Scottrade Says To Stop Sending Them Customers
I got a call today from Scottrade that they want me to stop referring customers to them via this blog, as part of their Scottrade referral program. I didn’t have time to ask them exactly why since I was busy, but after hanging up I got to thinking – how is this a good idea for them? Not like I was spamming anybody. Isn’t that the whole point of having a referral program? To get more customers? Shrug.
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August 10th, 2006 at 6:04 pm
Probably some low end csr looking for fraudulent activity. Anyone who does really well in a referral program obviously must be doing something fraudulent, right? Or worse yet, he/she found your site through work and misapplied some of your advice. Wonder if they ran their decision by the advertising/legal departments?
August 10th, 2006 at 6:37 pm
I had a similar incident about a year ago. I got a certified letter from them telling me that they suspected me of referring people I didn’t ‘personally know’ from internet message boards, chats, etc. Nothing too threatening really, they just said they would revoke my free trades if I continued. I wasn’t a big offender either, I might have gotten twelve free trades in three years.
My biggest question was why they would waste that couple of dollars of postage to tell me to stop sending them customers. Perhaps there are some spammers making thousands of trades for free.
August 10th, 2006 at 8:19 pm
A lot of companies assign a value to their customers, especially if they’re sent via a referral program. In essence, you’re probably sending them customers that aren’t generating any revenue for them.
-Mark
August 10th, 2006 at 10:10 pm
You should not feel bad about this if you do. You’ve done a nice service for a bunch of us; not just the referrals, but this website of yours as well. It would be interesting to know their reasoning for this request, but then again, who really cares? They are the ones who are going to miss out on future word-of-mouth customers; it’s bad business practice on their part … their loss.
August 10th, 2006 at 10:25 pm
I dont understand this behavior of their’s.
Anyway – I dont have any intention of opening account with scottrade. I checked out their local branch and the mutual funds I wanted to buy would have costed $17 per trade. When I told them that at firsttrade.com it is free, they said that it used to be free at scottrade few years back. But not now and for my needs firsttrade is more suited.
Does anyone here have account with first trade and experiences to share?
August 10th, 2006 at 10:43 pm
I would be more disappointed, but in truth I haven’t even used any of the trades that I’ve gotten from referring people. I am mainly just disappointed because now people will have to track down someone else to get their referral. I got mine by asking random commenters that indicated they had an account. I’m still happy with my Scottrade account overall.
I don’t have an account with FirsTrade, but they seem to be a good option as well. In fact, they are almost like the early Scottrade, which also had free mutual fund trades along with $7 stock trades.
The concern I cite regularly is that Scottrade dropped the free mutual fund trades suddenly, leaving a lot of people with mutual funds that it would be expensive to continue to invest in due to transactional costs. I am assuming they did this because it was not profitable for them, so I would worry that this is not viable longterm for FirsTrade either.
August 11th, 2006 at 5:04 am
I moved my Roth IRA from Scottrade to Firstrade last year for the free mutual fund trades. Went off without a problem. Also moved my old company 401k to Firstrade this year. So i have a consideral sum of money there.
I don’t do many trades, just rebalance once a year. Interface is functional but I just use it to trade, no real research. They work great for what I use them for. No problems at all.
August 11th, 2006 at 5:21 am
I think you referred me to Scottrade, but I haven’t funded my account yet. It seems strange that they would turn away customers- I don’t have another brokerage account so i was pretty much going to stick with Scottrade. This seems very strange on their part to turn away potential customers!
August 11th, 2006 at 10:44 am
Weird indeed. Even moreso for me though because I was thinking about asking you for a referal to Scottrade this weekend for no particular reason other than to try it out and cash in the $10 ING referal link through your site. Huh, I guess that won’t happen.
August 11th, 2006 at 11:57 am
[...] Scottrade Told Jonathan to Quit Sending Them Referrals! – Strange, very strange. [...]
August 11th, 2006 at 1:14 pm
I just talked with Scottrade again – They just said that it was meant for family and friends, and that doing it my way was getting impersonal. I suggested to them that this is how people interact these days and share experiences and information – via the internet. I certainly would consider many people I’ve never met in person but have interacted online to be my ‘friends’ and trust their opinions. But I digress.
No hard feeling towards Scottrade, just not how I would have handled it.
August 12th, 2006 at 6:52 am
Firstrade is a favorite of Fat Pitch Financials. I’ve used them for many years (at least 5). They do a good job of even handling more complex transactions such as going private transactions and tender offers. They used ADP for their clearing service.
If you’d like a referral, feel free to contact me.
August 13th, 2006 at 2:00 pm
Hi George.
I need a referral to open first trade account. How to do it.
What incentive does first trade give for joining via referral?
How should I contact you?
August 16th, 2006 at 4:49 am
Hi Sammy -
Feel free to contact me through my online form at http://www.fatpitchfinancials.com/contact/.
The incentive for joining via referral is that you will receive up to 5 free trades for opening an account as well as one month of free access to their X-Stream2 Level II Quotes.
September 2nd, 2006 at 9:52 pm
[...] I sure went through a LOT of work just to try to save a few bucks. What poor and aggravating?service. Jonathan, over at My Money Blog, has?experienced similar?service. [...]
October 12th, 2006 at 2:28 pm
[...] People are still asking me for Scottrade referrals, but I’m not allowed to give them out anymore. Instead, I’m going to start a list of My Money Blog readers who already have accounts that are willing to give out referrals. If you are interested, please contact me and I’ll put you on the list. Please note that you may need to share your name, e-mail, and/or branch location when giving out a referral. Tell me if I referred you initially, and I’ll give you priority. Otherwise, I’ll just run through the list in order, everyone gets a shot. The referrals will be between just the reader and referree, so don’t even mention this blog when signing up. Hopefully this will resume the referral sharing love. [...]
October 27th, 2007 at 12:30 pm
Keep this in mind when considering Firstrade. They lured tons of people in with no transaction fee no-load fund trades. Rated “Hands down winner for mutual fund investors.” Then they dropped that feature and now charge people $50 per account to transfer out. Classic bait and switch. Poor ethics.
February 18th, 2011 at 1:46 pm
This company is another scam. They have frozen my account my their own mistake. They admited it but yet keep the account frozen. I will never refer nor do business with Scottrade again.