E-Trade: The Saga Continues

In my last post I mentioned the issue I had with E-Trade concerning a transfer that I initiated from work instead of from home. I thought the issue was resolved, but it has escalated in the last few days.

Here is the moderately-concise version:

After I first spoke with an E-Trade customer service representative (CSR) on the phone, he verified my identity and approved (so I thought…) two transfers that I submitted. “Case closed,” I thought.

So, I waited a couple days for the transfers to complete. They did not. So, I e-mailed their support center to inquire why the transfers did not come to pass. To be fair, E-Trade responded to my e-mail within a couple of hours, but the answer was surprising.

Thank you for your inquiry regarding a transfer of $XXXX to your complete savings account. After reviewing your account, the transfer was not completed and there are not any pending transfers.

I apologize for any confusion in this matter. You should initiate another transfer request….

OK, thanks for pointing out the obvious! No real harm done. I decided to try the transfer again. I submitted the transfer request (from home!), watched it show up in the “pending” transfers, and the next day saw it move to “completed” transfers. Needless to say, the money yet again DID NOT MOVE. Now I’m starting to get frustrated.

The Treasury Bill Debacle

On the morning of May 17 I received a notice from my trusty Google Calendar alerting me that a 28-day Treasury Bill was coming due and should be posted to… my floundering E-Trade account. Surely this would work smoothly… I hope?

Wrong! The 28-day T-Bill did not appear as a deposit in my E-Trade account. I waited an extra day just to make sure, but no, nothing appeared. Now I have $1,000 floating around in Cyberspace, and I don’t know where it is! Of course, I fired off another e-mail to E-Trade.

Dear E*TRADE,

I have a $1000 US Treasury Bill that matured on May 17. It was supposed to be deposited directly to my Complete Savings account on that day. As of today, there is still no sign of it.

I have had a number of transfer problems with my Savings account recently, and I am worried because this deposit has not shown up yet.

The US Treasury Department sent the $1000. Where is it? Has there been any indication of an attempted deposit from them on my account?

Within an hour I received a response from E-Trade:

Thank you for your message regarding a direct deposit to your Complete Savings account xxxxxx. I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused, and I will be happy to answer your question. In regard to your inquiry, I have submitted a request to research the status of the $1000.00 direct deposit from US TREASURY for you. Please allow 3-5 business days for processing.

A rather generic response, but at least they are communicating. So, I’m supposed to sit around for 3-5 days while they look under rocks and between couch cushions for my missing money. As it turns out, I did not have to wait that long.

The same day I received an e-mail from Treasury Direct.

An attempt to make a payment to your bank account failed.
The payment has been returned and the proceeds will be used to purchase a
Zero-Percent Certificate of Indebtedness in your TreasuryDirect account.

Thank you Treasury Direct! At least I now know where my money is, and can sweep it into a different account soon. I also know for certain that the problem is on E-Trade’s end, since they rejected the transfer.

The Realization

Obviously, my E-Trade account has been rendered useless. I can’t send any money in or take any money out. For all practical purposes, they are holding my account hostage. They put a “lock” on my account eleven days ago, and despite my verification of identity to their CSR a week ago, they failed to remove the lock. Furiously, I fired off yet another e-mail to them.

Dear E*TRADE,

I received a message today from the US Treasury Department. They attempted to deposit the $1000 into my Complete Savings Account, but for some reason you all rejected the deposit. Apparently someone has placed some type of hold on my account. For the last 10 days, none of the transfer requests (in or out) that I have submitted have resulted in the actual movement of ANY money. Why has this happened? Please call me, for I would like to resolve this problem as soon as possible.

And once again, within an hour I received a response from E-Trade:

Thank you for your e-mail concerning the error with the IRS. I apologize for any inconvenience this caused you. There are some questions that we have, that could explain. Please call us at 1-800-382-XXXX. We are opened from 9 am to 9 pm EST seven days a week. We can resolve this quickly. Thank you.

Despite my initial call, they still have some more questions for me? I have a few questions for them as well, such as:

• “Why are you all so incompetent?”
• “Why didn’t you tell me that you LOCKED my account completely when you had me on the phone last time?”
• “Will you please close my account?”

The Call (again)

After I received that last e-mail, I called them, waited on hold for twenty minutes, and then answered a bunch of identification questions for the CSR again. He then asked me to hold again while he transfered me to the appropriate department. I waited for about ten minutes, listening to some terrible muzak, and then the same CSR picked up the phone again.

Get this: he apologized and informed me that the particular department that could help me was CLOSED for the day. I had to sit… and wait… and sit… and wait… just to be told that the department was closed. Sheesh. “Pathetic” is the most appropriate word that comes to mind.

To Be Continued?

Of course, I’m supposed to call back tomorrow morning. We’ll see how that goes. The real shame here is that E-Trade used to be my favorite on-line savings account. Their service works well… until you have a problem. Then, good luck finding someone who can actually help you.