Opening A Zecco Free Stock Trading Account, Part 1

Update: Zecco came in dead last in customer service again in Smart Money’s annual survey, so I decided against funding my account. Zecco only offers 10 free trades a month, hardly a great offer versus a mere $4.95 per trade for TradeKing.

I guess it’s time for me to jump on the Zecco free stock trade bandwagon now that it’s been a few months since they launched and had some time to work out some kinks (like a streamlined application process).

Stopwatch in hand (not really), I think I opened an account in approximately ten minutes but you will need some form of government issued id (Driver’s license, Passport, or Military ID). There are four relatively quick pages. Just a few quick notes, with page 1, where you sign up to myZecco, don’t use a password you use anywhere else, I’ll explain later. Page 2 being the bulk of the application, asking for investing history, employer, affiliations, and income. Unfortunately, you will have to fill out the “annual income” and “income source” fields of the normally optional (elsewhere) Financial Information section, but you can leave the rest out.

Now I wait for my two emails:

You will be receiving two automatically generated emails. The first confirms that we have received your application and is generated immediately. The second is generated as soon as your account is approved and opened. Receipt of this second email may take a few minutes to a few business days.

Okay, never mind, I just checked my email about two minutes (no joke) after I applied and both emails are sitting in my inbox… guess the approval process is pretty quick.

Now, why shouldn’t you use a password you use anywhere else? Well, so far the only thing I haven’t liked about Zecco was how, after signing up for myZecco, they sent my password to me in plaintext in an email… seriously, don’t send the password out like that, you’re in the financial industry, you should know better. If you don’t know what I meant by plaintext, I meant it wasn’t encoded or encrypt or anything, anyone who picked up the packets in the middle would’ve known what my password was and that’s just plain stupid. So if you do signup, don’t use a password you use anywhere else.