> >And they do make mistakes.
Merril Lynch made a $4,000 mistake on my CMA account a few years ago.
We believe they did a shuffle, crediting about $2,000 of mine to another
account, and some other account's two deposits for about $4,000 to mine.
> >Anyway, I withdrew $300 and got my print-out -- this obliging machine
> >advised me that I now had $99,999.99 in my account! (And this in Yanqui
> >pesos, woowoo! :)
> >The Corel co-workers with me were all jumping around saying, "Wow, go
> >for it man, spend it!"... and hey, these were all programmers, they should
Well, I had spent it inadvertently... (And learned to keep paper
backups of all transactions. Yep, computer error on my part, too. Not that
it would have helped any that day.)
> And if you listened to your Corel friends you would now be
> $99,999.99 richer. Sometimes knowing too much is a disadvantage eh? ;-)
Over half year later, they suddenly blocked my account. Their
customer resolution people lied through their teeth, claiming they had
investigated investigated and investigated, and treated me like I was a
piece of you know what! Their customer relations department people lied
about firing the branch manager, lied about proof, lied about everything!
Their branch staff woke me up in the morning in violation of American Fair
Credit collection laws, and further illegally threatened to drive me
through bankruptcy, ruin my credit ratings, etc, etc. (I was not coherent
enough after four hours of sleep to record all the names of the people
involved in that incident... I am in California, they are in Connecticut.
I knew about the law because I had studied it when I set up collection
standards for another company! That was the ONLY apology I EVER got out
of Merril Lynch!!! And they were lying through there teeth and belittling
me even as they gave it!)
I had lost the original receipts and a number of other paper records
during an allergy attack that day. The client who paid me the money I
deposited had the worst accounting scheme I ever saw. I could not prove or
disprove anything when Merril Lynch claimed they had "proven" it was not
my money. Since they are NOT subject to banking laws, even though they own
a few banks, the only alternative was to fly to New York and appear before
some of their appointed arbiters. For $4,000? I caved in and paid.
I like my accountant's assessment, equating stock brokers,
particularly ML's brokers, but just about all of them, with thieves and
liars. The particular branch manager would have done well in Chicago
during prohibition.
Don Regen, former president of Merril Lynch, once said something in
an interview to the effect that Merril Lynch was being run by a bunch of
yuppies with out a lot of investment sense. He regretted leaving it for
his role in Reagan's White House, as it was in his absence that he said
the yuppies took over and, in effect, started screwing the customer. I
certainly tend to agree with his views of Merrily Lynch.
A friend still does some business with Merril Lynch. He finds it
valuable to listen to it and their reasoning processes; and in most cases,
do the opposite. Understanding, but not following, Merril Lynch's flawed
advice has enabled him to earn more in stocks last year than I made
working!
My accountant says Dean Wittier is better than Merril Lynch, but all
stock brokers push what they are told to push, and it usually is stuff
others have returned for poor performance on the market, since they get
larger commissions if it is resold within the brokerage. (See
http://www.motleyfool.com for better stock market advice.)
Bottom line is, you gotta pay one way or another. Better the easy
way, than after fighting a losing battle with their lawyers. Sometimes,
even if you are right! There are a couple of stories about that on the
web, as I recall.
[EMAIL PROTECTED] ------------------ [EMAIL PROTECTED]
----------------------- IMAGINEERING --------------------------
----------------- Every mouse click, a Vote -------------------
---------- Do they vote For, or Against your pages? -----------
----- What people want: http://www.mall-net.com/se_report/ ----
---------------------------------------------------------------
____________________________________________________________________
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Join The Web Consultants Association : Register on our web site Now
Web Consultants Web Site : http://just4u.com/webconsultants
If you lose the instructions All subscription/unsubscribing can be done
directly from our website for all our lists.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
