Fuck You E*Trade

The BBQ Pit
1

A couple of years ago, when I worked for The Gap, they had an Employee Stock Purchase Program, which, of course, allowed employees to buy stock in Gap at a discount. Seeing as how the stock was hovering around at $30+ a share, shooting up to $70 a share, splitting, and then shooting back up to $70 a share, and I was an employee, it made sense for me to participate in the program.

Of course, things change, and the stock started bottoming out, and I moved onto other employment. Now, I need to sell the stock because I could use the cash (even though the stock’s down to about $17), but I can’t. Why? Because of fucking E*Trade, which is “managing” my account. (Missmanaging is more like it.)

You see, ETrade is the company that’s been hired to handle Gap’s ESPP. ETrade mailed me, years ago, various information on my account that I’ve since misplaced. However, E*Trade mails me a montly statement with my account number, so I figured I’d just call their 1-800 number, talk to a human, explain the situation, and get everything taken care of. No dice.

I call the 1-800 and it asks for my account number, which I punch in, then it asks me for my password. Don’t have that, so I randomly punch in numbers, hoping that the system will get confused and route me to a human being. Again, no dice. I get locked into this loop where it keeps asking for my password. No password, no human.

So, I hie myself to their website, poke around, hoping that I’ll be able to find some way of selling my stock using it. No dice, again. :rolleyes: I do manage to find a way of contacting them, so I send them an e-mail to explain my situation. They respond with a link that’ll let me get the necessary information snailed to me within a week. (Meanwhile, the stock is dropping in price, so I’m losing money while waiting for the information to show up.)

2

And because I’m a doofus, I accidentally hit the “submit” button before I was finished with my OP.

Over a week has gone by (when E*Trade said that I’d get the information within 3-5 days) and I’ve not recieved anything from them. I’ve sent them another e-mail telling them that I haven’t gotten the information.

Why in the bloody fuck can’t I simply pick up the phone, dial a 1-800 and speak to a fucking human being about this? We’re not talking about huge amounts of cash here, only a 100 bucks or so. It’d be nice if I could unload the stock before it hits rock bottom, ya know?

3

Have you tried using the “forgot your password” option?

Try this link:

https://express.etrade.com/e/t/user/resetpassword

4

Won’t work for me, because they don’t have my goddamn e-mail addy. Brilliant, huh?

5

Shit, that sucks.

Here’s one more idea: They have a few “financial centers” around the country. And while you may not be able to visit (I see that none is near TN), you might have better luck calling there and actually talking to a REAL FUCKING PERSON.

(Sidenote: I fucking hate not being able to talk to a REAL FUCKING PERSON. Drives me up the wall. So I empathize with you.)

Check out this link and try calling one of the centers tomorrow morning if you can.

https://us.etrade.com/e/t/home/accessus?gxml=hm_acu_etradecenters.html

6

So, you have an account number, no password, they don’t have your eMail address and your upset that they won’t just give you the password.

There are people with several million dollars in E*Trade accounts who I’m sure will sleep OK after hearing your story.

7

So, it is somehow E-trade’s fault and not yours that you misplaced ie; threw away, info about your account, which presumably included your password.

Right.:rolleyes:

Take some fucking responsibility for your own actions and quit trying to blame everyone else but yourself.

This isn’t a problem that E-trade made, you are the one who made the problem.

Grow up.

8

Yeah! What are you doing to solve the problem besides phoning and e-mailing and searching websites? :stuck_out_tongue:

9

Bite me. I’m bitching because I can’t get to a human to talk about this and get it straighted out. What if I hadn’t lost this information, but it got destroyed in a house fire? Why should it be a royal PITA for me to get access to my account and my money. I’m not asking for E*Trade to have an office on every corner, or that they have 24 hours phone support. All I’m asking is that I be able to pick up the phone (say during normal business hours) and talk to a fucking human!

Hell, I can call Charles Schwab and speak to a human, why the fuck can’t E*Trade do it?

10

Tucker, same story here. I had to jump through 4,000,000 hoops to get my password, which I NEVER received. Basically, they make it nearly impossible to get your $$ back…all the while your stock languishes because they refuse to work with you online, or on the phone. ANd what’s worse is my account was a joint account with my brother so the paperwork was just about tripled, faxes flew out, letters mailed.

I still haven’t cashed my shares in because I decided they could fucking eat it. THe main problem is that it was a random PIN instead of my normal set of 4-10 digit passwords. Never could get it ingrained in my head, and every time I could get myself to the PIN, it was too late because the purpse was rendered null when whatever event(crash, dip, skyrocket of stock) had long since passed.

Sam

11

Fuck e*Trade. Fuck them up their asses with a hot poker.

Trade your shares to Ameritrade (for instance).

You see, you don’t need your password to transfer your account to Ameritrade, just your account #.

Of course this process will be slower than dirt, since you’re going to have to open a brand new brokerage account, but then you weren’t planning on keeping your e*Trade account anyway, were you?

12

Oh, hell, let me make myself clear just in case I said something interesting for a change.

You can transfer (not “trade” as there’s no buying/selling of shares - I don’t think) the entire contents of your account to Ameritrade simply by opening an account (I think you may not need to fund it, choosing to fund it with this transfer instead) and submitting a…an account transfer form (or something to that effect).

They don’t ask for your password, assuming that if you dished out enough information to get an account with them that as long as your e*Trade account is in the same name, then you pretty much have to be you.

The transfer takes about a week, setting up your account may be about the same, but it sounds like it may still be faster than getting anything from e*Trade.

13

KKBattousai, I think you may have found my solution. Since my paperwork was supposed to arrive by now, I sent them an e-mail asking them why it hadn’t made it here. Here’s the response I got back

Thanks for being so fucking helpful. Wonder if an e-mail to the SEC is in order?

14

As far as getting to a human on the phone:

Something I try when I get desperate is to call whichever number and never push any buttons. Sometimes they have the computer set up for people with rotary phones. If you don’t punch any buttons, you get a human.

There are a few that this doesn’t work on, and unfortunately those where it doesn’t work are getting more numerous every day, but it’s worth a shot.

15

And E*Trade’s one of them, because I tried it. I just got stuck in this loop, listening to the computer tell me to enter in my information.