I hate E*Trade

I really do. Here's why.

Saturday morning, in the course of catching up with various bits of online business, I decided to see how my E*Trade investments had done while I was in the air Friday. I'd checked on them once from San Francisco and several times while in Japan, but a few days had passed since I'd last looked in on the account, and I was considering ditching one of my stocks.

So, I logged onto my account and found: nothing. My account was gone. No money, no account, nothing. Just an empty space and an alert to call security.

I'm not going into details, but the amount of money and stock in the account was, for me, very large. I felt sick at the thought that someone had managed to steal those assets.

I called customer service. After waiting on hold, someone finally answered. I waded through the usual rapids of annoying security questions until I finally earned the right to be me. I then asked after my money. The nice man explained that it wasn't gone, but that I couldn't see it or access it.

I was less than thrilled.

I asked why I couldn't see my money. He said he couldn't tell, because he was not in the department that had made this happen. So I asked him to transfer me to that department. He could not, alas, because the people in that department don't work the weekend.

I had now progressed from sick to my stomach to less than thrilled to downright furious.

I asked for someone who could help me, but the nice man--who, to his credit, did stay nice in the face of hurricane-level winds of anger from me--said only the department that was closed could help me, and then not until Monday.

I hung up furious.

I called back yesterday to the only number I had: the number of the department that couldn't help me. I got a less nice woman who offered to let me join the ten- to fifteen-minute-long waiting queue for the department that could help. I had to get out and exercise, so I demanded to speak to a supervisor, my fury now in full flight. The woman kept trying to avoid the request, so I began repeating it over and over, adding only the question, "Are you refusing to transfer me to a supervisor?" She eventually agreed to do so.

When the supervisor finally appeared on the phone, I explained to her that I wanted someone from the department that could help me to call my mobile or that my next contact with them would be via my lawyer. She eventually agreed to consider my request.

While I was out walking rapidly up and down our street with Allyn and Kyle, who was visiting, my mobile rang. It was indeed a man from the department that could help. Before he would assist me, however, I first had to jump new hurdles of proof of my identity. He gave me lists of cars and asked which, if any, I had ever owned or leased. He asked about my brother's son. He asked things I had no clue they knew--and don't like them knowing, though for no particular reason. I answered all the questions.

At which point, he declared I had failed to prove I was me.

I was now yelling. I asked what questions I had missed, because I was quite sure I'd gotten them all right. He told me he didn't know, because they contracted with a third-party agency that provided the questions and told them whether I was me. He wouldn't tell me the name of the agency. He would only say that its software had rendered its verdict: I had failed to prove I was me.

I then told him that I was fine with not seeing my account online. Instead, I wanted E*Trade to close it and mail me a check for all the funds in it.

He refused, on the grounds that I might not be me and that someone might be waiting to receive the check. I pointed out that the address on the account had never changed, nor had the name on the account, and that all I was asking was that E*Trade mail a check made out to the account holder to the account holder's address. He refused again.

He offered me the option of faxing a letter to a number he would post in an alert on my account and including in the letter the information the alert would specify--but I had to do so within one hour, no longer, or we'd have to move to new, yet more painful layers of identity verification. I fought for a while but ultimately agreed. I was late to work because of the time necessary to write and fax the letter.

The alert was downright stupid. It required that I explain the activities that had caused the problem--but no one at E*Trade would tell me what those were. It further mandated that I sign the letter and include on it a photocopy of my driver's license.

So, had I actually hacked someone's account, I would have known the name and the activities, and I could have used any third-class forged license--we're talking a fax of a photocopy going to E*Trade--and any signature that matched the forged license to get access to the account again.

I wrote the letter. I guessed in it that my sin had been checking my account from Japan and California. I faxed it in and stated that I wanted someone to call me as soon as they freed the money.

No one did, but late that day, the account reappeared.

I agreed with Kyle that removing the account was a geek solution to a human problem: the account might be compromised, so hide it entirely. A considerate solution would have involved freezing the account and leaving a prominent note that the account holder should contact a specific number, a number with 24X7 service.

But no, that would be too nice for E*Trade, a company that clearly has no notion of how to be considerate.

As soon as time permits, I'll be shopping for a new online trading service.