Victory over Etrade
 

Last fall I deposited $50,000 with Etrade under their promotion to give me 25k UAL miles. I bought microsoft which promptly dropped the value of the account below $50,000. Etrade gave me 5k miles but no more, saying I had to maintain the $50k balance for 6 months. The promotional literature from last fall does NOT contain this requirment. After months of email arguments with them, last month I sued in small claims court. They are in default, and I may be getting a $750 judgment soon. In the meantime, a few weeks ago my UAL account showed TWO 20,000 postings from Etrade. I have a comment and question.
1. Don't let them deny your miles if you gave them money under the initial promotion.
2. Is it possible for them to "un-post" miles if they later think that they should have sent 2ok instead of 40k??

In what state did you sue them? Can you sue them in any state or does it have to be certain states?

I am shocked, make that SHOCKED http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/redface.gif, that E-Trade doesn't have some hideous clause mandatinng arbitration http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/frown.gif in front of the National Arbitration Forum http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/frown.gif http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/frown.gif or some other body with some chocie of law provision involved. They probably just didn't enforce it.

I sued in Oregon. My best guess is that they could be sued in any state where they transact business. Jurisdiction was not tested in my case since they never bothered to appear, and the matter went by default.

Here's a question related to this thread.

I signed up for E-trade $1k>5K with Delta Three weeks ago. No Miles. My Stock is doing poorly.

My wife signed up for E-trade $1k>5K Clickmiles 1 week ago and got her miles in THREE days!!!!!. Her stock is up and down a little/ back and forth.


Is getting the miles contingent on the balance being above the $1k mark?

Or is it more dependant on the Partner?

Congratulation on taking the incentive to win your case in small claims. I have had judgements awarded to me in the past, granted never against corporations and the only value of the judgement paper was when I traveled to places that didn't provide toilet paper. Collecting can be expensive and time consuming. You might consider taking those miles and get an award ASAP unless of course you have a large balance that they can access.

Good luck - I fired Etrade also.

DR

by the way - keep msft!

[This message has been edited by drtravels (edited 08-28-2000).]

Last year, I opened an Etrade account for $10k in cash to get the 10,000 United mile bonus. After 6 months I transfered the entire amount $10k + interest back to my Charles Schwab account, leaving my Etrade with a zero balance.

In April I transferred over $50,000 of Qualcomm stock from Charles Schwab to Etrade under their promotion to give me 25k UAL miles. Of course, Qualcomm dived to well below $50,000. To my surprise, Etrade gave me 20k UAL miles in July, less than 3 months.

I'm planning to move back my much smaller nest egg back to Charles Schwab and wait for the next Etrade promotion. However, I'm just hoping that I have the $50k for the next minimum.

tasnam, I think the answer to your question depends on the language in the promotional material.

------------------

I started to go with E-Trade when the DL promo first came out. Just happened to get a large expense reimbursement check that would have worked great for the 50K miles.

I signed up for an account on line, but had a question about how they make a market for foreign stock. I e-mailed the question to them at the address they have for questions, and waited to hear back from them before I sent in the money or the forms.

Almost 6 weeks later I got an automated response saying there was possibly the e-mail I sent may not have been read. If this was the case please send it again. Oh yeah, like I am going to do that, trust people to handle my finances who don't know if they have read and replied to my e-mails or in fact don't read and reply to my e-mails. Fired before they were hired.

By the by, about 5 months later received a letter asking for my social security number as they needed the info to finish processing my accounts.

I've had nothing but trouble w/ them as well. Deposited over 50K in stock and they posted 2 15,000 credits to my UAL MP account. Two months later they subtracted 15,000 miles. I had to sell the stock and close the account and they not only subtracted another 15,000 from my account, they actually posted another -15,000 to my account.

I've argued w/ them numerous times and finally got someone sympathetic from MP customer servce to reinstate the 15,000 miles.

Is it legal that they can remove miles from an account once they have posted them? Anyway, I told one of the Etrade reps. that their attitude towards their customers is one of the reasons their stock is in the toilet recently.

Isn't it a little odd that another company (E!@#Trade) can take points out of your account ?? I mean, its understandable that United can, but another company ?? I think it might be time for me to set up a company and find out how to collect miles from people's frequent flier accounts !!