E*Trade froze my fund for months and their customer service was very rude Merrifield Virginia
In November 2008, I found out that my outgoing transfer in E*trade bank was not successful because they placed security hold on my account which was at the balance of approximately $20,000. I called them and they told me I need to write a notarized letter to them. This started my nightmare with their incoherent verification process and rude customer service.
They lost my notarized letter by accidents, repeated tricky requests to me even if I was not able to do their requests. Their requests didn't make sense at all, like requesting my source bank to promise I am the account holder. But E*trade didn't care, and would hold my fund forever until they smelled possible lawsuit from me.
Their representatives had been really rude during my communication with them. Some of them told me if I satisfy their request, they would consider removing security hold on my account. Some other representatives directly hung up on me and refused to communicate after I finally satisfied their request (and that was hard to do). They even got rude when I pointed out that they did receive my notarized letter.
Their service and attitude were very bad through the tedious discussion, which took me 3 months of time, countless call and headache. The funny thing is they kept making difficult requests to me, but they could never give me a clear answer why they placed security hold on my account.
After reading hundreds of complaint in Internet, I know my case is not rare. It looks like E*trade is doing every possible trick to hold customer's money as long as they can. Very unethical and disgusting.
Richard
Redmond, Washington
U.S.A.