This is a commercial for E-Trade that aired during the Super Bowl some years ago. I only saw it once and could never find it online, but it has remained my favorite commercial ever since. Well, now I’ve found it. And it’s a glorious day.

I happened to open my E-Trade trading account today. It had been a long time, since about the time of the market meltdown last year, that I checked on it. I have a very, very small portfolio. A few hundred shares of E-Trade (ironic, as you’ll see) and a hundred shares of Freddie Mac, which I picked up on a lark when it dropped like a stone. Since then, I’ve just left it alone, figuring that maybe, in a decade or so, they will be back to what I paid for them and then I’ll cash them out and buy some fish tacos.

Well, to my surprise, E-Trade has been charging me a boatload of money the past nine months for an “Account Servicing Fee.” I never heard of such a thing. I figured they made their money on the transaction fees. And I don’t recall there being any servicing fees when I opened the account. Guess I was wrong, cuz so far this year they’ve charged me $120 in servicing fees, because I had not made any trades during the last three quarters. And they plan on charging me another $40 this month if I don’t buy or sell something.

First, let me address WHY I haven’t made any trades in the last three quarters. The stocks I own are UNDERWATER! The market is CRAZY! Who wants to sell underwater stocks, or buy into a market that goes up and down on a daily basis and which many economists – even highly respected traders – say is built on sand and is heading feet first into another major “correction”? Maybe highly active traders like to do this, but not regular Joes like me, who know very little about stocks and such except that pearl of wisdom passed down through generations: Buy and hold.

Sure, I am small potatoes and my losses are not huge. But times are tight, and charging me $160 a year to hold onto stocks that are barely worth that seems unreasonable.

For this, E-Trade gets today’s big Fuck You.

Don’t deny it.

These commercials make you laugh EVERY time you see them.

See. You’re smiling now.

e-Trade hit it “out of the park” two Super Bowl Sundays ago, with the introduction and  animation of this little guy, whose name has not been released.

For those of us who are interested, the marketing genius behind the ads is Nick Utton. In an interview, he describes the creative thinking and animation process that went into this effort. At the time of the interview, the ads had over 10,000,000 hits on YouTube. When I checked today, it was over 12,000,000. That’s remarkable for a 30-second commercial.

And now, for the second posting in my new “Time to Laugh” series, here are all the e-Trade baby ads to date.

“I underestimated the creepiness” (Rented “Bobo, the Clown”)

“No big deal.” (Throwing up)

“Hey girl, can I hit you back?” (Blackberry)

“…the golden pipes” (Two babies)

“Shankapotomous” (Country club locker room)

e-Trade Outtakes

Outtakes from ABC-TV Special*

Still laughing, aren’t you?

Sincerely,

www.MichaelKontras.com

*The last ABC clip was from a special called “Un-Broke: What You Need to Know About Money” with Mellody Hobson. And who could be seen in the room with Christian Slater in one scene?

Yup, that would be my son, Adam. Here’s the clip from the show.

I need to preface this by saying that I cannot be held liable for my bitchiness when I have PMS and someone f*cks up.  I just can’t.

Here’s how my conversation with some peon at E-trade: (my mood was slightly bitter and demanding)

Me: What paperwork are you requiring my sisters and I to redo?

Etard:  The Beneficiary IRA Distribution forms.

Me: Why? We completed and sent that paperwork in over two months ago.

Etard:  The forms you sent are outdated.

Me:  What do you mean they are outdated.  They are the forms your representative told us to use and they were pulled from your website the same day they were completed and mailed in.

Etard:  We need you to fill them out again and mail them in.

Here’s the sum of what he said:

• He called my sisters and I liars (under the guise that we must be mistaken or just couldn’t have gotten April forms in June)
• The energy I’ve spent fussing at him  could be spent completing and mailing the forms that they must have to continue with opening the accounts
• Etrade didn’t have the forms  (that they were calling to tell us were incorrect)
• If we mailed these in July, Etrade would’ve gotten them sooner so we must not have
• Etrade bears no burden in correcting their mistakes it’s completely up to us to correct it with no compensation offered (if only in the form of priority customer service)

I cleared things up for him:

First of all, don’t EVER call me a liar or I will unleash a wrath of yelling you’ve never witnessed before. You will cry and wish you’d never answered the phone or gotten out of bed.  Second of all, we DID get those forms from your website at the direction of Etrades customer service rep.  Third, we mailed them the same day we filled them out so NO we didn’t sit on them and wait to mail them.  If you would, look at the bottom of my form and tell me what it says.

(He answers with a June date.)

I continue:  Now that we agree that we got those forms from your website, were told these are the correct forms, and submitted said form in June let’s move on to the next point.  Why the HELL should my sisters and I redo all these forms so that you can wait another two months to tell us they are no good.  There is no difference between the forms we submitted and any new forms except for some BS disclaimers that Etrade needs to have on forms.  Guess what?  I don’t care if you have to explain to your regulators and examiners that you gave clients or potential clients the wrong paperwork.  Under what circumstances do you think it is my burden to correct your mistake.  The forms were good in June and should be good now. I wasn’t applying to open any stupid Etard accounts and I CERTAINLY WON’T BE OPENING ANY NOW.

Eventually I have to agree to redo and send in the forms.  However, I’m still not content to just mail the f*ckers in because we’ve seen how that goes.  I tell him, the only way in hell that I will resend these is if our paperwork is handled personally and expeditiously by a person, preferably him if he didn’t want to ever have to talk to me again.  You should know, there were loud statements and intolerance of ALL 100 of his excuses and standard responses. The poor guy was stuttering because he just didn’t know what to don or say because he was never going to win this discussion or get out of this without having to do something towards correcting the problem.

So I explained it to him:

I don’t care if you have to stand by a darn fax machine holding your pee until you cry waiting for my sisters and I to send you the new forms (that I’m only begrudgingly filling out and sending in) just to walk them over to whomever has to approve them so these funds get dispersed.  We WILL not be mailing anything in because clearly that fails to succeed.   My late father did NOT intend to have his retirement sit earning crap interest or be withheld because YOUR company is far to incompetent to provide his beneficiaries with the correct forms.  Furthermore, if you tell me one more time, EVER, that you don’t have these forms I will scream at you.  You wouldn’t be in this position if YOUR company hadn’t given us the wrong forms to turn in, now would you?  So, don’t BS me.  You have the forms, you’re just to stubborn to accept them because that would mean admitting you guys screwed up.  As well as never calling me a liar again, don’t ever pretend that it is my responsibility to assume 100% of the burden of fixing Etrade’s mistake.  The very least you could do is offer to personally assist in making sure this error is not only corrected with speed, but tell me you are sorry for the error.  If you don’t want two more, just like me, calling to chew your ear off for another two hours each, I suggest you give my sisters the same expeditious attention and priority when they fax their paperwork directly to you.  I think it goes without saying, I don’t want to have to call again.  I’m sure you don’t want to have to deal with me again.  Make sure Etards doesn’t screw this up again.  If I haven’t heard a personal update from you within 5 business days of receiving my faxed paperwork, I will be calling you back.  Do you understand?

Him: Yes mam.

Me:  What is your fax number?

Him:xxx-xxx-xxx

Me:  In the future, don’t call clients liars and don’t give them the wrong forms.  Offer to help, rather than just put 100% of the burden on them.  Don’t assume you know how or what it takes for anybody to complete and submit forms.  You do NOT know their circumstances.  Don’t argue with me over what I’ve done, when it was done, or how it was done.  I am far from stupid or crazy and you WON’T win.  Again, 5 days.  If I don’t hear from YOU in 5 days, you will hear from me and I won’t be any happier. Thank you.

I swear I almost jumped through the phone and punched him in the face.  I have not been that mad since my teenage years.  He called me a liar at the start and it went all down hill.  He only offered personal customer service and bearing some of the burden to correct the problem when he was given no other option.  Well, he had another option, but for his sanity personal service was the easiest.

FROM MY FOX BOSTON.COM
A Massachusetts mother was horrified when she found her 7-month-old child’s photo on popular promotions site, Craigslist, advertising his own adoption.

MyFOXBoston reports that a stranger alerted Jenni Brennan of Abington, Mass. to the photo, which involved her 7-month-old son, Jake, in an online adoption scam. The ad read: “A CUTE BABY BOY FOR ADOPTION HE IS VERY HEALTHY AND READY FOR ADOPTION FOR MORE YOU COME BACK TO US.”

Brennan responded to the ad, receiving an email describing her son as Canadian but currently living in an African orphanage.

She said the photo was from her family’s blog.

“I know he wasn’t being physically harmed and no one was going to come to our door and try to take him, but I felt like his likeness was being violated,” she told MyFOXBoston.

She alerted the FBI and attorney general’s office to the scam. Yahoo! has also removed the scammer’s email addresses.

I think the kid kinda looks like the E-Trade baby myself. I’ve told them all along that nothing good could come from a toddler on the internet.

A/S/L?

Using babies in your commercials seems to be a successful marketing scheme, and this Evian commercial is no exception. The combination of roller skating, break dancing, and “Rapper’s Delight” is hard to resist.

Thanks to Molly for the link!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQcVllWpwGs

The E*TRADE Baby is back! See what he does next @ www.etrade.com/tv.

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What did the E-trade baby mean when he called his golfing buddy a shankapotomus in that commercial?

At one brokerage alone, E-Trade, 29 percent of all consumer assets were in cash by last fall, up from 17 percent in 2007.

I just opened a new Vanguard Account.  The process took about 10 minutes and was very easy.  The only thing to be aware of is that a new account requires a minimum of $3,000. for each fund that is opened.  The great thing about Vanguard is the account expense fees are very low.  Most of the mutual funds at Vanguard have an expense fee of around 0.20%.  Mutual funds generally have fees in the 1% range.  So the savings are substantial.

I decided to open the Vanguard account in order to diversify my portfolio and reduce risk just in case another major financial institution goes broke.  I currently have an E-Trade account that is used to purchase stocks that focus on dividend yield.  I also have a Merrill Lynch Account that is professionally managed.

I will post my mutual fund strategy in the next blog.