Scottrade slow to
respond and locks up.
January 27, 2010
At
least several months ago, in late 2009, Scottrade web site began
locking up my browser or became really slow at updating web pages.
Sometimes I would have to click the tabs again, or force a page
refresh. Other times, I would have to close my browser and restart.
After
months of fooling around with this problem, and updating my browser, I
decided to try to figure out what was causing the problem.
Was
it ATT, in that I use an ATT aircard at home and my service provider at
work, uses ATT lines and hardware? To try to test this out, I used a
ping tester to send pings to Scottrade, to measure the response times.
The problem is that I had to be having the problem at the same time I
ran the ping. It was difficult to try to get everything arranged, but I
managed to determine at least that pings to Scottrade (which were not
returned) were not taking a long time. I was experiencing delays of up
to several minutes to update a web page. Pings were millisecond range.
I
contacted Scottrade. They were very responsive, but not very helpful.
They stated they were having a problem with FireFox and were working
with them to resolved the problem. They stated that if I upgraded to
the latest, it would solve the problem, after clearing my cache. I
didn't believe them, but I found I was already running the latest, and
clearing the cache did nothing. I also informed them I was having this
problem with Chrome, FireFox, IE, and a different computer running
Linux. I experienced the problem on all variations.
I asked Scottrade to do a ping test to my T1. After a while, they
informed me they had run a test and had found no problem.
In the mean time, my service provider ran tests on our system and
determined no problem.
The
route to Scottrade in St Louis from Columbus, goes through several
servers in Columbus, to Washington DC to St Louis. I believed the
problem was due to packet losses along the route, but no one could find
anywhere they were dropped.
Determined to find the problem, I
ran Wireshark on my end while on Scottrade. I found the problems were
in 2 places, causing lost packets: Qwest is
not handling security
certificates properly in Washington DC, and a company called Savvis
was
causing 7.5 second delays in my packets. This 7.5 second delays caused
errors in packet handling. I do not know if they caused any packet
losses or not. Most of the packet losses were due to certificates being
handled by the Washington DC Qwest server, which caused time outs or
disconnects to my secure connection with Scottrade.
I informed
Scottrade 2 days ago, and they are not as quick to respond this time. I
suspect, I have located the source of customer dissatisfaction, and
they are hot on the trail to fix it.
Good thing I am a small trader. They could be costing me a lot of money
if not fixed.
Update January 31, 2010
Wikipedia has some interesting things to say about Savvis. It seems
they, too, are located in St Louis. I wondered if Scottrade was being
hosted by Savvis, and probably is. Savvis has had a roller coaster ride
up and down with the dotcom boom/bust, and somewhat shady dealings.
Among those dealings were nepotism, call girl lap dances, bankruptcy
misdealing, and being the largest spammer in the U.S. and more.
My latest dealing with Scottrade Support leads me to believe
they do not read my e-mail.
My recommendations are to not use Scottrade for online trading unless
this problem is resolved. I will update this page when resolved.
Update 2/3/2010
Scottrade
bumped by e-mail up to another group and will get back with me in a
week or so. At least some one is doing something besides telling me to
update my browser (currently experiencing the problem with FireFox 3.6)
In
the mean time, I found that Scottrade uses Qwest for a network. They
signed a 5 year agreement last June 2009. I would bet that is when most
of the current problems surfaced. I know that would pretty well fit for
my experience.
Update February 14, 2010
Since
February 5th, the Scottrade web page has not locked up. I have not
heard from Scottrade, but expect that they will wait a little longer
and then give me a status update. Some pages seem a little slow to
load, but at least the site does not hang so I have to restart and log
back on to buy or sell my stocks.
Update March 13th, 2010
Scottrade
seems to be in denial. I wrote a letter to Rodger Riney, President and
founder of Scottrade, and he forwarded my request to another complinace
department person to handle. She requested I upgrade to Firefox 3.6 and
use Windows. I currently am using Windows XP and Firefox 3.6, which she
knew from my letter, if she bothered to read it. More information is
available at the Firefox forum at: https://support.mozilla.com/en-US/forum/1/556535#threadId591630
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Contact Info:
work 614-851-1100
email:
eplurib@earthlink.net
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Charlie Morrison
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