A month ago, we wrote about Brice’s struggles with E*Trade to recover the balance on an account they closed. After eight months of letters and phone calls, Brice got E*Trade to close the account, but it continued to accrue interest and Brice never received the balance. Finally, after launching eight Executive Email Carpet Bombs, Brice has his money.

When we posted Brice’s story, we listed the names and email address format for E*Trade’s executives, and encouraged Brice to fire away using the methods in The Ultimate Consumerist Guide to Fighting Back. The results:

Dear Consumerist,

I wrote you a bit ago for help getting my money back. I had emailed the etrade execs the day after the post aired on your website, and was ignored. I than decided I’d do one more mass emailing and then I’d just take them into the legal system. This time I kept the letter extremely short (the first one was about 4 sentences and asked them to rectify the situation). This one just said I’d like to be contacted with my account numbers and phone numbers provided. I decided I was not going to be easily ignored this time, so I sent 8 emails to every executive in 3 minutes time. 1 hour and 38 minutes later my phone rang from a fellow from etrade. We did have to jump through a couple hoops, all of which could be done via fax and he explained and got back to me on every occasion. Today, I got my checks and my accounts were successfully closed. On an ironic note, 3 days ago I received a letter saying that my account has only earned interest for a year and had no withdraws or deposits and if I didn’t withdraw or deposit with in the next year the money would be turned over to the state.

Hooray for Brice for staying on E*Trade for all this time, and kudos to E*Trade for at least accruing interest on the money they were holding hostage.

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