Back in 2000, I had some Phillips Stock worth just over $1,000 and decided that it was better invested in Novell. So I sold the Phillips Stock and bought 110 shares of Novell through an etrade account I opened. Well I bought the Novell stock at just over $9.00 a share. Not soon after that, Novell stock plummeted down into the the 2 dollar range. No biggie. I'll just sit on it. Well I have been doing that. I hadn't forgotten about my stock, just knew it was worthless, so I never checked my account. Well I guess in the fine print of opening the etrade account, it said, the first year is free, then since you can't read the fine print, we will charge you at least $25 a quarter. Apparently, etrade wasn't sucking my money fast enough, so recently changed the fee from $25 to $40 a quarter. I had just under $300 dollars in "fees" for them doing absolutely nothing. When I saw this, I was shocked and immediately called, only to be told the info above. Well I didn't stop there. The guy I was working with was really nice, but couldn't take the fees off my account. The kicker came when the guy I was talking to told me that there were alot of ways I could get the fees taken off. One of which was work for a company that used etrade for corporate stuff. It just so happens Novell is one of these companies. However the supervisor said there is "no one in the company that would take all the fees off my account, maybe $80 but not $260." I told him I wanted to talk to whomever could clear this up for me and I wasn't taking no for an answer. He promised me a call back within 24 hrs.
I can't belive it. Right now my 110 shares of Novell stock are worth about $800, then with about $300 in fees, that means I only have about $500 dollars. Some investment. I would have been better off to put the money under my matress.
I'm not too happy with etrade right now.
