Watch what you say to zecco. BEWARE of ZECCO.com for investing, trading, options and stocks. It took over 5 weeks for them to setup my account and it still has not been created correctly. I don’t even have any stocks to transfer in. When talking to customer service I need to start over every time which takes a lot longer if any problem needs more than one phone call to resolve. There have been reports from people that the setup process is not clear so if you fund your account after they say everything is a go and you have not turned in your government tax papers they will withhold a sizeable chunk of your money.

Recently they changed their policy where if you no longer meet the New minimum balance requirements you do not get free trades. Even though their whole business model is built on free trades you don’t get any. Now my account is halfway setup at this point and I log in and I receive the notice saying everything is changing the minimum requirements for account, and the amount of free trades, and that you must meet the $2500 minimum to be able to receive their now ten (down from 40) free trades a month. I have not even traded my first stock with this service and the terms are changing. On top of that there is a $50 transfer out fee (up from $0) that is imposed now. This seems like bait and switch to me.

Now they contact me because they don’t have the required information that was already sent to them when my account was setup the first time. I send back that I don’t have time to start this process over with and I do not feel confident more or less in the company anymore. I also let them know that I am not happy with their business model now affects me and how I have been treated as a customer since the start. Now I have heard people criticize the company on their site which is always deleted by the moderator’s but also on the internet. I felt that I would make my own decision as their site seemed informative and I thought I know what I was getting into. All I wanted was for them to understand they are pushing customers away and that it would be beneficial to grandfather the people in that have been with the company or just signed up before this was enacted. I was not notified of this change by email or us mail as they stated before it went into affect and I just wanted to use my account with their new restrictions if need be but not be shutout by the new minimum balance.

Now I have my major funds at another broker since I wanted to make sure this company was of the straight and narrow before I brought my whole account over to them (like a lot of people do). Now these people are shunned away which may lose them business.

Now I understand that they are a new company but they don’t need to close my account because I stated I didn’t think I what they were doing was fair to me and to others. Most business owners would like to hear the feedback before it costs them money from customers taking their business elsewhere.

Moral of the story is watch what you say to Zecco they may close your account if they don’t like what you say.

Zecco if you would like to contact me I would be more than happy to talk to you.

Thanks

Do you make money on the spread between bid and ask?

Zecco Trading does not make markets and therefore does not participate in the spread between the bid and ask on any security. All of our orders are entered as agency orders and are therefore never marked up by us. We route all orders through our clearing firm Penson Financial Services who then automatically routes them for best execution.

Overall, social investing websites will have to overcome three top challenges to succeed: - build a community while keeping spammers at bay; - rank and rate information in a way that makes financial sense - aggregate content beyond their own website.

See a more in-depth analysis on my blog: http://phc.typepad.com/infonomics/2007/02/social_investin.html

Sponsored by Bloomberg.com Morgan Stanley Fallout From Andy Xie E-Mail Costs Two More Jobs (Bloomberg) Last week, Morgan Stanley economist Andy Xie was forced to resign after an email of his leaked suggesting that Singapore was a hotbed of corruption…

hey Zecco Scam:

” Sell’ m to me when u can! More than happy to pick’ em up.”

btw: did u get one of their free hotdogs on WallStreet last Monday?

c ya, -d.

So I read in various places about this new investing startup Zecco that is going to offer free stock trades, and make its money from site advertising versus customer commissions. Then I got an e-mail from a guy at Zecco…