ZECCO - When Free Trades Can Cost You Your Sanity

I decided a few weeks ago to give ZECCO a test drive. "ZECCO - The Free Trading Community". Why give it a try? ZECCO claims "Because it’s time to get wise about money." It sounds great! We've come a long way as far as trading commissions go. Free? Now this I have to see.

Actually the trades are only free if you stay within specific restraints.

"At the heart of our market-busting change lies our promise of zero dollar trade commissions. That’s right. The price war is over. You won. You can make up to 10 trades in any one day up to a total of 40 trades a month at no cost, and after that you only have to pay a paltry $3.50 per stock trade. Option trades only cost $3.50 plus $.60 a contract."

But the commission structure has its competitors beat. But as far as I am concerned that is the only thing that makes ZECCO attractive, the prices.

Site navigation is slow and tedious. I want everything on one page, ZECCO has everything scattered in slow loading tabs. I can not find my total equity balance until the next day. This is inexcusable.

The past few weeks using ZECCO have been fraught with anger, frustration, and pure disgust and ZECCO was kind enough to give this to me for free too!

First of all ZECCO has been experiencing technical problems. The other day I could not see my open orders. That is right! If I placed an order I had no clue if it was accepted, what its status was, and worst of all I could not cancel or edit it! That is completely unacceptable in my opinion. When you trade stocks every second counts, especially if you trade penny stocks. I had to call up ZECCO each time I wanted to cancel or change an order. I was amazed that they allowed this to happen. At that moment I lost all faith in ZECCO.

A few mornings later I tried to place a pre-market trade. The time was 9:15AM. In prior instances the order was always queued, but this time it was rejected. "Rejected" I said as I looked at the status. On the bottom of the rejected message it said "Line with ECN down"!!!! That to me meant I was not able to trade stocks at that time. The market was due to open in minutes and my ability to trade the stocks in my ZECCO account was non-existent! I needed some orders in first thing or I risked losing money. I was pulling my hair out. At 9:27AM the trade finally went through.

Finally I feel like my trades are being manipulated. My orders sporadically show up on the LEVEL II's. I think ZECCO thinks that I don't have access to LEVEL II's, or maybe they think I am plain dumb. They are wrong on both counts.

On numerous occasions I put an order in to sell. It does not show up on the ask, but according to the current level II's I would be the low ask. Eventually I see trades going through at my ask (still not visible on LII's and the current ask is higher than the trades going through), I click on executions and none of my shares were sold. With other brokerages I put an order to sell in below the bid my order would fill at the current bid and below. This does not happen with ZECCO.

Let me illustrate how ZECCO is stealing my money.

Example: I put an order in to sell ZIPL at $.11 The current bid is $.12 . After I submit the order I see sells going through at $.12 - many of them with numbers that add up to my sell order. I assume I have been filled and check my executions but I am not filled. The bid drops to $.11 and now my trade goes through. What do I think happened? ZECCO stole the difference between $.11 and $.12.

This is all from my experience. I trade penny stocks so maybe ZECCO is only for the bigger markets. As far as I am concerned if I have to pay to get trades executed properly I will. If I have to pay to get a trading system that does not frequently fail I will. If I have to pay to get great customer service I will. If I have to pay to get orders filled without getting shafted I will. ZECCO is free but I would not even use them if they paid ME per trade. Forget it. You can't make money if your broker is taking your profits.

On ZECCO's about us page they say that they have "a dedication to a minimalist business model that cuts out the fat like those big, expensive TV commercials and wall-to-wall online advertising" and they "give people what they want and they will return; impress them enough and they will tell their friends about us, too. "

I am not returning or telling my friends. You can look for those expensive commercials to come when football season hits Week 4.