The short story is I logged on to check my Etrade account the first week of Jan and found that my account balance was zero. (the account balance as of about two years ago was only ~$460.)
Etrade has been taking $40 per quarter for over two years as a "maintenance fee." they even sold the remaining stock I had so that they could collect their last fee.
Legally, I have no doubt that they followed the letter of the law as far as disclosures, etc. But the fees disclosures are ridiculously subtle.
E*Trade.com has an "alerts" area on the first page of your account when you sign in where you can get notifications of account activity. You can also sign up to receive account updates by e-mail. I signed up to receive both.
And yet, they never sent one e-mail indicating they were charging me a $40 maintenance fee; and only ONCE was there an alert when I logged in indicating the fee: that alert was posted in mid-December and I didn't see it until I logged on in January of '08.By then they had sold my remaining stock to take their "fee" and all the other funds in the account had been drained. Essentially, they sent me one "alert" about two years after they started stealing my money, I mean charging a "maintenance fee."
They don't even provide a link to their "fee schedule" from within their Customer Accounts Agreement*. They just say, 'see the fee schedule for current fees' or words to that effect. (It's a Website... All they have to do is add a link to the page. Why don't they?) (*This is true as of January 9th. I've complained about this to them so it's possible they'll update the site, although frankly, i don't think they have it in them to do what's right.)
They charged me maintenance fees anywhere from 7-10 times over the last few years (I'm still going over documentation for an exact number). They never sent a letter dedicated specifically to the topic. (I did receive quarterly statements that, after reviewing them this past week, indicate the fee was being withdrawn. But it's listed as a withdrawal and it's buried on page 4 or 5 of the statement.)
Also, when I opened the account in '99, there were no maintenance fees.
Again, legally I'm sure they're covered. But they steadily drained my account for two years until they took literally every last dime out of it. I'm a fairly
smart guy (not the savviest investor, perhaps) but the manner in which the information was disclosed was so subtle that I simply thought my stock was just
losing value due to market conditions.
Legally, I'm naive... Can I file some sort of class action lawsuit and/or petition congress to change these disclosure laws (similar to what they've done
recently in the credit card industry). I suspect that there are probably hundreds if not thousands of people unknowingly paying these fees.
Ethically and morally, E*Trade is reprehensible, in my opinion. I can't believe they can get away this kind of crap.
Someone please help!
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