ameritrade and the patriot act

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: mis () seiden com
Date: September 8, 2005 12:35:04 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: ameritrade and the patriot act


dave, for ip if you want.

ameritrade sent me a nice offer for up to 25k miles to open a new,
differently titled, non-ira account.  okay, i'll bite.   i already
have an account with them, and i'm happy with them, so now i'll open
a joint acct with my daughter.

but after i fill out all of the online forms, and check the electronic
"agree to" boxes several times, they tell me that my account will be
"restricted" until i fax in a copy of a govt issue id and my social
security card!  nobody has asked me for a copy of my social security
card for, oh, 35 years, and i have no idea where it is.  so i call the
nice representative, and i say "you know your customer already, i have
an existing account with you".  sorry, we reverify information
supplied every time we open a new account using a third party service.
the patriot act requires us to verify social security information.
oh, we'll accept a statement from the social security administration
instead.  it's for your own protection.  it's to prevent money  
laundering.

i kid you not, all of these phrases were uttered by the customer  
service rep!

despite the abraham abdullah affair (assuming the identity of some
large number of the fortune 500 richest and setting up brokerage
accounts in their names) i wish they would stop protecting me from
this sort of thing and start doing something useful.
















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