UKNM: Realtime sharedealing's not us

[Darren Wallace]

On Monday I had my first experience of selling shares.


The Emap shareprice has rallied dramatically in the last few days, and Monday

seemed a good time to sell some of the small amount that I had. Wanting to

practise what I preach: I'll decided to sell them online'.


So first I went to E*Trade's www.etrade.com

Unfortunately, as far as I could tell, they only currently offer a servce to UK

residents who want to trade in US stocks, as the UK specific service hasn't

officially launched yet.


I then went to the Charles Schwab site www.schwab-worldwide.com/Europe


They offer 3 ways to trade - web, phone or TTT (Touch Tone Trading).I dutifully

clicked on the web option to open an account.

I filled out a registration form, and then submitted it.


Four hours later, I still hadn't received anything back - not even an

autoresponder message.


So I called them, concerned that there might have been some kind of

transmission error. The response that I received was that my application form

details would be handed over to another department.They would then send me some

*paperwork*, which I then needed to complete and return, *before* I could start

trading online.


In addition, there is a �20/�25 set-up charge.


'How long is this all going to take then?' I asked.

'About 4 working days'. was the reply.


The whole point of me wanting to sell on Monday was to literally cash-in on the

sudden upsurge of the shareprice. And selling them online seemed to be a fast

and efficient way to do this.


In the end, I put a call through to Lloyds Stockbrokers (Lloyds are Emap's

registrars).

Lloyds took my details there and then, set me up with a temporary account, and

then put me through to the sharedealing desk.

Within 3 minutes of me calling them, I had sold my shares, and was told that

I'd receive payment by direct debit on the 15th Feb.

It only cost me a �25 commission fee, and *no* setup charge. I posted my share

certificates to them the next day.


All of us on this list spend a good deal our time evangelising about the

Internet to clients.

But if, as in my case, it means a slower and more expensive service for the

customer than doing things the 'traditional way' then what is the point?


Is it me, or is something wrong with this picture?


BTW, my pack from Charles Schwab arrived this morning (Friday).



D.

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Darren Wallace  -  Marketing Manager

CommerceNet Consortium - UK & Ireland

darrencommercenet [dot] org [dot] uk

+44 171 916 2875(T)  +44 171 209 1236(F) +44 410 780 775(GSM)

www.commercenet.org.uk (UK & Ireland) www.commerce.net (Global)

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