E*Trade Financial
Reviews and Complaints

etrade closed my account for NO reason and completely shut me out of their website
. the reps told me a letter was coming to explain how why and how to get my money out. i have not received a letter after a week and therefore i am assuming they have stolen my money. i am contacting a lawyer today. STAY AWAY FROM ETRADE!

ETrade is the worst trading company you can pick. Horrible customer service, outright theft of customers money, and a complete lack of professionalism in financial management & trading practices. Whatever you do - stay away from ETrade!

For no apparent reasons my account at Etrade was locked. I called the company and despite the fact I provided the E-trade representatives with my SS number, date of birth and current address they did not unlock my account. Not to mention I spent couple of hours on the phone answering ridicules questions. I will be withdrawing my money from Etrade ASAP.
After reading reviews on the Internet I realized a lot of people are having the same problem. This may be an indication Etrade is having a financial difficulties so it has to froze accounts to stay afloat. I think Etrade soon will be going out of business. My advise - stay away from Etrade.

I purchased my first stock in the year 2000 for $5200.00 using ETrade. As most all tech stocks did, my stock plummeted and, at one point was worth $198.00. Over the years it has slowly began to climb back. I recently sold the stock and, after $19.99 for their commission fee and $3.00 for miscellaneous fees, I was told that my balance was $2004.00.` Customer service told me to wait for three days and then to request a check from them for the amount aforementioned.

I am getting married soon and I sold the stock with the intention of paying for the rental of a facility costing $2000. My fiancée was happy that this cost would be covered since we are paying for the wedding ourselves. Six days later I called to request a check from ETrade and I was told that my balance was $1771.00. I asked customer service where the $230.00 went and they told me that any customer that has less than $5000 dollars is charged $25 quarterly and that I owed them this money for maintaining my account.

When I first bought stock through ETrade, I did it because I was told that it was only $8.00 per trade. I was not told that it would cost me an additional $25 per quarter. After being on the phone with two different people at ETrade for a total of 48 minutes, the best I could get was for them to reverse one charge. Out of frustration, I requested that they send me the check for $1796.00.

Now I have to come up with an additional $204.00 that I don't have for my wedding. If I knew of these hidden maintenance fees, I would have waited for the stock to go up more before selling it. ETrade customer service had the attitude of, "Oh well, you should have known." And, why shouldn't they? They have my money.

I would encourage everyone to not trade through ETrade and to beware of hidden costs if they do.

ETrade froze my account and wouldn't tell me why until, after about 5 calls, I finally got through to someone competent enough to figure it out. Something about me logging in from my work computer caused them to think there was "suspicious activity" going on. 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 identify verification info? Couldn't I have simply given them everything over the phone... 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? Jesus...

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, so... And if they had my checking account info, why not just directly access that? F**king etrade... 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.

I purchased my first stock in the year 2000 for $5200.00 using ETrade. As most all tech stocks did, my stock plummeted and, at one point was worth $198.00. Over the years it has slowly began to climb back. I recently sold the stock and, after $19.99 for their commission fee and $3.00 for miscellaneous fees, I was told that my balance was $2004.00.` Customer service told me to wait for three days and then to request a check from them for the amount aforementioned.

I am getting married soon and I sold the stock with the intention of paying for the rental of a facility costing $2000. My fiancйe was happy that this cost would be covered since we are paying for the wedding ourselves. Six days later I called to request a check from ETrade and I was told that my balance was $1771.00. I asked customer service where the $230.00 went and they told me that any customer that has less than $5000 dollars is charged $25 quarterly and that I owed them this money for maintaining my account.

When I first bought stock through ETrade, I did it because I was told that it was only $8.00 per trade. I was not told that it would cost me an additional $25 per quarter. After being on the phone with two different people at ETrade for a total of 48 minutes, the best I could get was for them to reverse one charge. Out of frustration, I requested that they send me the check for $1796.00.

Now I have to come up with an additional $204.00 that I don't have for my wedding. If I knew of these hidden maintenance fees, I would have waited for the stock to go up more before selling it. ETrade customer service had the attitude of, "Oh well, you should have known." And, why shouldn't they? They have my money.

I would encourage everyone to not trade through ETrade and to beware of hidden costs if they do.

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 on-line) I was transferred to their "fixed-income" department and was solicitied 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 continously 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 ###, 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.

I have been an E*Trade customer for many years. All of a sudden, without any prior notice or explanation, E*Trade has frozen my Money Market Account. It refuses transfers I wish to make to an external account, refuses to pay my credit card bills of $800 when the account balance is over $100, 000. No customer representative is able to give an explanation. In spite of repeated promises that a supervisor or case manager will call me, I never hear from them. I have emailed Pam Erickson, Corporate Communications Officer, and faxed Gregory Framke, Executive Vice President and Chief Operations Officer with all possible details and a request to rectify the situation. Neither one has answered. I have a confirmation that my fax was received by Etrade, but no one answers.

Do I have to go to the media or a lawyer to obtain any kind of reaction from them? Are they just a bunch of crooks?

I am so fed up! Does anyone have suggestions?
Lil Bancroft

Etrade liquidated the shares in its Etrade SP500 index fund in my IRA without notifying me at the bottom of the stock market last year. For 8 months I've been trying to transfer my assets to Vanguard and Etrade always finds some reason to reject the transfer. Etrade is a criminal organization.

Etrade sold all of my stocks without notification! Apparently there was a quarterly fee that I was unaware of (also was not notified). To make up the negative balance on my account, Etrade sold all of my stocks that could potentially be worth a significant amount of money some day. You would think that before they decided to sell all of my stocks that I would have been notified by email or phone. This is a very poor way to do business.

So for 4 years I never was notified I owed anything on my brokerage. I had penny stocks I wanted to save for my child. So the years went on, no one called, no letters nothing. Recently I get a "Alert" that says my stocks were liquidated . Why ? I had no Idea. So I call and talk to a clueless customer service rep that says I was charged 10 charges of $40.00 for the last 5 years. I really am so angry with Etrade. I WILL NOT RECOMMEND ETRADE, THEY CHARGED ME FOR NOTHING! I NEVER TRADED AND their customer service ***. I hope they go bankrupt!

I'd setup a reoccurring transfer from my Chase account to my eTrade account back in May '09. After the first transfer went though on June 1st, I stopped all reoccurring transfer. On July 1st, lucky I received an auto alert from Chase when my account balance drops below a certain level, eTrade is still doing the reoccurring transfers at the first of every month, even though when I checked online, I had no pending transfers, reoccurring transfers or anything. Customer support said I did the transfer online, I call ###, and she didn't know what as going on. I talked to an agent in the Philippines, one of their call centers, and a supervisor in Houston TX. All were very rude, didn't want listen to what I had to say and didn't want to help.

Basically my bank, Chase, told me to wait until the transfer gets posted before I file for fraud. Etrade didn't have my permission to take money out of my personal banking account.

DO NOT USE THESE FEE DRIVEN CROOKS!

ETRADE claims on its website to have "NO FEES" "NO HASSLES" to open an IRA. First, they held my money for 8 business days AFTER they electronically received it.

Then they charged me a "fee" of .15 for trading over 2000 shares. This NO FEES FEE was not anywhere on their advertising page or even in their fine print. When their customer service was contacted they did nothing.

DO NOT USE THESE FEE DRIVEN CROOKS!

I am transfering my IRA account to Scottrade who will pay for the transfer!

SO MUCH FOR NO HASSLES!

We filed and received a line of credit from Etrade. We pay our payments every month and haven't ever missed a payment. Now Etrade calls 3 or 4 times a day to harass us. Some person on the internet warned me not to go with Etrade because they harass people by calling and saying they are recording the conversation. We record every call there is from them.

To get the calls to stop we are going to file a lawsuit and make it very public. My advice: Don't apply for a line of credit on the internet.

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.