sogotrade.com Review

I opened an account with Sogotrade a few months ago. I received a welcome e-mail from that but that's all. I never received any other communication on what to do to get started - which after speaking with them, was confirmed to be a mistake. I'm talking just some basic e-mail describing the steps to set up a bank account, etc. But no, I got nothing.

A few days later, I spoke with them and they confirmed that the account was set up. I later tried to log on but no go. I then called and for some reason they had to reset my password. IIRC, it was some issue where one department didn't know what the other was doing.

I got through the bank verification process fine and mailed them a voided check. I didn't get a chance to fund the account until several weeks later but that failed with the error that they did not have proper documentation (voided check).

I called them up and after waiting about 10 minutes, someone came on the line and quickly blurted something. I said "hello". I still did not get a proper "Hi, this is so-and-so. How can I help you?". But I started to describe my situation to the person anyway. The person on the phone was best described as the abosolute stereotypical brokerage agent that you can imagine. I felt like I was talking to my "bookie" or some floor-trader who cared as little about me as is humanly possible.

The woman I spoke to at Sogotrade resolved the issue after a lengthy wait but after realizing that their customer service staff is simply a "call center mill", I decided to close out the account before even funding it. If that is SogoTrade's idea of customer service, I need to put my money (a lot of money) somewhere where I'm considered a higher priority.

Being 48, I tend to have very low expectations for corporate customer service staffs to begin with. If I have a problem with a company's customer service, you can be pretty much assured that it's bad.