RateItAll: The Opinion Network

Website seems to ALWAYS be down pre-market on big news days. I log into my account about once a week, and just the first half of this year, I've caught Scottrade's website down 5 times. 3 of those times it was down well into market open. I don't understand how they could have such a blase' attitude about keeping their website running. They are cheap, however they're not the only low cost brokerage in town anymore.

Amateur website. Like one of the reviewers stated, Scottrade delays cancelled orders. I put in an order, cancelled it. It even told me it was cancelled, no funds were taken out of my account. The same day, I place another order for the same stock, but at a lower price. I find out the next day that BOTH orders were placed, even though the 1st one was cancelled. I call their customer service and got someone who could barely speak English and told her what happened. All she could say was "well, you placed 2 order". Other things I hate about their site is it lags now and then, their "profit" tracking is stupid and doesn't reflect losses or profits whatsoever, I mean, what's the point in even having that? The reason I chose them was because of the low commission. You get what you pay for. Scottrade.... whoever this "Scott" guy is, he needs a lot of improving to do. Ridiculous.

Just made over $8k this week with Scottrade's Velocity and Forces which rolled out to the ScottradeELITE platform last week. NO OTHER FIRM HAS IT! It's from NASDAQ and comes free with your ScottradeELITE/ Learn more here:
https://data.nasdaq.com/VF.aspx
And Here:
http://www.scottrade.com/MediaContent/WebCast.asp

It's the first video listed.


Scottrade ROCKS!

Terrible...I am so disappointed that I make sure everyone I know, knows that Scottrade has no respect for their clients whatsover...Lack communication...the quality of customer service is -10..not sure how this company claims one of the best...if you want to more my disappointing experiance feel free to email me...I will be glad to give you details...just stay away from Scottrade...

They suck, I just pull all of my money out yesturday during the 2nd day of login problems, server errors, lagged trades, and overall an archaic interface that screams ATARI. They have consistently had misinformation or outdated information representing my positions, cash, margin, etc. They cost me a nice $5000 on tuesday on a EJ trade that was easy money. Maybe they should spend less on helicopter commercials and more on servers from this millenia and programmers who can code with more than java. I hope that helicopter crashes and kills that annoying smug prick in the commercials.

I dumped them this morning after excessive lag on executions. 4-6 minutes on 4 stocks cost me 900+ account lost 27.00. Tech said "what do you want me to do about it" Cust service is great but the elite gets quirky at times and lost me thousands... time to move.

This morning pre-hours trading is off and scottrade does not answer any of their phone numbers.

I have consistant problems with scottrade being down and tech and local office support is non-existent during down times.
I am changing brokers -besides they are not a stock company so you never have an truely audited look at their financials, so I don't know how safe it is to have your money with a company that does not report quarterly financials.

This is for all the whiners out there. Boo hoo. Think you can do better? why not start your own brokerage firm, oh your all morons. So they have some issues, every brokerage firm does. Have you seen the news of ameritrade and etrade being hacked with the pump and dump schemes? Oh wait the only "big" firm not effected by this was Scottrade. As for all you Elite users who disconnect all the time, open up port 443 on your routers and firewalls a simple call to tech support would of told you that. Scottrade is constantly upgrading and providing the services (free) that clients are asking for. You think this happens by a magic programming genie? As of now, I have read all your comments below and most of them are obsolete as most of the issues have been resolved. As for the customer service, the best I have encountered, all the people who say they are bad, could it possibly be because of YOUR tone or what you were saying? Hrmm some poor young representative is answering calls allllll day and then he talks to your dumbass who was probably rude to begin with, and you expect flowers and sunshine? I think its hilarious all your complainers leave Scottrade just to come right back when you realize that the reason they are ranked highest in customer satisfaction is simple, they are better than everyone else. Think you had issues at ST, wait till you try to talk to support at some of these other brokerage firms.

There are problems with averaging prices incorrectly on scottrade. I am considering changing brokers. When you call tech support they DO NOT keep a log of transactions-- so you start from square zero every time. They do not even have a record of who you spoke with. That said, the tech support guys are nice and helpful people. I like the scottrade staff, it just seems they are not being backed up. How about less time in that helicopter on TV, and more time working on keeping your customers satisfied?

I am not very active trader, and Scottrade fills my need properly. I am using it for three years with no single problem so far. I think, it is the best solution for the beginners - investors.

Be careful with what you see on Scottrade's average price.
On Dec 26 I bought EWZ x 1500 shares. The average price $82.2113. (300 x 82.00, 700 x 82.31, 500 x 82.20)
Scottrade "Elite" show an average price MUCH lower. I got suspicious and after phoning their office, got confirmation that the shown average price paid is wrong.
This one time I confirmed my position over the phone but God knows how many transactions I have sold at a loss thinking I am making a profit!

Does anybody else have the same problem with Scottrade and their average prices?


deon.keyser@verizon.net

WOW. I was buying RIMM Pre-market and put a bid in for 122. It did NOT show that I had bought this at that price, so 2 minutes later, I cancelled my order. Here's the SCOTTRADE problem ( although I do like them, this just happend) 1. for the whole trading period, my balance was full, it showed that I had cancelled this order, and i was able to trade all day up to my maximum margin . 2. half hour before closing, my pre order showed up almost 8 hours into the trading day, at the current price of premarket 122. and now RIM is at 118. ( and I have 400 shares) so quite a lost. I called them, and they had the software glitch, and had to file each order by hand. 3. if i knew I had bought it early in the day, i could have sold it early, knew about it, and saved lost money. but it just APPEARED and I was TOLD that orders TECHNICALLY have up to 3 days to fill. but in the 'REAL WORLD' it is almost immediate, except for those GLITCH DAYS at scottrade. Wow, each glitch cost a thousand per point, and WE THE CUSTOMER has to accept the brokerage fault. How is this legal or safe? 4. last Monday, the software was down for over 2 or 3 hours, and I could not get out of my postion or do anything, and lost thousands again, due to software error or updating. similar to the guy post below. 5. SOLUTION, SCOTTRADE NEEDS TO VERIFY THAT I STILL WANT TO FINISH MY ORDER I DID PREMARKET, ESPECIALLY 8 HOURS LATER BEFORE THE SUBMIT IT , DUE TO GLITCH. I WOULD HAVE SAID NO AND SAVED A FEW THOUSAND. ALSO, NOW I'M NERVOUS THAT I HAVE ORDERS THAT WILL SHOW UP 3 DAYS LATER. WHAT THE F...?

Using Scottrade is the best way to lose money on an otherwise winning position.
Their system is down a lot, very unstabel. Fill confirmations are delayed, sometiems for hours. Changing the buy/sell order is somtimes impossible. Their favorit line "there was in issue with your order"
Just like it happened this morning during Pre-market trading. They decided to shut the trading down, and do a update in the system.
I was trying to load off my RIMM position pre-martket. Prices went all the wa y up to 124.40 pre-market but I could not do a thing. Scottrade screwed everybody, and I am sick of their stuff. This little incident with RIMM cost almost 7 points, as the stock sold off after the market opened.
The Elite platform, the Total view is the worst. There has to be a better broker out there. Any opinion?

Yesterday the whole Scottrade trading system was down the first 1 1/2 hours of trading. I watched helplessly on a very volatile day as my stocks went from up 1% in the green to down 2% in the red, and I was helpless to get out. I couldn't get through on the phone, there was no way to make a trade. I estimate I lost $1000 due to the problem. I am going to re-evaluate the lower trading fees against the other costs associated with this terrible service. I would rather pay another doller or two per trade than go through that again.

I started with scottrade back is 2003 when they were the only broker that didn't have a monthly inactivity fee. I just want to be able to buy long term investments and maybe a few speculative ones. Monday I needed to withdraw about 10% cash from my investments and now it is Friday and I still down have my money. Apparently it can take a week to get my own money unless I want to PAY to get it wired sooner. I have accounts with E-trade and Emigrant direct and have no problem doing an electronic transfer. Is Scottrade still stuck in the 20th century? Their staff is totally useless and unwilling to help - "These are the rules - take it or leave it".
Next week I'm closing my account.

Scottrade never calls to tell you they are making a significant change to your account. They just do it and tell you this is the way we do things when you call them about the change.

I have used them for many years, and I like their streamer and website.
They have many good features (streamer, live charts, news etc) which are not as sophisticated as direct access brokers, but you don't need much to be successful at short-term trading. The marketmovers feature is very useful for daytrading if you use it properly. My gripe with them is that I occasionally find errors in my account history and the Gainskeeper. They were rude about it when I questioned it. Now I will
have to closely check balances (a real headache for active traders) to be sure I'm not be shafted. Also the latest version of Firefox causes their site to lock up. No problems with any other website. Sometimes
the wrong order is entered when I am closing a position, and I have
been short twice the amount of stock without knowing it. So I suspect
a problem with their Java or other questionable activity. Unfortunately
I do not know of another broker with the features I want: low cost,
Streamer and live charts, check writing, local office and Gainskeeper.

Scottrade? Give it a Pass.
I began using Scottrade about a year ago. At first, there were no real problems. Unfortunately, I was dumb and placed too much money into my account for trading. Trading long was never a problem and I entered and exited the market fairly frequently. However, when the market seemed to be headed down I began shorting stocks and that's when Scottrade turned nasty. I shorted about a thousand shares of a well trade company in June. Now this is a firm that routinely trades well over a million shares per day--so it isn't thinly traded. The stock price has slowly and steadily declined and it looks like the company hasn't hit bottom yet. However, I am no longer short this particular company. Why? Because Scottrade says it can "no longer borrow the stock" for my short sale. Understand this is not a margin call situation--the stock went down as I figured it would. But Scottrade has bought back my position incrementally over two weeks. The first "buy back" was for 100 shares (out of 1000)to the tune of a forced transaction cost of $50.00. Then, a few days later I was forced to buy back 300 shares. This continued untill they bought back my entire position to the tune of $200 in commission--far in excess of the $7 per transaction. Since it was a forced buy back since they "could no longer borrow the stock" I have complained long and loud. However, trying to get money back from them is futile and very frustrating. Not to mention that I should be still short in my account and am losing money because I have been bought back and am no longer short. I figure that Scottrade wants more activity and will "create" it in order to get commissions. If you plan to buy and hold or short and hold, then Scottrade will bleed your account. Give them a pass unless you want them to trade your account for you or you plan on making multiple daily trades!

I've used Scottrade for 8 months now. While it was great when I started in late 2006, I find that now I CANNOT log onto the site during off hours (weekend, right before trading begins, right after trading ends). Labor Day weekend now and I couldn't log into my account for 2 full days. I'm not a day trader and I live in Japan which basically means these are the only times I can log into the account. While I understand server problems and updates occasionally causing downtime, this is ridiculous. If it were not such a pain to move to another broker, then I would do so immediately. As it is, I'll have to give them some time until it truly becomes unbearable for me, then move.

1) The standard software is mickey mouse. The charting and detailed analysis capabilities are a joke and there is no way to track expenses. I still have to use MSN's portfolio manager to analyze investments. 2) Trades take FOREVER. It typically takes 7-8 business days to sell and then complete the purchase of a new investment. 3) While stock trades are $7, mutual funds are $17. Otherwise, they have local offices, the service has been fine, and I have not had any accuracy problems to-date.

I inherited about $100,000 in stock - first time I have owned stock. I took the first certificate I received to Scottrade since they have a walk in office and I wouldn't be sending endorsed certificates in the mail. I take the certificate and endorse the back and was told my who I later found out was an intern that I would see the stock in my account in 5 business days. Since I have found out I should have been told 1 day. After 10 days, I call to say the stock doesn't show up. After promises that someone would get with me within an hour and noone did, I finally threatened to file a police report for theft against them. Someone calls me back and 2 days later calls to tell me the stock was lost in their St. Louis office. They send me paperwork to have the stock replaced and agree to let me trade it once they receive the paperwork, but they send that by US Mail not express mail. So meanwhile, the market is hitting record highs while I'm sitting around waiting on them to quit monkeying around. Now the corporate office is saying that they never received the stock in St. Louis and that the branch is not telling me the truth. I think this is unacceptable!!! I think losing an endorsed stock certificate is unacceptable.

My problems with scottrade are not unique. Last year (2006), I could count on their server going down a couple times a week. I always reported the problems, only to learn that everybody else was having the same problems. Most of the time the outages didn't last long, a few minutes, but sometimes they could last for more than an hour. If you're a serious day trader, that is a real problem.

This year the overall system is much more reliable, though I still see some problems sometimes. The biggest problem is the live news feeds. Sometimes those would go down several times a week, a real problem if you depend on the latest news. I haven't seen that problem however for couple weeks.

I am writing this note tonight because there server is off line again. It is not a huge problem after market hours, but I still can't get at my account information so I am not happy.

I agree with the guy who says "you get what you pay for". Of course this is one of the lowest cost brokerages out there. Most of the time the system does work. Over th e past year I have made many suggestions to the programmers for new features, some of which have been implemented. They do seem to listen to customrs, and I never had a problem dealing with them over the phone. They always try very hard to help, but like the other guy said, there shouldn't be any problems that require help.

From what I can see Etrade has a few more features in their top-line trading program, but overall there doesn't seem to be much difference - though I have no relaiblility statistics - and without those it is hard to judge the overall quality.

From what I can see they hire a lot of young people right out of college, and train them. It's kind of an entry level job, because no trading advice is involed whatsover. This company is strictly for do-it-yourself investors.

I have seen lower cost brokerages, but their trading system is a joke. Scottrade does offer a powerful trading platform (Elite). Another thing to consider is the interest rate they offer on cash balances. It really sucks, but seems typical of the brokerage industry. It is a way they can get extra money without high visibility. If you intend to keep a lot of cash around, you might want to look for another brokerage which pays a better interest rate. If you're a buy and hold type of guy, and you don't anticipate having a lot of cash around, I am sure you can find a cheaper alternative. Scottrade is probably best suited for active investors.

I do like the fact that they have a local office. I've only been in there once to open up my accounts, but I felt comfortable there, and they handled the account opening procedure smoothly. I did have one small problem transferring my account, probably due to my old broker, but it didn't cost me anything. (aside from some aggravation. The guys on the other end of the phone were always happy to do their best to fix the problem)

At this point I would give them a perfect score, if their system was a little more reliable and they gave me a better interest rate.

I just started my real trade with scottrade 2 months ago,and i got several problems:
1. Transferring money from the same account into scottrade can not go through the second time, I called them and they said it is my account problem. But in fact 1 weeks later the transaction is completed, however the status is still in progress, and they locked my transferring account, horrible! I called them 3 times, and it still not resolved.
2. Order lost! I submitted an order in later feb, and my buying order did not go through even the stock price is far lower than my order. I called them, they said the back end trading system error!
3. Selling Trailing order disappear! I set a trailing selling order to try their service, but it disappered in the premarket. And their system shows the wrong ticker for my stock! and Warning me that I have an margin call, and my cash summary become incorrect, $3000 more is gone!!!! I callled them, and the line is always busy... Shame on them! I sold my stock to cover! too bad!
4. Their market research system does not show the correct stock data. Some stocks, their system shows incorrect PE and financial data for research purpose, which misleads my trade!

I would NOT recommend scottrade to anyone unless you want to lose money.

Scottrade gets worse by the day. Scottrade Elite and regular website trading down for hours at a time and all they can say is sorry, we're working on it. Not for the serious trader.

Scottrade has been having great problems with their servers for over a year now. Their technical support is pathetic. When their systems are down, if we try to reach the live brokers, it takes more than 20 minutes. By that time, the trades we would want to place would be out of hand. Their local office staff in San Jose, is completely incompetent. Scottrade Elite is a big mess and is never stable. It keeps refreshing the connection while blacking out the data. While all these are happening, they keep trumpeting about some stupid awards given by some incompetent judges at JD Power. Either that or they are bribed to give such awards. Scottrade is in denial.

I am frustrated with their Elite connectivity, Technical Support staff, Staff at local San Jose office, Live brokers being unavaible during their system outages on and on... This has been happening for over a year now. I have another joint account with Ameritrade and it is really great. I rarely have an issue. I am thinking of bailing out of Scottrade.

I am moving my accounts even though it is a lot of trouble. I have major problems with the elite everyday and calling them does no good because the program itself stinks. Today it is not running at all. I have lost most of my symbol lists. I have had to keep backups of the data file because I know that every day I will have to restore it. My advise find some one else if you need a streamer. I would like to hear about someone who has had success somewhere else because I am looking right now.

Doesnt Sell at the Market Price Sells at the BID.They have cost me $$$$$ More than once.I Dumped them.

Scottrade was great for me when I was in the buy/hold mode. Recently I have become a more active trader again. I use the Elite platform with Total View. Over the past 2 months the "stuck" level 2 tiers, time of sales window having to be expanded vertically to almost the full height of my monitor screen in order to view the latest trade data, premarket trading unavailable, extended session market trading unavailable, intraday breakdowns with executions, confirmations, order cancellations, order modify's etc all being delayed or unavailable for sometimes hours. In short, the platform is so unstable that I am afraid to use it now. Yesterday (2-2-06) was the final straw. Repeated server outages prevented any action with certainty. When it finally seemed to be up and running again I bought one of the hot China plays just before market close for this morning gap up. Well, I could get no confirmation I got filled until this morning. In other words it didn't show in my positions until this morning. Anyhow, When I went to sell it premarket I had $3500 profit in hand. There was a huge bid sitting there just asking to be wacked. But wait, the system was down. I had to wait until the open of the regular market whereupon I was concerned the system would go completely down again. The stock had shed 90% of its gain by then, so I sold for $350 profit. I was lucky to get that because the stock dropped immediately thereafter well below my entry price. That trade was simply the latest in a string of issues with Scottrade. I have used direct access platforms like Terra Nova in the past. They are the cream, no question about it. Finding the right combo of features and price is going to be tough but anything that works has got to be better than Scottrade at this point. That said, I am transferring the bulk of my account as soon as I select a new broker. I am preparing for this by liquidating all my trading positions before the transfer. My swing positions will remain at Scottrade until they are exited. I will not initiate any new positions at Scottrade. I will however keep a modest balance in the Scottrade account as a back up broker. Hopefully Scottrade will get the bugs out of their system because I like their fee structure.

I've been using Scottrade for about 5 years now and have experienced very little problems with them. I am not a heavy trader, and their convenient access and low price per trade has helped me earn an amount over the years that I am happy with.

I've had no issues with Scottrade. However, I was quite unhappy when they added the $17 trading fee for quite a few of the mutual funds they offer that were previously no transaction fee. I am also not pleased by the fact that they don't reinvest stock dividends. Whenever my stocks pay dividends in my Scottrade account I have to wait til the dividends accumulate to at least $100 so I can invest that $ in one of my mutual funds. I'd much prefer to have the dividends automatically reinvest in the stocks that pay them. Overall Scottrade has been quite good with the exception of these 2 points mentioned above.

Scottrade has serious problems with it's online trading tool, Scottrade Elite. It is a great tool, when working. Unfortunatlely, they can't keep the back-end servers up and running. Two total failures were experienced near the open on 1/11/06 and today 1/12/06. The worst thing is they don't seem to have a plan to fix the problems. Also, their customer service depends on a good branch manager. If you don't have a good one, you are in trouble. If you try to contact their national customer service center, you are referred back to the branch. I in the process on moving my last account from Scottrade. If you are considering Scottrade as an online broker, look elsewhere! I think that it would be hard to find someone worse.

Bad Luck with ST I just opened an account last week. A few days later, I deposited my stock certificates into my account at the local Houston branch on Westheimer. It's been six days now and all of the shares have not added into the account. According to the stockbroker, all the shares should already be showing and he doesn't know why they haven’t been added. I've been calling them everyday, trying to get them to add the rest of the shares. They tell me the same thing, "We'll get back with you...we're waiting for the main office to call us back on this". This is really starting to bother me, since I can't sell the shares due to this delay. I'm very disappointed with the branch personnels lack of care and irresponsibility. With all the figures they work with, I would think they could at least add correctly. First impressions make all the difference. I'm switching to another broker as soon as this problem is fixed. I should’ve read the Scottrade reviews before I decided on this broker. With all the bad reviews I’ve read today, I would have never signed up with Scottrade.

I love my Scottrade broker. Cheap prices, great company.

The absolute worst customer service I have ever experienced. Brokers were extremely rude and uninterested in customer retention or satisfaction. Talking to people in the home office was an exercise in futility as they are cut from the same stock as their local brokers. Dont waste your time or money. Just pony up the couple extra bucks per trade and go some place else. It is worth it.

Scottrade is horrible. You cannot even fund your account with them unless you bring a money order into one of their offices. Can you believe that! This started a few weeks ago when I received a first class letter in the mail from Scottrade saying that eCheck, Scottrade's third party contractor for funding accounts was hacked and that until they find another way for you to fund your account, you'll have to wire transfer (hugely expensive) or bring a money order into one of their offices. I've tried emailing them several times for an explanation as to why they would simply fire their primary funding source without having another one in place first. What a stupid decision! Whosever idea that was should be fired. All I ever got back from them was the same form letter...bla, bla, bla. You can't reach them by phone either. After careful research, I've moved my account to Firstrade. Same price and there does not seem to be any idiots running the company.

I love Scottrade and let me say that these posted comments so far don’t understand the brokerage industry very well so I will respond to the many complaints I’ve just read: Daytrader: Scottrade Elite is a platform for the active daytrader (over $25k in equity) and 2 new features were added (Nasdaq TotalView and Trade Ideas). These features, along with advanced security measures, REQUIRE Windows Xp/2000 or above. Microsoft does NOT support ME or 98 anymore. You are telling me that you have over $25k in assets and are able to utilize Scottrade Elite, but you CAN’T afford a $200 Windows upgrade? Give me a break. Casper: Scottrade lets you buy ANY penny stocks, and it’s not 50% of the premium, its ½% of the principal. That is .005 of the principal which comes out to an extra $5 per $1000 of stock that you buy. If you buy $2000 worth of penny stock the total commission would be $7 + .005 = $17 total. Where can you trade penny stocks for less? Destes: Scottrade is not a bank and is not owned by a bank like some other brokerage firms. They don’t have the check processing power of a bank and cannot take third party checks. Can you walk into a retail store and pay with a third party check? Not usually. Is cashing the check and then simply writing a new one from your own 1st party account that difficult? Xbnkrbrkr: To go through the automated Account Transfer Process it is required to have in possession a recent statement. This protects customers from unauthorized transfers and ensures that the proper assets get transferred correctly. Are you telling me it’s that difficult to obtain your most recent statement? Firms mail, at a minimum, quarterly statements or provide them online…it’s not that hard to print a recent statement. Tit4Tat: Scottrade charges you for everything? NO inactivity fees, NO maintenance requirements, $7 trades for stocks above $1.00 and NO ACAT out fees. What exactly were they ‘charging’ you for?

I love Scottrade and let me say that these posted comments so far don’t understand the brokerage industry very well so I will respond to the many complaints I’ve just read: Daytrader: Scottrade Elite is a platform for the active daytrader (over $25k in equity) and 2 new features were added (Nasdaq TotalView and Trade Ideas). These features, along with advanced security measures, REQUIRE Windows Xp/2000 or above. Microsoft does NOT support ME or 98 anymore. You are telling me that you have over $25k in assets and are able to utilize Scottrade Elite, but you CAN’T afford a $200 Windows upgrade? Give me a break. Casper: Scottrade lets you buy ANY penny stocks, and it’s not 50% of the premium, its ½% of the principal. That is .005 of the principal which comes out to an extra $5 per $1000 of stock that you buy. If you buy $2000 worth of penny stock the total commission would be $7 + .005 = $17 total. Where can you trade penny stocks for less? Destes: Scottrade is not a bank and is not owned by a bank like some other brokerage firms. They don’t have the check processing power of a bank and cannot take third party checks. Can you walk into a retail store and pay with a third party check? Not usually. Is cashing the check and then simply writing a new one from your own 1st party account that difficult? Xbnkrbrkr: To go through the automated Account Transfer Process it is required to have in possession a recent statement. This protects customers from unauthorized transfers and ensures that the proper assets get transferred correctly. Are you telling me it’s that difficult to obtain your most recent statement? Firms mail, at a minimum, quarterly statements or provide them online…it’s not that hard to print a recent statement. Tit4Tat: Scottrade charges you for everything? NO inactivity fees, NO maintenance requirements, $7 trades for stocks above $1.00 and NO ACAT out fees. What exactly were they ‘charging’ you for? Less fees than the competition, good free research and a good website and branch offices. Good luck with customer service at Ameritrade/Etrade's huge call centers.

I started Scottrade about five years ago,transfering from both E-Trade and Ameritrade(there was extra charges like ...inactivity,and one or two others).Up until now Scott has been great.They just upgraded their "Elite" software so it only works with Windows XP.They must think I will go out and buy the XP system or just buy a new computer.I am trying to make waves and hope they keep it compatible with Windows ME.I called one of their branch managers and he told me that Microsoft was getting rid of "98" and "ME"(not true). P.S. to the people that were disapointed because of not being able to buy "Penny Stocks"....why the hell would you want to buy them?

I had sharebuider (which is expensive and have bad cust service) but no doubt that scottrade has beaton them by far. very bad cust service (specially online one) . dumb asses just copy the text and email you if you ask any question. then they dont let you buy penny stocks as theyc harge you 50 percent of the premimuim. You cant buynor you can sell. Now abt their website. Pathtic. Seems like a 10 years old kid has create dthat. very bad analysis. cant get right data. sharebuilder was the best. now i have tos each for stocks at other sites and then buy at scottrade. i m moving out. they are really abd.. i dont knw how j.d power & associates gave them 5 start ratings... seriously.. all of the people who have mentioned dissatisfaction for scottrade are right. really bad experience...

i sent a check into scottrade in seattle to buy some penny stock i play. got a call stating they could not take the check because it was written on a company check. i can take an owner draw anytime i feel like it. i do run the company. scottrade had me talk to a manager. he stated that it was not company policy to accept the check. that is poor customer service. i would have to cash the check. get a money order and send it to them just to have the money deposited on my account. i told scottrade that i was not a drug dealer or a terroritst and that perhaps they should change their company policy.

The worst of the worst.. AVOID AVOID Smooth sailing and then a Nightmare! The company lost shares and could not find them.

What do all these brokers want...your business. Should they try harder to get it? Tried to open a new account and called in advance to explain I only had a statement dtd 3-05. Was told policy required 90 days or less but they would attach a note and process my application that way. When I arrived at the Salt Lake office they refused to accept my application...again stating their need for a current(90 days or less) They could not explain why a more current statement than I had was necessary other than it was needed (policy) to verify information.I pointed out that a 90 day old staement could virtually have no current information to verify. When I asked to speak with some one at the regional level I was given a phone # to call. I called that number and got a service rep. My mistake was to outline my complaint to that rep. after he would not give me the name and number of a regional manager or Roger Riney, CEO. He told me that it was the policy and it would not be changed...a decision I believe he is not in a position to make. My reply was BS. He said I was degrading him and wanted to know my name so I would not be able to open an account with Scott...at that point the frustration in dealing with this company was high and I lost it and did degrade him. My point is there was never an attempt to work the differences out...it was thier way (lower level employees) or the highway. Heaven help you if you want to speak with someone higher up, that information is guarded and very hard to obtain. You better have a good law firm that can write nasty letter if you want an action out of this group.

Scottrade is terrible, plain and simple. Stay away from this company. I is a perfect example of you get what you pay for. I have never had a good experience with them. The staff, especially management, make it perfectly clear that you mean nothing to them and they don't care about anything at all. I have had management ridicule me on the phone during problems. They are beyond rude. The only way I can describe it is to say they are arrogantly ignorant and insulent- extremely low class. Doing business with them is difficult. They are constantly charging me extra for everything. They are extremely limited on services and are very rigid in their policies. They are very slow in doing everything. Forget penny stocks with them. Also, I have had a lot of just plain bad luck with them. I think it is because do not promote success and they have very negative energy.

I haven't had any problems with the functionality of the website and my trades have all gone smoothly, except once where they sold short some shares that I wanted to sell. Price is unbeatable as far as I've seen. The customer service is a little slow dealing with deposits and withdrawls, but anything is better than what I was dealing with in E*Trade!

Scottrade sucks. Their staff repeatedly promised to add a verbal password when I opened up an account. I don't like the idea that anyone with a couple of easily obtained facts about me can get access to the account. Anyway, they never set up the password. After ranting to a couple of managers, one finally admitted that they do not like to set up verbal passwords. The annoying thing about this is that they were basically lying the whole time. Scottrade is thinly staffed by stupid, unprincipled people.

I see the comments stating that Scotttrade has cheap and fast service. If you trade occasionally, I can see how one might get this impression. My experience has been dramatically different and BAD, in several areas: 1 Execution platform. Many mornings when I try to log on to the Scottrade servers they are either not working or after logging on they fail at the worst time, when the market opens. Frequently I get the message trading not available or modification is off from the system. Then when I call to have a broker execute the trade, they are either unavailable(because everyone else is calling in) or they can't even get to their own back office. 2 I was frequently puzzled about a strange execution pattern. On limit orders of several thousand shares, 100 shares would execute immediately at my bid, then the market would back the ask away from me and my order would sit there for minutes causing me to either bump my bid by several cents to get it off or go to a market order(which would fill several cents against me). I couldn't figure this out until I discovered several weeks ago that Scottrade doesn't even execute their own trades!! . they sell 100% of their order stream to Knight, which makes a profit on handling the stream and then shares the profit they made on the client's trade with Roger Riney. Roger happens to be on the board of directors of Knight. Bottom line is if a better broker that does not sell it's order stream charges a penny a share, it is a better proposition than losing 1,2,3,5 or more pennies per share. 3 Scottrade continued to overcharge me for limit orders, after they instituted same price for market or limit orders. 5 When selling a stock short, the briker must obtain the shares to short them if they are available you might notice that many stocks are not available to be shorted from Scottrade. THis is because they sell their order stream to Knight and do not have a direct relationship to the market makers who MUST make them available. I have frequently been in the middle of a short trade and either cannot short more shares or am told that my short must be closed out because the shares are no longer available. Bottom line. If you are a 401 acount trader and only need to do a few buys and sells per month on a cash account and don't mind giving away a few cents of each trade, Scottrade is the place for you. If you count on your trading to make you money regularly and want to pay a true discount fee with a broker that actually trades your shares with the exchange go somewhere else. The following link: http://www.tagaudit.com/r6viewpub.asp is for a website that will give you the SEC required execution specs on all brokerages.

The only good thing at Scottrade is the $7.00 fee, everything else is a disaster. Server was down fairly often, once it was down for the whole 30 min., the excution is usually slower than others (I also have Ameritrade and TD Waterhouse, but their fees are higher.) When I contacted the local branch to inquire about some transactions, they gave me vague answers and when I pressed on, they were very rude. Couple of days ago, I sold some of my stocks, got the excuted trade notification and found out the shares are still there and no money was credited to my account, which means the transaction was not excuted as I was informed by the email. I emailed them (I have been overseas, can't call them), and got a form answer which didn't apply to my question. I am still trying to find out the answer from them and really don't know what to do next, any help would be appreciated. They are nice and efficient when you first open the account with them, after that you have to be very careful, make sure to check you account or transactions often. They are not helpful and often time when you want to short some stocks, they don't have them . I think they are not professional and their main purpose is to make quick money and long term reputation is not important to them despite what they advertise about themselves.

Setting up my account was a pain, as was everything else I wanted to do. They require you do everything by mail and it took forever to set up (about a month) then I wanted to do echeck and that took another two weeks to set up and it didnt even work. This is crazy. they are a online broker and I have to do everything by mail!!

Unbelievable service! Went in with the opinion of just another online broker and was amazed at knowledge and proffesionalism of the staff. Big kudos!

I did my research of mutual funds and trimmed down my choices to 6. I then went to their branch office which is quite close to where I work only to find out that they only have 2 of the 6 I listed. Those two that they have were the only ones not yet rated by Morningstar and Lipper. The manager was very unfriendly and never even gazed at me. People there were not very sophisticated. They never even bothered to offer me any alternatives or interest in giving advice on my investment. That was the nail to their coffin for me. First they said that they don't trade some penny stocks and only learned that when I wanted to buy this certain penny stock. Second, they do not offer trailing stops and said that they have no plans of offering it in the future. I don't think I'll be ready for more disappointing surprises from them. Scottrade may be cheap but you get what you pay for...dismal service, dismal features, dismal selection of mutual funds. I will be transferring my account somewhere else, perhaps FirstTrade for my mutual funds. If you're looking for no-frills deep discount online brokers, I recommend using Lowtrades or ChoiceTrade.