Hi. First post ever on TMF. I now feel so important :-)

Anyway, I transferred my account from Quick and Reilly to Datek about 18 months ago. All it entailed was filling out the requisite paperwork for the new account, and then calling Q&R to have them transfer the shares (I probably could have done it on-line, but I wanted to talk to a person and make sure I didn't screw it up). If I remember correctly there was no fee. Overall it was relatively painless, except for trying to explain to Q&R why I was leaving them.

As for my opinion about the Datek fee, I personally believe that they have done that to discourage people who are "testing the waters" of online investing from opening accounts and then doing nothing (like I did for a while). They provide some serious capability with the streamer and such that small, inactive investors must be costing them money. Of course I have nothing to back this up with, just my .02