sold in June 2005 to pay activity fees of $96.02. The one statement I received I thought was telling me about my shares...I'm a novice and didn't realize it was telling me they sold my shares for $28.57. Today my shares are worth over $16,000.00 I asked James if I had 1 million dollars worth of stock would they sell them to pay the $96.02 without calling me....he didn't have an answer. I was never notified I owed etrade any amount. No letters, no phone calls. they sold my remaining stocks to pay this fee without my consent or knowledge.

I have lost over $16,000.00 as of today Sept. 2, 2006

I recently moved. During the move, I reported my debit card stolen immediately after it was stolen. During this conversation, I also asked the CSR to change my maiden name to my married name and change my address. Six weeks, ten phone calls and two faxes to ETrade later, I still have no new debit card. Each time I called ETrade, the CSR indicated that they could not see my history, but a new debit card was in the mail.

The last time I called (and after a particular heated exchange with a CSR), my husband's debit card was reported stolen to VISA (the next day). Neither me nor my husband reported this card missing. My husband and I have reason to believe that the E*Trade CSR stole his identity to close his debit card (as this person had knowledge that we would have no access to cash if my husband's card was reported stolen). I am afraid that since this person used our personal information to close his card that he may continue to use our personal information to perform other devious acts.

I cannot believe that a bank with almost solely an on-line presence would have such broken processes. Not once during this process did ETrade contact me to tell me of issues with trying to change my name. More importantly, however, I am exremely upset and concerned that ETrade would employ a devious employee and I am fearful that my and my husband's identities have been stolen.

We had several negative experiences with E*Trade Financial. First, E*Trade ignored several of our change of address requests. It took several months before E*Trade and their third party vendor, Clarke American, stopped sending our account materials to the wrong address. They sent PIN numbers, ATM cards, and checks to our previous address for months.

The other negative experience was with E*Trade's online Bill Pay system. E*Trade issued payment a day later than scheduled and, as a result, we were assessed a hefty penalty fee for the late property tax payment that E*Trade caused. After several phone calls and ignored faxes, we spoke with one of E*Trade's branch managers, Amy Alley. She was very unprofessional and rude for the entire conversation. That was the final straw for us. We're in the process of switching our accounts to another institution. I wouldn't recommend E*Trade to my worst enemy!

We were assessed a $250.99 penalty fee from our property tax collector's office because E*Trade did not deliver a payment when it was scheduled in their system (E*Trade's online Bill Pay system). E*Trade refused to cover the fee caused by their negligence.

My wife and I have 5 investment accounts. We were with HarrisDirect but E-Trade acquired them. I spent hours trying to get in touch with a real person. Once I spent 1 1/2 hours (hour long TV program and 1/2 hour news) and still didn't get through. I have sent 5 e-mails and all I get back is their automated response saying someone will respond quickly. I sent $2000 to open a Simple IRA 2 months ago, I still don't have the account on my computer but they have the $2000.

I was fed up so I decided to transfer my accounts to Scottrade. That was 2 months ago and I still have one account that they won't transfer because it has a worthless security in it. Well I have sent in the form twice to get rid of the security and it is still on my account. I tried to wire some money to Scottrade last week. It was supposed to go out the same day, well it is the following week and it still hasn't gone out. My wife and I had about 1.5 million dollars in the 5 accounts.

I phoned twice during the daytime and got no answer after at least half an hour wait. I finally got someone on my third try at 11pm. They also billed $25 per quarter for a "low activity" fee; they sold my remaining stocks to pay this fee. It cost me $50 to simply close the account.

In Dec. 2005 I was notified that I had $118 left sitting as cash with no stocks. By April 2006 it was worth $90, but after the $50 closing fee and $10 cheque fee, I get about $30.

I have spent over 8 months trying to close my account at Etrade. Three of those months were spent back in 2000, when I couldn't get them to answer the phone and there was no information on the website about closing the account. I figured I had 2 worthless shares in there and the account would lie dormant forever. I started getting "inactivity charges" last year, so I called to close the account. I was told to send in a form (a link nicely buried in their site, btw) that would pronounce these dead shares "worthless securities".

I sent TWO. The first they insist they didn't get, until they said they got both. Now, I am being asked to fax a third copy of this same form to them. Problem is, it's a joint account with my mom who lives on the opposite coast. I have waited on the phone for someone to pick up for as long as 1hr 45 minutes - and have given up without anyone picking up several times after waiting that long. All I want to do is close this account, but etrade refuses to do so.

I had an auto loan with etrade wherein my brokerage account was to be debited each month the payment. For the past two months the debits have not occurred, the people who actually handle the loan, CLC NOT etrade, tell me that they tried to pull the money but etrade told them it was nsf as the funds had to be in the account 10 business days prior to the payment due date. The funds have been in there and the debits are not happening. I have been on hold with etrade for 1.75 hours as they have never emailed me back, other than their auto inquiry.

I believe this is a dereliction of their fiduciary duty, to accomodate questions which will impair my credit rating due to their erroneous actions. The damage suffered is my worrying about my credit rating as my first home is completed, the time I've spent trying to resolve this and the 25 dollar nsf fee they've charged me!!!!!

I need to update my automatic payment information with eTrade. My userID and password were not recognized, therefore, the ONLY way I could contact eTrade is by phone. Today, I called 3 times, the first 2 times, I was put on hold for over 50 minutes. I hung up. The third time, I am holding for over 20 minutes and still holding right now. The voice message said the average hold time is 15 minutes. If a customer could not log in to their account online, they cannot send any e-mail to E-trade's customer service. RIDICULOUS!!

Last month I opened an online brokerage account with e*Trade. I'm a novice, but I thought I dip my toe into the world of investing. I transferred $2000, made a few buys, and all was rosy. Then, as soon as my $2000 cleared the bank, e*Trade switched off my account with no explanation. My portfolio was blank and I had no access to my cash. I called customer service and they said they wanted to verify my account via telephone and that someone would call that day or the next. Okay, sounds good. Glad to know they take extra precautions.

It is now going on three weeks and I've received no call and my account is still non-existent. I've called customer service four times (I was once on hold for 2 hours) and they just tell me the same thing—I need to talk to a "Linda." The last person told me my account was flagged with the word "indictment," which has sent me into total panic mode. I have never been indicted for anything ever!

I've sent 5 emails, 3 faxes, one letter, and I've left 5 phone message for this "Linda" (whose voice mail does not identify her by name nor that she even works for e*Trade) and I've heard nothing back. In my last message, all I asked was for her to please call me back just to reassure me she is real, there really is an "e*Trade", and we would eventually straighten out the situation. I received no call.

Frankly, I beginning to think I've been hustled and I will never see my $2000 again. E*Trade has my money and it looks like they are keeping it. Stocks that I would have sold have lost money and I can do nothing about it. Approximately $600 cash is just sitting in my Brokerage that I need to pay bills, but I cannot access it to transfer. This phantom " indictment" charge has me terrified—has someone stolen my identity? Oh, just for comic relief, yesterday I finally did receive something back from e*Trade. It was an email form letter suggesting I consult their automated online Help Center "designed to answer many questions." It's a nightmare.

I spent over one hour this morning on the phone having to make three separate calls to Etrade due to problems. Your Power Etrade phone number no longer gives customers the quick response it is supposed to. Since taking over Harris Direct, Etrade has been operating like a second rate brokerage firm. Problems all over the place from trade executions to balances not updating to very long phone holds to lousy customer service! It is a disgrace. Here is what I went through today in the first hour of trading:

1. My first buy order on VYST – it sat there appearing to be an “open order” for a very long time – no response from Etrade on whether it executed nor could I cancel it. I tried calling Etrade and was on hold for ten minutes – I couldn’t wait so hung up. Bad enough your site was not updating information regarding trade status but I was unable to get someone on the phone.

2. My sell order of CALB – I put the order in on the bid – the bid was large enough for that order to execute right away. It sat there for 15 minutes – I once again had to call Etrade and waited 10 minutes before a broker picked up the call and put me on hold another 5 minutes to get the trade executed. Luckily for me it was not a stock that was moving – I would have lost the trade within that time if it were. Of course your Etrade broker blamed it on the fact that it was a penny stock. I have heard that excuse so much from ET. Funny, I never have execution problems on pennies when I trade with Ameritrade nor do they use that excuse.

3. My third and longest call was to customer service regarding the fact that I still have yet to see a credit to my account from my points that I accrued through an Etrade credit card program. Any points earned in 2005 were supposed to be applied to 2006 trading for free commissions. Last year it took me about five phone calls for Etrade to credit my account for free commissions – it was like pulling teeth to receive something I was entitled to. Once again it looks like the same problem.

I called and was put on hold for 15 minutes. I then spoke with a customer service rep that didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. He kept insisting that it had “run out” and that I wasn’t entitled to the free commissions. I tried to calmly explain to him that he didn’t understand the provisions and that I needed to speak with someone who did. He finally was able to pull up some information that proved he was wrong and that he was reading old information. This took another 15 minutes for ME to explain an Etrade program to one of YOUR representatives.

After taking up about 25 minutes of my time he finally transferred me to someone within the credit card department who at least seemed to have a clue on what was happening. She promised me that she would research why I have yet to receive a free commission when I am indeed entitled to 24 this year with the points I accrued. That took another 10 minutes on the phone.

ETRADE is an absolute disgrace! By taking on Harris Direct you have compromised your original customers – real nice! Etrade obviously can’t handle the new load of customers and was ill prepared – new personnel should have been hired and trained prior to the merge.

I have been calling etrade's 800 numbers for over a week 3-10 times a day with no response. I was a Harrisdirect client who ETRADE brought out, whenever I called harrisdirect it was a 1-3 minute wait.

I have much cash in my account from a recent sale of stock and I can't get to anyone to see if they know what to do with my cash. Harrisdirect made mistakes and in less then 5 minutes corrected the problem. I can't talk to anyone at ETRADE about this problem; how can the exchage allow this company to operate; can I go after the exchange and etrade?

In Dec. 2001, I requested that my account be closed out and wanted stock certificates issued to me. There was more than enough money in my cash balance account to accomodate the cost of this transaction. E-Trade conveniently helped themselves to my account deducting their monthly maintenance fee's for the managing of my small sum (dormant account).

I have been trying to close my ETrade account since April 2005. In April, I called Etrade - the Customer Service (CS) rep forwarded me to an account manager. The account manager (AM) told me to receive certificates to close my account, I need to pay $80. I sent $80 in May. I saw nothing happen on my account statement. And I did not receive my stock certificates.

I called back in June... while talking to a CS rep, he saw my account was flagged – the account manager had flagged my account so she would be contacted. So the CS rep forwarded me to the AM, who happened to have a manager in the office with her. The AM told me that I needed to send another $80 because the first check of $80 was for the unpaid service charges.... she said she forgot to add that number to the total that she gave me. She gave me her phone number and extension to call when I send the check so that she could monitor the payment. AND she would credit back any service charges that were accrued from April because I was in the process of closing my account.... But I needed to send a second $80 check for the 2 different stock certificates.

I had opened an online checking account with Etrade under a promotion for $175 for opening the account and Direct Deposit of $1000 for 3 months. On June 6, I received a letter saying my account has been closed due to fraudulent activity. I had $31,000 in my account at that time which I wasn't allowed to withdraw. I had to contact the banks from which I had made the deposits within the past 60 days to reverse the ACH and get back my money after more than a month! I still have $250 in my account and Etrade has refused to refund it to me claiming that it was deposited as part of a promotion that I didn't qualify for, even though the promotion was for only $175!!

Forget about putting money here. I have only had my account for 3 days and already I am disgusted. One of their service lines is supposed to be open until midnight. it's not. STRIKE 1. I called during normal hours and after the system tried to connect me to customer service, I got "the number you are trying to reach has been disconnected." STRIKE 2. Today I called 1-800-etrade-1 and have been on hold for 38 minutes. That's ridiculous. STRIKE 3.

Opened a checking (individ.) account, and transferred, $100/$4900, from the joint AMEX acount. Suddenly my account at eTrade gets blocked, and all the money gets transferred back. I called, by now over 10 times, nobody at eTrade can or wants to tell me what is going on, except that my account is being investigated. Now I seem to have a $25 fee charged because of ???.

Somebody is playing god with my account without informing me about the issues. Even if I did something wrong I should be able to know. In the mean time my wife has also started a account with eTrade bank, but is now scared of taking any action.

On two occasions, I wanted to liquidate my cash account from e-trade and leave my stocks intact. I called the customer service on each occasion. On each occasion they said to simply write a check for the full amount and this would close out the account. Nothing more was needed I was told. In each case, I wrote a check that day for the full amount in the cash account.

On each occasion a small amount of interest was left in the account (despite the fact that I knew the exact amount in the account when I wrote the checks). Later, I began being charged fees because I did not have a minimum balance in the cash account. When I contacted Etrade the third time, I was told that I cannot liquidate a cash account which is associated with stocks and that I had to pay the fees.

I had an Etrade account for several years, holding shares in two small stocks. Around the time of the market slide, Etrade decided to start ripping off its customers by charging monthly "service fees" on accounts that weren't actively trading. The customer was left in a catch-22 in that he couldn't sell, at such a loss, couldn't buy, in such a market, and was stuck paying "service fees" to Etrade, in a word, for NOTHING. It got so bad that Etrade actually had the NERVE to sell, without my permission or notice, my remaining shares of stock, JUST to pay their "service fees" Unbelievable! I will NEVER do business with them again.

I have an account with this company and I wanted to transfer $19K to Germany by mailing a check via FedEx. On October 7th 2002, a check was issued and my account was charged with a $20.00 fee for Foreign FedEx costs. However, this check did not yet arrive in Germany. The service representatives of Etrade are unable to provide me with a tracking number for this shipment. They promised to send me this number by email what they never did.

Yesterday, I received an email from Ryan H in which he indicated that he would be able to provide me with the tracking number on Tuesday, October 22th. I suspect that Etrade never mailed this check on October 7th, 2002 because the tracking number is available to the sender as soon as you put the check in the envelope. I fear that my money may be lost right now.