I applied for a trading account with E*TRADE on March 9, as I saw a bottoming of the stock market. It took about three weeks for the US office to get the account ready for trading.
By then the market had rebounded 14% -- oh well, live and let live

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I liked their trading platform and executions are generally smooth. Unfortunately, as soon as I tried to withdraw money from my trade account into my linked bank account within the same login session, I WAS LOCKED OUT OF THE SYSTEM.
Called the US headquarters for help. Although I answered all the security questions correctly, I had to fedex them a letter from the notary public to verify my identity before they will start work on reactivating my account.
I googled the word etrade and complaint. Other users had similar problems -- some users were locked out of the account and their money was stuck with ETRADE for WEEKS. Here's one example I found.
http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/0/3 ... 328237.htm
Then again there were also other reports of online hacking in the past, so I'm not fully against them shutting down accounts too often once there's any suspicious activity.
I thank my lucky stars that I had closed out all my positions before the account was locked out. In any case, you can still close out of your positions over the phone -- that's nice

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The relationship manager (RM) based in Singapore was generally responsive, but once there's a lock out, he told me that there is nothing he can do.
I've been praying pretty hard that the funds will be safe -- hopefully the person who posted on ripoffreport had particularly rough time.
Other practical things I did was to have three complete sets of notarized letters: one sent to Singapore, one to the US and the final one for myself (in case its lost). I also followed up by calling the Hong Kong office. If you speak Cantonese, these reps are the most efficient.
In addition to the documents the account activation department asked for, I included copies of my passport, NRIC and welcome letter -- so that the person in the States can reconcile the name and home address on the welcome letter with my NRIC.
The letter was delivered to Arlington yesterday -- and I am blessed to know that the account activation department has received it.
I was told it takes about two business days to get the account unlocked.
Updates, hopefully happy ones, to follow

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