First Trading Experience with Zecco
A week after I opened a Zecco Trading account (check out my Zecco review post for details on account opening process) and initiated an ACH fund transfer, the money finally came through and I got the chance to make my first trading with Zecco.
I requested an ACH transfer of $1,000 last Friday evening from my Bank of America checking account to Zecco. But since it was quite late when I made the request, I was told that it will be reviewed the next business day, this Tuesday. Though Zecco says it usually take about 2 business days to clear the ACH, my transfer used twice as much time to complete.
The trading interface is shown in the above picture (click to enlarge). Honestly, this is probably the simplest interface I have ever used (so far I have used Scottrade, Firstrade, ShareBuilder, and Fidelity and all are much better than Zecco in terms of providing an user friendly trading interface). Even the stock chart looks very amateur (they offer Advanced Chart option, but it’s from BigCharts.com instead of their own). Well, to me, as long as they get the job done, I don’t care too much about how its appearance.
The stock I want to buy is Xinhua Finance Media (XFML), which was hit hard recently due to various issues related to whether the company intentionally hided information in their IPO filings. I bought 360 shares of XFML on its IPO day at $11.10 and yesterday the stock was traded below $7. At this level, I hope I could make up some losses by adding more shares.
After entering all the necessary information such as stock symbol, transaction type, quantity, and order type, I can review the order one more time before submitting it for execution.
Then something unexpected happened after I hit the SEND ORDER button. My order was rejected!
At the bottom of the page, it gave me the reason of rejection as “Only orders that liquidate positions are allowed.” Liquidate positions? I am buying not selling, plus I don’t even have a position yet. I can’t believe there’s such a trouble buying a stock (hopefully selling stocks will be easy from what’s happening now 
). After trying a couple of more times and getting exactly the same result, I decided to give Zecco a call to see what caused the problem. All they told me was to log out and re-enter my account and, surprisingly, it worked!
Overall, I wasn’t very impressed by their website and their trading interface, though the order was executed almost instantly (at least for this order) and it was indeed free. I feel that I can use some improvements of their website:
- I am bothered a lot by having to enter my account number every time when I do anything related to ACH.
- It took me 5 days to complete the first ACH transfer, that’s much longer than with other brokerages.
- A gain tracking tool will be convenient.
About the first item, I actually brought it up to the CSR the night before when I called to ask the status of my ACH transfer. The reason he gave me was it’s for security reason. For what security reason? The account number is displayed right there after logging into myZecco account as it is used as user name to enter the trading account. After I complained that it’s not convenient to have to manually enter the account number every time, the CSR sounded inpatient and told me if I have any suggestions on how they should design their website, I should send them an email.
Right, email. Last time I sent an email inquiry about their promotion, nobody ever bothered to reply to me.
Ready to try Zecco? Use the following Zecco promotion codes to open an account and get 10 commission free trades per month:
| Promotion | Description |
| Buy Stocks Online for $0 | Trade stocks for free on Zecco.com, the Free Trading Community. |
| Tread Stocks for Free | 100% free stock trade. Open an account with $2,500 minimum and get 10 trades per month commission free. |
| Free Blogs, Forums & Trade | Why Invest in stocks? Find out at www.zecco.com for free blogs, forums and tread. |
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48 Comments
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The XFML investment might not be a good idea. Please check this Chinese article:
http://blog.sina.com.cn/u/47665bc1010007yl
i pulled the trigger last friday (6/1/07) by opening a zecco trading account. now i need to fund it using the ACH. the instruction says to enter the account id and click on the “request…” button. i had a tough luck trying to figure the account id. the site had several versions of my account id. some starts with the “07″. some doesn’t have the “07″. some has the “-”. i probably tried five times.
Does Zecco only require $1000 to fund your account now? Didn’t they used to require $2500? I was waiting to open a Zecco account until I had $2500, but if I only need $1000 then I can open an account right away.
Michael: Thanks for pointing to the article. I am aware of the problem of XFML as there are many places that have discussed it. But I want to try my luck with it and see how it will work out.
Zeron: Sorry to hear about your experience. I have to say the way Zecco handles ACH is the worst I have ever seen. The account ID, I believe, is the one that shows up as user name after you log into you myZecco account, but before log into your Zecco Trading account. At least for me, that appears to be the only one.
Rick: The minimum account requirement never came up during the account application, nor did it show up in the ACH transfer. Anyway, I did successfully transfer only $1,000 instead of $2,500 as it required. Maybe you can try with $1,000 as well. It should be OK.
i was going to fund it with only $1000 but then that same day i think it was in one of their forums that somebody was able to fund it with only $300 and started trading. so i end up funding it with only $500.
chasing a stock in trouble? you dont offset losses by “adding more shares” you just get more junk shares.
‘Only orders that liquidate positions are allowed’
I tried logging off and on, but it did not work.
‘Only orders that liquidate positions are allowed’
It still did not work after I logged off and one again and again
Rick/Zeron: Zecco has no minimum now to open an account.
The ACH account # issue Sun mentioned is something I’ve noticed myself and i’ve also noted it in my review of Zecco.
Wendy: Sorry to hear about your trouble. The best way to deal with it is to give them a call to report the problem. I didn’t know exactly what they did after I called them, but it worked for me. The error bothered me a lot, so ask them to get it fixed instead of trying to figuring out what went wrong yourself.
“Only orders that liquidate positions are allowed”
Same post as Wendy…I will give Zecco a call. Thanks for your post on this issue. I thougth I was doing something wrong.
Eric
Eric: Yes, Zecco has a poor interface and does some weird things. For example, I just noticed today that they log me out of my account if I don’t do anything in FOUR minutes. Another headache.
Very informative. I’ve been getting a lot of questions about Zecco lately so it was good to read a review of them. I look forward to reading about future experiences.
I just opened an account with Zecco. Funded the account on Friday via ACH. Called them Monday and they told me that the transfer will be processed in 2 business days. It’s Tuesday now, and there is no money in my account. Called Zecco and CSR with a drone voice told me that the transfer will reflect tomorrow, Wednesday. He has nothing else to say for the delay, no apologies no reason why funding hasn’t posted to my account.
So don’t believe them when they say it will take 2 business days to process your ACH transfer. Customer service does suck! But, hey …it’s free and there is no minimum balance required.
Recently started up my Zecco account. I attempted to trade today (first time). I kept getting the “Only orders that liquidate positions are allowedâ€? message too. I called Zecco. The guy I talked to was very friendly and informative, and the wait wasn’t too bad (considering it’s a Friday afternoon, 10 minutes before the end of the trading day). Anyway, the guy told me that I needed to send in some signed paperwork-which surprised me, because, at Zecco’s behest, I forged through their FAQ section first, where I found the following Q/A: “I signed the online application form electronically. Do I need to mail or fax a hardcopy of the application documents too?
If you applied for an Individual or Joint account on or after Thursday, May 10th, and you have a US Social Security Number, you’re all set.”
All conditions applied to me, yet I still have to send in all of the paperwork. Then, 3-5 more days before I can trade. Not a huge deal, but a tad confusing. If you continue getting this error message, check the “myInfo” tab to make sure that it says “No” next to “Outstanding Paperwork.”
Chris: I am really surprised by the request of all paperworks. Did you ask them why you have to submit the paperworks? The message seems to be an error as you don’t have any position before the first trade. In any case, that message shouldn’t appear at all. I have the feeling that if you call again at a different time, you may have different answer.
I called again yesterday. Their response was “for some reason, the electronic signature didn’t go through.” That concerned me a little–why wouldn’t my electronic signature go through? I’m a high school teacher and am about as harmless and “unquestionable” as a person could be with regard to investing. Nevertheless, I did both mail and fax my paperwork to them. I checked earlier today, and I’m still unable to trade. At least my conversation with customer service yesterday was a pleasant one. The agent was as helpful as she could be, but she didn’t have an answer to the electronic signature question-a pretty important question.
So, if you keep a “cool head� about verifying your identity (without taking offense, as in an airport security check), send in the paperwork (fax and mail), check-up on your paperwork status (yourself…as you should be consistantly familiar with your account,every aspect/tab), have some patience (1wk-1mth), and don’t setup more than 1 account…I can have a free trade account that I can trade ANY…ANY stock I choose?
Another fact I’ve noticed (and the main reason I went with Zecco) is that Zecco does not determine what stocks I’m allowed to trade. -Unlike my former Sharebuilder account, I mean, its MY MONEY…kewl beans :^)=
Zecco won’t give me back my $6,000.00. They keep saying they need more paperwork to release my money. And so far I haven’t gotten a cent back.
First they told me my account was approved and I could start trading. I deposited $6,000.00 into the account but I found out that I had no trading so I tried to take my money out and zecco keeps canceling it.
You can put money in but you can’t take it out.
Read other posts of people not getting their money back.
Zecco is okay since it’s free to trade.
For new account holders, the trades are being rejected because your account has not been completely activated. When you call they will activate the account for you . And then you log back on. I called today and the trade executed immediately. If you don’t see the trade reflected right away hit the refresh button. –Happy Trading!
I was thinking about opening a Zecco stock trading account, but after reading the above readers comments, I am not too sure.
This company seems to have a lot of customer, service, software, etc. related issues. Can someone give me a good reason to use this brokerage other than it is free?
I’ve also had problems with Zecco. My Account was approved and everything, but when I transferred money into it I could not trade. When I tried to withdraw money from my account they wouldn’t let me because of “The Patriot Act”, or so they say. They’re so full of sh*t, and their customer service is horrible. I staid on the line for five hours just to talk to an idiot for a couple minutes. Now they have around $10,000 dollars of my money that I can’t get back and I can’t trade with. It’s probably going to cost me at least 10k just to sue them so I can get my darn money back.
Have been trying to get my account activated at Zecco for a long time. Paperwork, paperwork paperwork. Site navigation difficult. They let me transfer money into my account. But when I want to take money out, they say I’m missing paperwork. There were no warnings or alerts of any kind when I was putting money in. Now I’m stuck with customer service that is so notoriously difficult to talk to — they don’t answer any questions! They have one less customer.
I used this review extensively in attempting to determine if Zecco would work for me or not. I eventually did open up an account with Zecco, and have had a so-so experience.
If you would like to see my thoughts on Zecco you can see them here: http://maxopedia.org/?q=zecco-brokerage-account-review-april-2008
Max: For Zecco, I don’t have a positive experience with them either and the only thing I do like is the commission free trading. Their website is difficult to use and their customer service is pretty bad.
Hello all,
Im about to open a trading account. I need update information con and pro from Zecco. many thanks
On two separate occasions, Zecco charged me margin interest when I had no margin balance. On 3/23/09 I transferred my account to TradeKing. 2 strikes and your out when you mess with my money.
Zecco has now (4/14/09) taken $155 out of my TradeKing account for margin interest. I had NO margin balance with them!!! The last I heard, this is called theft. They use Penson as the clearing agent.
I find it amazing that 3 weeks after transferring my account out of Zecco into TradeKing, Zecco is allowed to do this. I will be contacting the appropriate regulatory agencies as well as my securities attorney if these monies are not restored to my account.
Is there any comparison between Zecco and TDAmeritrade? I am using TDAmeritrade to do my day trading and it works fine so far
http://www.stockstradersblog.com