Beware the $60 termination fee.
My wife and I had opened a joint E*Trade account in order to save on brokerage fees when trading large quantities of "penny" stocks, by transferring shares from Fidelity. To sweeten the pot, they offered a $50 bonus to open the account, surely knowing that the new fees in the pipeline would quickly eat up those funds, and generate extra revenue.
Long story short, we would have been better off leaving the shares with Fidelity (which, by the way, runs a MUCH more professional operation, and is always there for you should a problem arise)! E*Trade's $25 per quarter account maintenance fees were initiated after we opened the account, and soon required regular deposits just to keep the core account above water.
WE BELIEVE THE TERMINATION FEE IS FRAUDULENT AND ILLEGAL IN THAT IT VIOLATES NASD REGULATIONS, AND PROBABLY BREAKS FTC LAWS CONCERNING INTERSTATE TRADE. It was not in the Customer Agreement that we signed, and, in fact, is not even in the extensive Customer Agreement that can be viewed online! It is a hidden fee that you don't find out about until after you cancel. Further, since there was less than $60 in our cash account, MONEY WAS ACTUALLY WITHDRAWN FROM OUR FIDELITY ACCOUNT, WHICH COULD HAVE RESULTED IN AN OVERDRAFT AND ADDITIONAL PENALTIES OR FEES.
Most of us know to "read the fine print", but since this fee was not even there, we feel totally cheated.
DO NOT OPEN AN E*TRADE ACCOUNT, because you will be $60 in the hole (or whatever amount they arbitrarily decide to raise that to in the future), because the day will come when you will want to close that account.
0 comments