Zecco: Go Paperless or Pay for Your Paper Statement

Since I began to actively use my Zecco account to trade stocks in March, I got myself a task that I don’t want: find a place to store the mail Zecco sent me every time I made a trade. It’s not really a piece of junk mail that I can just throw away, but close to that status because I really don’t need it. It’s the trade confirmation. When I did only one trade every few months, getting a piece of mail isn’t a problem. However, when I traded seven times a month, all the unnecessary statements become a problem.

Because of the large number of accounts we are using, I have tried to minimize paper statements I receive from banks, credit cards, and brokers. Since most transactions are already conducted online, I am more comfortable to go to their websites to find information I need than looking for a statement from a pile of paper. For Zecco, I have long wanted to opt-out paper statement and receive email confirmation instead. Eventually, I called them about two weeks ago after I failed to make the selection myself. The problem was when I clicked the Account Record, there was also a link to Account Statement in the window on the right in addition to the one in the pull-down menu. But when I clicked the link on the right, nothing happened (another evidence of their lousy website). After I called, I was told that I had to use the link in the pull-down menu

Anyway, I am glad that Zecco decided to force its customers to switch to electronic statement and if you don’t, it’s going to cost you for every paper statement you receive:

If you don’t sign up on or before May 30, 2008, you’ll continue receiving paper documents by mail, and you’ll be charged $1.50 per paper trade confirmation starting June 1, 2008 and $2.00 per paper statement starting June 30, 2008.

You pay $0 commission for a trade, why pay $2.00 to receive a paper statement? Actually, I hope all the banks, credit card companies, and brokerages eventually offer only electronic statements. Yes, they will probably lose some marketing opportunities (all those extra stuff that come along with your statement), but they can also save a lot of money from paper and postage.

BTW, I hope that when everybody switches to electronic statement, Zecco can increase their monthly commission free trades from 10 to, say, 15 as the operating cost is reduced further

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