Nice TV commercials, crappy service
Written: May 30 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Relatively easy to use, decent printed reports
Cons: Poor charting, lack of innovation, slow customer service, poor website performance
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| led_zec's Full Review: DLJ Direct |
Don't be mesmerized by the well-produced DLJ Direct television commercials that seem to air every five minutes on CNBC or CNN. They may have great music and cool graphics, but DLJ Direct as an on-line brokerage service is lacking in a number of ways. I originally joined DLJ Direct by moving my traditional brokerage account from Smith Barney, with the hope of benefitting from DLJ's renowned research and on the recommendation of my brother in law. As a moderately active trader (average once per week), I have been underwhelmed ever since.
Features
DLJ offers the typical on-line brokerage services, but not much that sets it apart from its competitors. The only significant advantage that DLJ enjoys is the industry leading proprietary equity research that is made available only to those customers with more than $100,000 in assets invested with the service. While the research is good generally, relatively few people can benefit from it and it is more than offset by mediocre features in other areas.
One of the most disappointing features on DLJ is the charting. With so many great charting options at various other brokerages, Excite, Yahoo, MSN, etc., it is amazing that SLJ can get away with such a poorly performing and limited product. I usually utilize the charting features of CNBC or MSN to get good technical charts or even basic fundamental charts. The charting isn't even much better when using DLJ's off-line software tool, Marketspeed. While this tool is pretty good, it really doesn't add much to the equation or offer significant advantages over the website. It also doesn't work well through firewalls.
While the DLJ interface is relatively easy to use, it is not the best it could be. There needs to be more persistent navigation, allowing users to jump between features with more ease. It is really old-fashioned and needs some serious usability feedback and a redesign. In fact, why DLJ has never made any significant efforts to redesign or improve the site in the over two years that I have used it baffles me. Most on-line services often reinvent themselves and are on a constant path of improvement -- DLJ shows no innovation or commitment in this regard.
Reliability
In my experience, various features of DLJ Direct are often non-functional, with one of the biggest offenders being the "Alert" system which is non-functional almost 50% of the time recently. In addition, it often sends duplicate alerts to my cell phone or sometimes does not send news alerts even though I have selected that option. Overall, the website performance is extremely poor, with certain pages, views, etc., often unavailable, presumably due to overloaded hardware or poorly architected software. There have been times during high-volume market days that availability has been so poor that I have felt my financial well-being threatened and in one case almost contacted the SEC to register a formal complaint.
Customer Service
Calling DLJ's customer service is often a waiting game. I have NEVER gotten through without at least a minimal wait. Most of the time, I find myself on hold anywhere from 5 minutes to 20 minutes. In addition, customer service agents are often uniformed or unable to assist with website errors or problems. This is completely unacceptable, especially when most of my calls are prompted by a poorly performing website that is thwarting my ability to execute trades or access the information I need. To my knowledge, there is no special phone line for investors with large invested balances or high trade volumes. DLJ should treat its better customers to better service and support as they are significant contributors to their bottom line.
In Summary
Basically, I cannot recommend DLJ Direct any more and I am currently looking at alternatives for my investing platform. If you do not require significant technical analysis, charting, high reliability and want good research (assuming you invest $100,000), then maybe DLJ is for you. If you require these things, I suggest you look elsewhere.
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
led_zec
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Location: Los Angeles, CA
Reviews written: 96
Trusted by: 38 members
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