I curse thee, E*Trade
I had an interesting dispute with E-Trade recently that I'm still disturbed about. I was trying to move some funds and of course they asked me to identify myself. Okay that's reasonable, I thought, as I began answering the standard questions like name and address. Then the weirdness began. A piece of land was bought last year by a Mrs. Holtzman...could I tell them the details? Well, the problem was that the person in question was an ex-wife and I didn't know (or care). The service rep huffily informed me that E-Trade had bought 3rd party information on me from a database provider and was using that info to "validate" me.
Ugh. How creepy is this? After several phone calls and a flat-out refusal on my part to even participate in id'ing myself to those bastards with any information that I had not given them myself, they begrudgingly gave me my own money.
The arrogance of this company is remarkable. I also wonder what else they're doing with purchased information since their privacy policy says that they might buy info for "marketing purposes."
I don't believe in voodoo, but I have made a doll anyway and named it E-frigging-Trade. If you're an investor, sell the stock now before the curse hits. Internet brokerages are for consumer convenience only, and when they cease to become convenient (because they're a pain in the privacy ass), they will wither and die.
Posted on August 20, 2007
