Zecco.com

Infobox Dotcom company
company_name = Zecco
company_type = Private
foundation = July 4, 2006
location_city = Burlingame, California
location_country = United States
key_people = Jeroen Veth, CEO
Allard Luchsinger, COO
Gabriel Dalporto, CMO

industry = Financial Services
products = stock brokerage
url = [http://www.zecco.com/ www.zecco.com]

Zecco.com is an American online investor portal. Zecco stands for "Zero Commission Cost". Zecco's stated philosophy was to eliminate commission fees. Zecco was among the first online investing websites that allowed for any trades without a commission. Currently, Zecco Trading allows for ten free trades a month [ [http://www.fool.com/investing/brokerage/2007/11/19/lets-all-pick-on-etrade.aspx Let's All Pick on E*Trade ] ] . However, Zecco requires a minimum balance of $2,500 to be able to receive the 10 free trades. If that balance is not met, or the 10 trades are exceeded, the price is $4.50.

Community

Zecco.com was the second investing website to allow (but does not obligate) users to disclose their portfolios and performance publicly in the user forums [ [http://www.usatoday.com/money/markets/2007-07-11-social-network-sites_n.htm Investors share tips, track records online - USATODAY.com ] ] after Tradeking, which launched with these capabilities in December 2005. Zecco profiles are given a stated objective, for instance "Speculation" or "Growth". In theory, this disclosure allows users to seek out high performers with similar objectives. [http://www.zecco.com/zeccoshare/user/default.aspx?UserID=23248]

Since Zecco cannot offer personal attentive service as Schwab and others do, it relies on the community forums to help newer users get acquainted. In addition, recently, CEO Jeroen Veth in his blog reported tripling the customer service staff to better assist users. As a result, call pickup time has nearly been cut in half since summer of 2007. [ [http://www.zecco.com/blogs/zeccoscoop/You-spoke-We-listened-Were-delivering.aspx You Spoke. We Listened. - Zecco.com ] ]

Features

Zecco offers a low price point for trading, but as a result lacks more of the advanced features of some other companies. Zecco does have live tracking, but it does not auto-refresh nor does it compare two stocks simultaneously. Zecco offers some of these features, but charges extra fees [http://www.zecco.com/trading/PremiumTools.aspx] . This makes Zecco more suitable for smaller investors or people with more unified portfolios. Zecco also offers tax-planning software and assistance at an extra cost. [https://www.zecco.com/trading/GainsKeeper.aspx?gkTab=Taxes] .

Criticisms

Zecco's community is very open about speaking out against certain parts of the trading interface as well as the site as a whole. Recently, due to demand, Zecco reformed its "money transfer" interface. However, some still complain about speed issues regarding money transfers and being able to buy stock. Also, dividends do not show up in the user's account until the day after they are paid. Other trading companies will put the dividends in immediately. At times, money transfers have taken 5 days to appear in an account as usable. Fact|date=July 2008

In the past, there had been issues with tax withholding as mentioned in an actual broker's test drive of Zecco. However, such issues have been resolved.Fact|date=July 2008

In Smart Money Magazine's 2008 Broker Survey, Smart Money named Zecco as one of the worst in the customer service category. [http://www.smartmoney.com/brokers/index.cfm?&pgnum=4] .

Overall Reception

Reviews of Zecco have been very mixed. When serious customer service issues arise, it occasionally seems like Zecco is lacking in this area. Many traders have glorified the ten 0 commission cost, as well as its low commission cost for traders with less than $2500 ($4.5 per trade). Other investors with just a couple of trades a month find the interface to be lacking, and would rather pay commissions to get such features. Overall, with the recent improvements in customer service, Zecco's usage has gone up consistently over the last 12 months.

Another hindrance to Zecco's growth is its refusal to trade international markets and stocks. Even stocks on the OTCBB that are not US-based may not be bought. Zecco currently supports the AMEX, NYSE, NASDAQ, OTCBB, and The Pink Sheets.

As a reaction to the recent financial crisis, Zecco has decided to cancel commission on trades during the entire month of October 2008. Although this seems to have caused a few trouble with logging in, many users applauded this move.

References

External links

* [http://zecco.com Zecco.com]