160 Reasons To Not Use Etrade UK
I have been trading with Etrade UK quite actively and have about 160 transactions in my account. I was amazed to find out the other day that Etrade UK offers no way to export your account history data, so that you can easily calculate taxes owed etc.
Without an export feature I have had to manually copy and paste the details for each transaction into a spreadsheet in order to calculate my profit/loss and taxes due.
I contacted Etrade about this, and pointed out that their US site (and most other online brokers) offer an export feature but they didn't really seem to care.
Think 160 times before signing up with Etrade UK, or you will regret it come tax time!
Tue, Apr 15, 2008 at 8:27 PM
To: uksupport@etrade.com
Dear Sir or Madam,I am trying to find out how to download my account/trade history from my account (for import into excel, etc). I see that the US site has this option under "accounts" but the UK equities site does not appear to.
Cheers,
Gordon---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
UK Customer Support <uk-customersupport@etrade.com> Tue, Apr 22, 2008 at 9:10 AM
To: Gordon <***********@*.com>
Dear Mr,Thank you for your email, apologies for the delay in getting back to you. In response to your email with regards to importing account history onto excel, unfortunately we do not offer the facility on our website. However our website is currently undergoing development and we are finding new ways of improving the facilities we offer. Hopefully we can accommodate this feature in the near future.
Should you require any further assistance please contact our client services department on 0845 234 34 34 or <mailto:uksupport@etrade.com>
Kind regards,
Jaynesh Shah
Client Services RepresentativeE*TRADE Securities Limited
42nd Floor
One Canada Square
Canary Wharf
London E14 5AA
T: 0845 234 34 34---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Gordon [mailto:**********@*.com]
Sent: 15 April 2008 20:28
To: #UK Support
Subject: export account historyGordon <**********@*.com> Tue, Apr 22, 2008 at 11:35 AM
To: UK Customer Support <uk-customersupport@etrade.com>
Dear Jaynesh Shah,Thank you for your response. I can not stress enough how important this feature is to myself and many other traders. Without an export feature taxes, analysis, etc are all quite impossible (without manually copying the data for each trade) which is very undesirable for active traders. Your American site does offer the feature (detailed here: http://www.armencomp.com/tradelog/etrade.shtml ).
I hope that you implement this feature in the very near future, in the meantime I have applied for an Iweb share trading account and shall move my business across as soon as it is open. I hope that you will forward this email to management, now is not the time for Etrade's offerings (especially when a simple programming fix can solve the issue) to be lacking.
Thank you again for your time.
Kindest Regards,
Gordon---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gordon<**********@*.com> Mon, Jul 7, 2008 at 6:29 PM
To: UK Customer Support <uk-customersupport@etrade.com>
Please be advised I have moved £***,*** out of this etrade account and will move the remaining funds away from etrade as soon as possible simply because you do not have an EXPORT account history option (your american site does). Without this feature creating tax and profit/loss reports takes hours of manual work.Hoping you add this feature in the next week.... another customer lost.
Regards,
Gordon
July 7th, 2008 - 22:41
Ha, I had this same exact problem and closed my account. Etrade is going downhill, 5 or 10 years ago they were really good, but they don’t seem to have updated their site or services much since.
July 7th, 2008 - 23:24
I told you not to sign up with them! oh well that sucks man.
July 8th, 2008 - 15:01
I had the same problem about a year ago at tax time too. I moved to another provider, really once you move you will notice what else etrade lacks (profit and loss reports etc).
July 8th, 2008 - 15:02
Gordon, let me know which broker you switch to, I was just about to fill out my etrade forms.
July 8th, 2008 - 15:03
I closed down my etrade last year with all their financial worries, the lacking site features were just one of many reasons to leave them. As you noted adding an export feature is less than an hours programming job (take existing account history code, add limits to the query, output in csv).
July 8th, 2008 - 15:05
Hey, dan from the trader forums. Switch to iweb, you will be more than happy.
July 8th, 2008 - 15:06
Geees, amazed that they don’t have an export feature. An online service without any online features. lol what a joke.
July 8th, 2008 - 15:08
Don’t get me started on Etrade (I had this same problem a month or so ago), not only that but they BACS’ed my funds to my correct number with an incorrect sort code! They said I must of filled out my application incorrectly, so I faxed them a copy of it showing that all was correct, muppets!
July 10th, 2008 - 14:53
I feel your pain Gordon, creating P&L manually AND having to manually copy the data is ridiculous. If they offered export you could use one of the many free programs to calculate taxes etc. I almost fell into the same trap as you, but I called up and asked about the feature before signing up and the person on the end of the phone had no idea what “export” or “csv” or “excel” was so I hung up the phone and signed up with another broker.
February 14th, 2009 - 09:48
Thanks all of you for the valuable comments.I hope etrade does something about this problem urgently otherwise they will loose more customers including me Dr.Beg
February 20th, 2009 - 12:21
Anyone suggest a good internet trading site then, I nearly registered with etrade until reading here. Also suggestions for a good US internet trading site would be nice.
February 20th, 2009 - 12:30
I would suggest http://www.scottrade.com/ for your US trades and https://share-dealing.iwebsharedealing.co.uk for your UK trades.
March 24th, 2009 - 15:04
Hi Guys
I am having the same problem as above.
Just one question:
How do I transfer my shares from etrade to another service.
Regards
Roland
March 24th, 2009 - 15:12
You will need to contact the new broker and they should be able to handle the transfer for you.
May 8th, 2009 - 07:40
Chaps,
May be they have noticed this website for I spoke to their customer services and they stated they can send a consolidated tax cert around April if requested(saying that the original guy for new accounts first stated “No we don’t” but I persisted he ask further)?
May 10th, 2009 - 22:55
@Suki
The Consolidated Tax Certificate (CTC) details all dividend payments received between the period of April 6th to April 5th of the following year.
It does not detail all of your trades, nor profit/loss for the year.
On your tax return you need to detail all of your trades and the profit and loss made on each, hence the need to be able to download the data from etrade.
May 11th, 2009 - 18:21
Thanks for the info. I was just looking to setup an account myself. I came across your post and then called Etrade. Sure enough they have no idea why you would even want to download the data, and they don’t offer a download. What a bunch of idiots!
Anyway, thanks for saving me the hassle of signing up. I went with iweb per your recommendation.
Donna
July 3rd, 2009 - 13:27
I have traded in Australian shares for years using the Australian version of Etrade. I then opened an Etrade UK account because it was cheap and thinking the website would be very similar. It wasn’t. The Australian version is much better. Australia is leaving us behind. I may have a look at iweb.
October 27th, 2009 - 06:20
I’ve been thinking of switching from etrade but I’m not located in the UK and iweb only allows accounts from UK and Channel Island residents. Any other suggestions?