Opened a Roth IRA in 10 Minutes
I’ve been trying to open a Roth IRA for my wife for 2006 contributions at Zecco for a few weeks now.
Initially I couldn’t open their stupid .fdf file. Finally I gave in and updated my adobe acrobat to the latest version in order to open it, filled out the paperwork, printed it all out and asked the wife for a copy of her drivers license.
She didn’t have. She’s lost it and isn’t going to waste time at the DMV until after tax season is over. Bummer, without it Zecco will not open an account. Unfortunately tax season ends on 17th April this year, which is the last date I can make a 2006 contribution.
Total time wasted in this activity has been about 4-5 hours. This involved filling out the online application 3 times, calling customer support and being placed on hold for 30-45 minutes (and then giving up), emailing them, printing out the forms and then shredding them.
Instead I decided to go with TDAmeritrade. I currently have all my accounts with them and they have excellent customer service. They also sent me a free 2 GB Ipod when I asked them!
I went online and in about 10 minutes, the account was setup and funded via ACH.
Zecco may have free stock trades and ETF trades but it has significant drawbacks.
1. There is no customer support.
2. There is no technical support.
3. Too much paperwork to signup.
4. They charge you commissions for Mutual Funds.
TDAmeritrade has a TON of mutual funds that are no commission and no load. They also waive the minimum purchase amounts for most of them too.
I think Zecco is definitely over-rated. Besides that, TDAmeritrade gave me free trades for 45 days and a free copy of Money!
Also check out this post about Ben Stein’s Rule of Retirement Investing.
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April 5th, 2007 at 4:32 am
I tried to set up a Roth IRA on Ameritrade for Snork Maiden but they required us to send in a paper check. When I did it I got to fund it with ACH. And now you say you did too. This is very strange. Maybe it’s because we admitted that she is a foreign student (though resident for US tax purposes)… They also wanted a photocopy of her passport and the W8-BEN which is wrong because she is a US resident as far as the IRS is concerned. It is terribly confusing that the IRS uses a different definition of resident than Immigration does.
April 5th, 2007 at 2:20 pm
I had the exact same thing happen to me at Zecco. I tried for nearly a month to open an account, spoke to various “customer reps” to get absolutely no where.
Funny thing is that I was told over my phone that all the issues were fixed only to get a rejection letter three days later.
Zecco = Horrible.
April 10th, 2007 at 2:25 pm
I had no problems opening up my taxable account with Zecco back in October or so. I didn’t like having to make copies of stuff and send them snail mail – I’m very spoiled from all the online banks that set you up in minutes. But, I had my money invested with them in only about 5 days from start to finish. I still highly recommend them. I love being able to DCA into my taxable ETFs for free.
April 23rd, 2007 at 7:10 am
It’s worth noting that Zecco charges a $30 yearly maintenance fee on IRA accounts. When I generally put all my money into one ETF (like VTI) and sit on it for years, Zecco looked like it was going to cost me more money than TDAmeritrade which has no fees. I do pay that $10 to trade, but it’s cheaper than $30.