E*TRADE, a Lesson in Stupidity: Episode 1

Although I've had an E*TRADE account for some time now, I have decided to close it down. The reason I am shutting it down is because they have quite possibly the second worst service I have ever experienced. The worst was a waitress in a restaurant in San Jose, CA.

Let me back track a few months to where this all started. Our story begins in sunny June of this year when I decided to make a small deposit of $20 per month into my account as an initiative to save money. For a variety of reasons, when E*TRADE's system tried to pull the funds there were insufficient funds available and the transfer failed. This happened for 2 recurring months and E*TRADE notified me that the auto-transfer was being discontinued. No biggie, it's what I expected.

A month or so later, I needed to pay of some hefty credit card debts to avoid finance charges and decided to sell everything in my portfolio which I was able to do successfully. Now the fun begins. E*TRADE happens to have this service called BillPay which you have to enable to use. I apply for BillPay to be enabled and after a couple of days I get a response saying everything is hunky dory. Go pay your bills to your hearts content which I proceed to do. I send out a couple of payments which will take about 5 days to send. I wait for 7 and go into the system only to find that the payments were unsuccessful. Why? Well, I got this message telling me what the issue was...

Your online request to pay $xxxx.xx to CHASE MASTERCARD & VISA from xxxx-xxxx could not be completed. This could be due to technical difficulties, incorrect bill pay setup, insufficient funds, or other reasons.

Ummmm, so what was the reason? Basically, E*TRADE has no idea why this failed, so I call them. After sitting on hold for what seems and age (15 minutes), I get a customer service rep. Let's call her Wanda. Wanda tells me she has no idea why the BillPay failed and that she will need to put this in for investigation. I get a 20 digit reference number and I'm told that E*TRADE will call me back within 2 days. So I wait... no phone call.

Whilst I was on hold previously I was bombarded with ads saying that I should try E*TRADE's online help center if I want a speedy resolution to my problems. After day 3 of radio silence I decided that I would try out this amazing answer to all my problems.I jump online and proceed to explain my problem in detail. With lightning speed I get ... no, sorry ... I get nothing.

So I call back and get a new customer service rep. Let's call this guy Dave. Dave, tells me that the reason my BillPay failed is because my account is locked. "This can't be" I cry out in disbelief, "I've been selling stock as if the stock market was crashing around me in flames without a problem!". Dave confirms that it is definitely not enabled. "Why is it disabled?" I ask curiously. Dave, tells me it's because I owe them $40. Assuming this is a finance charge for the 2 failed transactions, I ask Dave to take the fee from my brokerage account which has more than enough cash in it to cover this nominal fee. "No, this won't do", says Dave, I have to wire in the funds before he can unlock the account. Now here is the clincher, the funds are not for finance charges, this is the two, $20 amounts E*TRADE tried to unsuccessfully withdraw from my bank account. wtf? To make this even more ridiculous Dave says that E*TRADE will pay for the wire transfer fee - $25 to be exact.

Let me get this straight, E*TRADE is going to pay $25 for me to transfer $40 into my account so I can take it out again to pay bills? Hmmmm, I wonder why their share price is sitting at just over a buck?

I finally get the wire sorted out and my account unlocked, all the while I have been sending a message each day through the "amazing" online help center asking if anyone is actually working there. No response. I am now picturing tumbleweeds and desert sands in the support desk offices. I pay my bills. Tantantantaraaaa! Big fanfare, drum rolls.

No, this is not over...

Vegas Vampires

On many occasions I try and hunt down the worst movies I can find on television. I have found some pretty bad movies but "Vegas Vampires" takes the cake.

Some movies go out of their way to capture a spectacular event using one camera without a cut. Take "Children of Men" for example. They have an entire 5 minute scene with 100's of extras orchestrated to produce one of the most impressive "One Take" scenes I've ever scene (ha ha get it... phew). Vegas Vampires is impressive in the way that EVERY scene is a "One Take".

Clearly it's a monster pic, so you're expecting something disturbing and scary. VV (as it's friends like to call it) delivers disturbing... but not in the way you think. I'm not sure if it was the dopey vampire dance or the incredibly crap script that I found scarier.

Another plus was the horrible* acting. Lines like "I'm your wife now" and "what the f**k" delivered with the passion of a socially inept wine cork with a bad lisp on Prozak. The good thing is that the plot was brilliant...wait...what? Unfortunately this too, had the consistency of a wet blanket. Just in case you were confused lines like "He must be a creature of the night" are repeated multiple times. Awesome, thanks!

Attention to detail is fantastic. It seems that Vampires can be killed using bullets, unless they are on the street. In which case you need to use a form of Karate with a lot of yelping and whooping.

One has to commend the set design. One scene included a binder and a pot plant; the plant being possibly the best actor in the entire production. Another notable feature of this film is the fake teeth. Apparently vampires have a serious overbite problem, so much so that only a couple of them can actually talk (the others are dancing around triangles). An orthodontists dream species.

What was the saving grace of the entire movie, you may ask? Well that depends. If you like boobs then I guess those. If not, then when the movie ends. Watch out for Navy SEAL Ninja Nun and the riot police.

* Did I say horrible? I meant awful, dreadful ... more synonyms here.

911 Emergency

Ethan wanted to call 911 the other day. Had he been allowed to, the call would have gone something like this...

911 Operator: "Hello?"
Ethan: "I have an emergency!"
911 Operator: "What is your emergency?"
Ethan: "I have no-one to play with"

As you can imagine this would have gone down well, so we decided not to let him call.

Ethan Logic

As many know, my son Ethan has a rather unique outlook on things so I thought I'd share a couple of gems regarding life according to him:

Apparently

you have a nose to store boogers in it.

He can't drive because he doesn't have a drivers license. When asked why not he said

I have to go to boating school to get a license

not because he is only 3 feet tall and can't even see over the wheel, let alone reach the pedals.

Why boating school you may ask? Well, that's where SpongeBob Squarepants goes for his driving lessons.

Ethan Speak #2

I was having lunch with my 5 year old son today and he was telling me about vampire bats and how they actually "resist" but vampires do not. We then moved on to Star Wars and talked about Jango and Boba Fett who are apparently "bouncy" hunters

The little language of Ethan

I love to talk with Ethan these days. Yes I said talk with, not to. He has become a real little personality, following in his brothers talkative footsteps albeit rather one sided and around one subject - Bia-yickels (TFES*: Bionicles). He told me yesterday that he loves blahnahs (TFES*: Bananas) and constantly reminds me that HE is not cute, BABIES are cute. Now we have the Bia-yickelMooovee (TFES*: Bionicle movie on Lego.com) on the pewter (TFES: Computer) which keeps him fairly occupied for a while.

So if you ever want to spend a solid 4 hours listening to someone else do all the talking ask Ethan about his Bia-yickels. The story will go something like this... 'And the little guy and the white guy and my movie...'.

* Translation from Ethan Speak

50 cent, Eminem aint got sh!t on me!

I am possibly the worst wrapper in history. Presents that is. Give me a simple box and I guarantee you I'll wrap it in the worst way possible. It'll look like a helmet or a violin but definitely not a box

Catch the ball, Win the game!

Being a Dad in the United States, I have been trying to get acquainted with the national sports so that I can share in my boys learning experience, and maybe teach them at least one thing that will help them succeed. I have really been getting into American Football. So much so, that I am actually watching a game while I type this.

I believe the first step to becoming 'US Sport Dad' is to have all the proper equipment, so I bought a regulation size football yesterday. This afternoon, Chris and I went out into the garden to throw it around for the first time. The thing with a regulation size football is that it is about 2 times the size of my sons head and about as long as his arms. This combined with still to be learned co-ordination led to a lot of falling, crying and a little laughing.

As you can imagine the first pass beamed Chris right in the head knocking him clean over, so I decided to tone it down a bit and throw softer. Brave face, no crying though. One of my softer throws hit Chris square on the finger tips. Brave face forgotten, big tears. After some tickling, a mock tackle and rolling him around in the grass he reluctantly agreed to try again. That's my boy!

Of course a pass or so later, a direct hit! Smack in the face. More tears, a nice red mark on the forehead and football has lost it's charm. At least for the moment.