I signed up for an account on Tuesday.
On Wednesday, I still had not received any confirmation that my application for a trading account had been received. In fact, if I signed in to my “regular” account (yeah, confusing), it encouraged me to sign up for a trading account. So, I emailed customer service asking if my application had been received. On Wednesday afternoon, I received an automated message confirming the application, and indicating that I would be contacted when it was approved.
This morning (Thursday), I got a reply to my email to customer service. They said that the application was approved and all I had to do was click on “Trading” and enter my trading key. If I click on “Trading” while signed in, it still asks me to apply for an account. There is no option to enter a trading key.
I tried calling customer service to get this sorted out. After about 30 minutes on hold during lunch, I got to talk to someone. The rep was actually pretty helpful, but I shouldn’t have had to call in the first place.
What had happened was I had misunderstood a question on the application, and answered it in a way that would require a specific letter to be sent to Zecco. The problem is, they never told me this until I called. If I hadn’t called, my account would probably have been left in this state forever. I ended up having to send them a fax (yes, apparently that technology still exists) explaining my error. Hopefully they’ll get this sorted out soon.
So far it’s E*TRADE: 0, Zecco: 0.
For those of you keeping score at home, due to my lack of faith in both E*TRADE and Zecco, I’ve put in an application at TradeKing as well. Apparently they rank highly on customer service.
Let’s see who wins this race for my money.
Note to self:
Next blog entry about Zecco should be titled: “How’s Zecco? Zecco’s like this:”
Read it aloud and smile.
Hi Michael,
Thanks for your attempt to become a Zecco Trading customer. I definitely understand what you are talking about. Our new account set up process is not as smooth as we would like and have significant enhancements on the way. I agree with the perspective that you shouldn’t have to call our service folks for something that should be a slam dunk process.
I appreciate your patience.
Craig Prickett
Vice President, Marketing
Zecco Holdings, Inc.
Thanks for following up, Craig.
My account was approved this morning and I’m working on funding it now. Looks like Zecco may come out as the winner.