Stay away from TradeKing

Dear Internet,
 I recently had the displeasure of dealing with TradeKing's customer support, and decided I no longer want to do business with a company with their policies. Sadly, I had to learn the hard way and I am hoping I can save a reader or two from this ordeal.
 At the end of last month, I deposited some money to buy some stocks. Since it is an ACH transaction, it takes a couples of days. So, I forgot and didn't log back in until this month. To my surprise, there is an outrageous $50 charge in my account for an "inactivity fee". This is a fee they added late last year and they claim they emailed me about it during that time. I can not find an email to this effect and even then, why not notify me before charging me this time around? Would it hurt them to drop a line with all the technology available nowadays? A text, IM, tweet, or something like hey we are about to charge you this fee if you do not make a transaction soon. Instead, the first month there is enough money in the account for them to charge me a fee, they just charge away.
 In the following chat, I tried to talk them out of charging me this fee but they will mostly just argue the validity of their fee that is hidden in a 100 question long FAQ that I only found after googling for it. I honestly recognize it was my mistake not to research the company further. But, since I though I was somehow grandfathered in from Zecco, Inc. which they merged with, I did not do my due diligence. I admit I snoozed. However, I don't want to and advise you not to do business with a company where if you snooze, you lose.

  Welcome to TradeKing's Live Help service. Your chat is currently being routed to one of our representatives, you will be connected shortly. Thank you for contacting us, I am 'Donnie' how may I assist you today?

Donnie: Good afternoon. Thank you for contacting TradeKing. 

Christian Rios: Hi Donnie, I was about to place a trade and I realized my account have a $50 charge! 

Christian Rios: After reasearching it, I am very upset. I did not have to worry about this with Zecco 

Donnie: Let me check your account 

Donnie: Please provide your full name and the last 4 digits of your SS number for account verification. 

Christian Rios: Christian Rios, 1337 

Donnie: Yes I do see your account was charged with an inactivity fee, and we apologize if this caught you off guard. 

Donnie: All Zecco clients were notified via email regarding the introduction of the Inactivity Charge to their accounts, so they could take the course of action they felt best fit their needs to avoid the charge. Unfortunately it does cost TradeKing to maintain dormant and inactive accounts. In efforts to continue to offer our deeply discounted commission structure to all our clients, and to avoid having to change our commission structure to offset the increasing maintenance costs associated with these inactive accounts, the Inactivity Charge was introduced. 

Christian Rios: I would appreciate it if you guys remove that charge. 

Donnie: Unfortunately, this charge is a valid part of our fee structure. However, if you would like I can extend an offer to have this charge reimbursed if you can make a deposit to raise your account balance to the minimum of $2500 in order to avoid this fee. 

Donnie: I see your account value is roughly $800 short of the minimum balance required in order to be exempt from the fee. 

Christian Rios: I thought all you needed to do was to make a trade once a year? 

Donnie: That is correct as well. 

Donnie: You will have until August of 2014 to place one trade in order to be exempt from the fee for next year 

Christian Rios: Well, can you remove it and I can place a trade before the end of the month? 

Donnie: Unfortunately not, this fee was validly charged to the account. 

Christian Rios: Look, I am trying to be reasonable here. But, if you are not going to play ball, I promise you, I will take my business elsewhere. 

Donnie: We do regret to hear that, and we would not want to lose your business. However, this charge is a part of our structure here at TradeKing, and we do apologize if this is not in line with your intended trading volume in the account. 

Christian Rios: Yet, you agreed to remove the fee if I deposit 800 dollars to comply, but not if I place a trade. Fine, I am done doing business with you. Btw, I have a blog and would to share how you treat your customers. 

Donnie: We do apologize for your lack of satisfaction here, but if placing one trade per year is not something that can easily be met then it may be best to find a broker that does not have minimum trading requirements. 

Christian Rios: Yes, one without ridiculous and outrageous fees and one willing to work things out with their customers. 

Donnie: If you should decide to leave then we do wish you the best of luck with future investments. 

Christian Rios: well, I already decided to leave, can we get started with that process? Donnie: Sure, if you intend to transfer your account to another broker then this process will be initiated on the receiving brokers end, as they will have special transfer instructions for you. 

Donnie: Once this process is initiated on their end, no further action will be needed from you on our end here. 

Donnie: Do you have any other questions that I can assist with at this time? 

Christian Rios: No, I am just amazed a what a terrible company you are 

Donnie: We do regret to hear you feel that way, and if there are no further questions then I wish that you have a great rest of your day. 

Donnie: I am happy to be of service, have a great day. Thank you for contacting TradeKing today. I hope I was able to answer your questions or address your concerns. If you believe that this issue is still unresolved or you have additional feedback, please email a copy of this conversation to service@tradeking.com.

 As you have probably already noticed if you are a baby boomer that still goes to Blockbuster, it has gone bankrupt. The franchise name was sold to Dish Network. We still don't know what they are going to do with the brick and mortar stores, maybe sell you satellite dishes. They are, however, keeping the brand for online and mail-in rentals. It is sad though that growing up I used to go there with friends, sometimes just to socialize or talk about movies with people knowledgeable in the subject. You would get great recommendations especially from more mature people that could steer you away from "Glitter" or "Crossroads." It was a place where you could buy snacks, walk around, and our movie hobby wouldn't be just being a couch potato.

     I miss these days, not to mention that streaming still has not caught up with physical media. No streaming option can match the quality of Blu-rays. Most are on par with DVDs, a more than a decade old standard. The Surround Sound and HD Audio availability is very limited. Streaming services have done a terrible job of providing Closed Captioning and their prices are quickly going up. Coincidentally, right after Blockbuster bit the dust, Netflix increased their prices to up to 60% to keep your previous plan, with little to no improvements to the service.

     Video is going through many changes, just as audio did in the last decade. MP3s are not nearly the same quality as formats that did not prosper such as Super CD or DVD-Audio. Even though storage is very cheap nowadays, we have not even moved to slightly larger lossless codecs or uncompressed audio. I understand most people do not have equipment to appreciate the difference since iPods are the most common/convenient audio player out there. This leads me to believe that eventually great video quality is simply going the way of the Dodo (and Blockbuster). One day, I will tell stories to kids of how we had much better video and audio back in the day.

Ocupy SMS

As you may already know, the "evil" telecom companies want to squeeze every cent they can out of you by making up fees. SMS or Short Message Service is what is usually described as texting by your carrier. In the last decade before the explosion of smartphone, SMS used to fill a gap where there was little to no connection to the Internet. SMS functioned though SMS centers hence requiring its own infrastructure.
Nowadays, this is completely irrelevant as most smartphones typically use standard mail protocols such as SMTP over TCP/IP. Meaning, if you have a smartphone, it is very likely you are being charged for something that should be covered by your data plan alone. Of course, I am not familiar with pricing from all cell phone companies; however, if you are on a "bundle" plan and texting is part of it, most likely they are just getting a bundle of money from you. Otherwise, if it is clearly spelled out as a separate fee, you might want to consider just not paying for it and using alternatives that require your data plan alone.
There are several apps out there, each one with its limitations, but with more features than SMS.  So far, Kik is my favorite cross platform messaging app as it is free and it is available for iOS, Android, BlackBerry, and WP7. The makers of Kik are currently being sued by RIM, the maker of BlackBerry Messenger, alleging Kik uses their notifications system for Delivered and Read messages. This feature is not available on SMS. BBM is a superior app as it provides several other features but it is only available for BlackBerries. GroupMe and Whatsapp are good ones too but they use your phone number as your ID and that might be inconvenient if you switch SIM Cards when traveling abroad or for other purposes. GroupMe also requires you to have SMS for activation so make sure you have not canceled SMS before setting it up.
Most platforms have apps for all popular IM clients such as AIM, Facebook Chat, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo, Gtalk, etc. However, the obvious disadvantage is that they require you to be logged in to be able to receive messages. But, you will be able to text with people running it on their smartphones or computers. Of course, all of these apps have a couple of issues to overcome even though they provide more features than SMS will ever do. SMS is already installed on your phone and it is the only way to text people with Jitterbugs. So, tell your friends, tell your wife, that they all need to upgrade!
© 2011 Christian Rios
All trademarks and copyrights contained in this document are owned by their
respective trademark and copyright holders.