Account Service Fee: Dick Move, E*Trade.

So yesterday I get an email from my online brokerage account, E*Trade, where I've kept my (recently decimated) life savings for the better part of the last decade, telling me they were going to charge me a $40 Account Service Fee, because the balance of my various accounts have dropped below their minimum account balance.

Oh E*trade - you bastards. Of COURSE my account balance has dropped - EVERYONE's has. It is RIDICULOUS, in this economic climate, when the vast majority of your clients have taken extreme losses to their stock portfolios, upwards of 50% in my own case, to add insult to this injury by charging some ridiculous account maintenance fee. ESPECIALLY when these clients are staying with E*Trade despite the current state of the market. You should be waiving all such snake-oil type fees for the immediate future, if not forever. It's shady business at best, bad business altogether.

Shame on you E*Trade. Shame.