eTRADE - if you are reading this, please take onboard that you...

eTRADE - if you are reading this, please take onboard that you have caused considerable frustration, angst, nervousness, not to mention losses and missed gains to your rank and file.

If you know what concern you've caused, then you have not expressed it. Imagine if there was even one post here that said how well you had dealt with a customer's concerns and had offered anything of substance other than 1 free trade.

How you deal with a problem often counts for far more than the problem itself, but not if you seem indifferent to the problems and ignore your customers' concerns.

I have had two complete days of non-trading. Losses total a relatively modest $1000 and missed wins about $4K. No-one can afford to lose a grand. If you think that's small fry then I'll have mine back in cash please.

I haven't had a contract note in my inbox since last Tuesday's outage so it's still far from fixed.

So far I have received one email stating how well you responded to last week's outage. That's it.

If you indeed care, why not give every single eTrade user free trades pro-rata for one week's worth of their average number of trades over the last month?

It costs your buiness next to nothing and is the only way you are going to keep many of us - if at all.

Look at it this way, if people are leaving they are leaving, if not you get another week's usage out of them because they are unlikely to leave if they have free brokerage. If they do leave it costs you nothing.

How about even some mediocre attempt at an apology to your customers several critical failures of your entire business?

I will give any business a second and third chance because I own two businesses and I know these things happen.

Your handling of the situation from here is the ONLY thing that will convince me to stay.