esquire415

Is Zecco.com Any Match for Wells Fargo and Bank of America?

I would have loved WellsTrade with their 100 free trades including mutual funds. However, their mutual funds list is not as comprehensive as some brokers. I have been asking for a trailing stop feature for I trade many stocks and this would be handy in a volatile market but it doesn't seem like they will add this feature in the near future. The best you can do is put a stop loss order.

Zecco is even worse now since my last post. Since March, they require $25,000 equity before you can make 10 free trades....yea $25k from $2,500k....that's a freaking 1000% increase, and even if you reach that amount, it's not even an unlimited free trade. They really screwed up the many small investors they have which is their customer base. They practically eliminated free trades and now charge $4.50 per trade. The only real advantage they have over Wells Fargo is the trailing stop feature. Otherwise...they are crap! Ironically, when they first started, they criticized BofA's and Well's high minimum equity requirements to obtain free trades and now they are taking a punch in the gut for it.

Is Zecco.com Any Match for Wells Fargo and Bank of America?

Zecco was great when most of it was free. Now you have to have $2500 equity in your account in order to get 10 free trades a month which is a HUGE (75%) cut from the original 40 with no minimum balance requirment. Also if you go over your free trades, they charge $4.50, up $1 from the original $3.50

In addition, Zecco didn't use to charge $30 maintenance fee for IRAs and $30 closing fees. This is a typical bait and switch business tactic. I got lured in as soon as they took out the $2500 minimum requirement for free trades only to put it back in and decrease my free trades once they got my money. And part of their slogan even said that the original offer is "not an introductory offer". What irks me most is that they do not have the balls to admit that they are not making money. They tell us that only 2% of their customers trade more than 10 times a month. Well if that was the case then that 2% should not affect their bottom line. Why make 98% of their customers suffer? Why the drastic additional and increase in charges? They would have been still good if they met their customers in the middle by decreasing the minimum requirement to a more reasonable $1000, providing 20 free trades, and $15 annual fee for IRAs. They can't really claim zero commission costs anymore....perhaps "almost zero commission costs"

Oh yes, and their forum sucks. The other poster is right. They remove posts on complaints and and technical issues about Zecco. They even once provided a board for it and totally deleted it. They also would not let you post suggestions in public.