I just transferred out of Zecco Trading into ING Direct Sharebuilder.
ING Direct's transfer mechanism is only DTC, they do not support ACATS.
However, Zecco billed my account the $50 ACATS transfer fee and not the $25 DTC transfer out fee.
Zecco uses Penson as their clearing house and ING Direct uses Pershing as their clearing house.
The transfer form sent from ING to Zecco was specific and clear to use the DTC mechanism for the account transfer.
Zecco is claiming that since the equities transfer took place between Penson and Pershing by ACATS, they can charge the ACATS fee.
ACATS transfers are initiated by the receiving firm with a TIF being submitted to NSCC and NSCC issues a ACATS control numbers to both sending and receiving firms.
The DTC transfer process needs to be initiated by the sending firm.
How can I determine the method by which my equities moved? I can't see the specifics but can only "trust" what I'm being told by Zecco, and I don't believe them.
Their customer service is giving me the run around, I'm asking for the ACATS control number and they aren't providing it (not that I could tell if it were real or not).
Is there any mechanism for the average consumer to tell if an equity was moved by ACATS versus DTC? These are all large (>$1B) American stocks or ETFs, all DTC-eligible.
I'm much happier with ING for a buy and hold, dollar cost averaging DRIP investor account, Zecco was good when it was free.
The $1 per trade at ING, with the ability to buy constant $ amounts on a regular basis with fractional shares beats the $4.95 trades at Zecco.
