Comment On Change Article Title

The WTF, of course, is that the E*Trade screen is missing the next two options:

* Irrelevant to put this here as a bullet point.
* ???
* Profit!

(Overplayed joke, sure, but you knew it would get posted eventually...)

Always got to love these kind of things in a webpage. Worst of all, it seems to still be there.

He did the responsible thing and reported it, right?

If it's always irrelevant, does that mean everyone gets charged the fee? Or only if one observes M1?

The bigger WTF is ETrade. I'm currently in the process of trying to open an account (Only because they decided to close my old account from not enough activity).
Since I work for a financial company, and one of our subsidiaries is a member of the IDA (www.ida.ca), they need a letter from me. Fine, if that is the regulation then I’ll get one for you). When asked what they need specifically the only information they provide me with is ‘Ask your compliance department to send us a letter’. I responded with ‘We have lots of ‘compliance’ departments. Can you be more specific. What should the contents of this letter be? Do you not have a standard form for this type of thing?

I've spoken to people all over my company and they've no idea what E-Trade is asking for.

Phoning E-trade usually means being on hold for 30 minutes then getting a customer service rep who never can find my application which means another 10 minutes on hold while they search. They have a different story each time I’ve called.

First person: You need a letter.
Second person: We can waive that requirement, so you don’t need a letter.
Third person: Waive? Absolutely not, you need a letter, fax it to 416-214-3778.
Forth person: Fax? absolutely not, the letter must be sent via the post.,
Fifth person: I'll find out the specifics of the letter and call you back today (that was 2 days ago, no call back)

E-trade = WTF. I think I'm going to cancel my application to open account.

This may not be right on topic, but seeing the e-trade logo pissed me right off

What might have happened is that someone wrote a comment on a print-out of the page during the review process, and the page developer just wrote everything down verbatim. Doesn't make it any less stupid.

Note to self: Pull money out of E-Trade account...

Hmm, amusing. Looks like someone put a note in and forgot to take it out. Could M1 be an error code?

M1 is milestone 1, a generic marker for the release of a product. The note means that the bullet (whose main text was removed) is not needed for the current release. In a future release they will probably have a feature that would make an extra bullet point necessary.

I, for one, welcome our irrelevant dot-point overlords...

captcha: I look so cool on my scooter.

Artemus Harper:

M1 is milestone 1, a generic marker for the release of a product. The note means that the bullet (whose main text was removed) is not needed for the current release. In a future release they will probably have a feature that would make an extra bullet point necessary.

*bangs head on desk

Artemus Harper:

M1 is milestone 1, a generic marker for the release of a product. The note means that the bullet (whose main text was removed) is not needed for the current release. In a future release they will probably have a feature that would make an extra bullet point necessary.

Explains my reaction perfectly:

E*Trade is the crappiest company on the face of the planet. I've gifted shares of stocks 4 different times, and each time something different happens. They can't handle stock gifts through their website so you have to send a notarized letter for them to execute. Once, they double-executed the same order (even though I specified which batch of stocks to use, and by the time they got around to the second batch, the specified batch has already been sold-out; naturally then, they just took the latest).

Do you know what the fix for that is? They had to go to the broker of the charity and ask for the shares back.

Absolute, complete, effing morons.

Irrelevant for me to put this comment here.

Dur, I think you forgot to change the article title before you published it!

Durrrr.

It is probably not us, but the stock market is going through a sell-off right now...

Could this be a financial-world version of the Digg effect? Nah...

The bigger WTF is that Centre is incorrectly spelled.

jk

You may be elligible for a fee. Woo! A winner is you!

Also WTFy is the use of the word "eligible". If I'm "eligible" for an account maintenance fee, that suggests that it's a special bonus. If I don't apply for it, do I not get the bonus fee?

anon:

The bigger WTF is that Centre is incorrectly spelled.

jk

Damn limeys.

anon:

The bigger WTF is that Centre is incorrectly spelled.

jk

I didn't even notice that, meaning I've probably been watching too much BBC and FSN lately.

There is another error in their text.
In order to be consistent with the table below the first bullet should be:
Your total account/s value (Cash + Shares + Managed Funds + Options) is less than or equal to $10,000, and

NOT 2 trades OR total < 10,000
is not the same as
NOT (2 trades OR total > 10,000)

Literally != Actually

// FYI

The REAL WTF (tm) is that the message talks about how users might be "eligible" for a 20 dollar FEE.

Excuse me, but as our one millionth visitor, you may be eligible to win a $500 prize fee! Make checks payable to I. Scamu, 123 Scam Street, Nigeria.

I hate to break it to you, but at least a couple billion of those "loyal readers" are probably just spam bots.

doof:

He did the responsible thing and reported it, right?

If it's always irrelevant, does that mean everyone gets charged the fee? Or only if one observes M1?

I reported it here right away!

Talk about asses...

"At the end of each quarter, we assess each customer’s accounts"

CAPTCHA: doom

- Maybe you should go with another brokerage
- irrelevant to put this here as a bullet point.

Oh and please please don't ask me anymore to verify I ain't a robot by typing the 'riaa' validation string.....

My reaction was more like this...

I once accidentally turned in a science paper with a section that just said "<add later>". The teacher returned it with that section marked with "How much later?"

peon:

Literally != Actually

// FYI

Actually, tard, they are synonyms.

http://m-w.com/dictionary/literally

anon:

peon:

Literally != Actually

// FYI

Actually, tard, they are synonyms.

http://m-w.com/dictionary/literally

Come on, you know as well as anyone else here you compare strings using the Equals method...

(Jokes aside: "literally" really is not the same as "actually", though they may be considered synonyms in specific contexts. You (quite rightly) won't see "literally" mentioned here: http://m-w.com/dictionary/actually )

anyone that looks at a thesaurus and then tells me that two words are the same because they are listed as synonyms is a complete moron who probably doesn't completely understand the words that he uses. If you only put matches in a thesaurus that were the actually the same you would have a very short thesaurus.

Between the time I read this and the time I showed it to my roommate (literally about 2 minutes) Etrade had fixed it.

At least I got to see it in all its glory.

I vote for you as a return author. I loved all the layers of your offering. =) still giggling. I wonder what the convo at eTrade was like as they found this article and scurried to fix it.

"Articles" like this are just noise. OK, so a webpage was not properly proof-read. Honestly, it's just NOT THAT FUNNY. Maybe it was funny the first fifty or so times, but it's getting a bit old.

Erm, title says E*TRADE _Australia_. We don't write American in Australia.

Evgeny:

"Articles" like this are just noise. OK, so a webpage was not properly proof-read. Honestly, it's just NOT THAT FUNNY. Maybe it was funny the first fifty or so times, but it's getting a bit old.

So is comments like yours, but nobody forces you to read those either

And now it's fixed. Excellent work, ETrade.

Googlefight: Untitled Document vs Unnamed Web Page

Oooh.. and Untitled Document crushes the opponent!

Try http://www.zecco.com/ -- $0 trades as long as you have $2500 in your account.

Captcha = stinky. P.U.

tster:

anyone that looks at a thesaurus and then tells me that two words are the same because they are listed as synonyms is a complete moron who probably doesn't completely understand the words that he uses. If you only put matches in a thesaurus that were the actually the same you would have a very short thesaurus.

Uh, I think you mean "If you only put matches in a thesaurus that were LITERALLY the same..."

This will be good for at least a couple of hours:

http://www.google.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Finvest.etrade.com.au%2FHelp%2FContext.aspx%3Fkey%3DUpdating%2520Details%2520%2526%2520Account%2520Options%23Account%2520Options&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

Yep I am a happy ex ET Employee, and know why they are having website problems. The website QA department of ~20 was replaced with ~40 English as a 2nd language contract folks.

Oh I did not work in that group but I saw it happen.

tster:

anyone that looks at a thesaurus and then tells me that two words are the same because they are listed as synonyms is a complete moron who probably doesn't completely understand the words that he uses. If you only put matches in a thesaurus that were the actually the same you would have a very short thesaurus.

How long a thesaurus would you have if you only put in matches which were literally the same?

As long as the matches don't burn thesauri will contain lists of more-or-less interchangeable words.

Actually and literally are not synonyms, but lots of people will use them as if they were. This phenomenon happens in the real world.

What's this real world you are talking about and can you show me where to find it?

RobertJohnK:

What's this real world you are talking about and can you show me where to find it?

That is privileged information, sorry but no can do.

You have to understand... and the only way to do that is to actually work with these people. I have, and I can tell you they spent at least 200 man-hours on that page and there's a damn good reason for why it says that. If you missed the meeting, you won't know the reason, but there is a reason. I'm gonna take a wild guess and say it was a lawyer responsible for that one. It usually is with e-Trade. I think my company stopped dealing with them after I left... nothing was ever right with them unless it was totally wrong. "The eTrade Site" quickly became a bad word around there.

Disclaimer: This happens to be about e-Trade... but ALL brokerages are like this... too big, too many departments, and a 2:1 lawyer-to-useful-person ratio. Some even have departments that compete with each other to get contracts... within a single company.

anon:

The bigger WTF is that Centre is incorrectly spelled.

jk

ETrade site is correct. "centre" is English spelling; "center" is American spelling

http://www2.gsu.edu/~wwwesl/egw/jones/differences.htm