Sure Trade brokerage Rip-off

I'm a money manager and I manage my client's portfolios in their existing accounts. I deal with accounts are almost all of the prominent online brokerages. I had a horrible experience with SureTrade that I want to share with you:

I went to SureTrade not for their low fees (I know the hidden costs online brokers usually charge) but because they were willing to deal with international clients. I had a client from Saudi Arabia, a country that has no street addresses but the entire postal system is built on P.O. Boxes. SureTrade signed up my customer for a margin account, took their money (a substantial amount) and allowed us to buy equities in the account.

My customer sent in some more money, but then SureTrade FROZE his account (disallowing him from trading or taking his funds out), because he had a P.O. Box address. I explained to them that the country did not have street addresses, but they wouldn't unfreeze his account. After my client then informed SureTrade by fax, e-mail and snail mail, they closed his account, BUT it still took two months before my client got his money out. SureTrade's policy is that if you send in funds by check, they don't let you wire the money out of the account for another 30 days.

I'm not arguing that SureTrade should change its policies about P.O. Boxes (it's actually an NASD policy). My point is that SureTrade did not communicate the policy to us when we opened the account. They accepted my client's account although it clearly had a P.O. Box address on it.

It's a shame that all this happened from November to January; my client's assets (first stocks then cash) were frozen in a rising market.

The other area of great dissatisfaction is SureTrade's customer service – it would take us many calls and faxes before we would get an answer; we talked to many people who gave us different answers to simple questions (such as “why is my account frozen?” and “my account is now closed; why can't I

L. Budner