I have been thinking about consolidating my husband's and my IRA accounts with Scottrade instead of spread out among mutual fund companies. I am now glad I have not done so. $17 is a BIG dent out of my investment for each contribution to an IRA and I certainly will avoid that. I have also urged family members to open IRA accounts at Scottrade, now I will be pushing in the direction of the mutual fund company.

I've heard the rumors about this, but I think it's based on a mistake.

From the Scottrade website:
In addition to our low commissions and no-fee IRAs, Scottrade offers you more than 9,000 no-transaction fee mutual funds online.
However, as of January 5, 2004, Scottrade will begin charging a $17 handling fee for no-load mutual fund orders placed directly with
your Scottrade broker. This fee will be charged in addition to any applicable fees charged by the fund. This handling fee is being
introduced to offset the expenses associated with processing no-load mutual fund orders through a broker and does not apply to
orders for load funds.

Scottrade will also continue to charge a $17 short-term redemption fee for the redemption of no-load, no-transaction fee shares
held less than 90 days (excluding Rydex, Potomac and Profunds' families of funds).

Thank you for your continued business, and remember that all mutual fund orders placed online will continue to have no transaction
fee.

So, it sounds from this that you can still do the online purchases without the $17 fee. It's the broker-assisted purchases that have the fee attached.

But there are lots of stories about Scottrade ... One I've heard is that Scottrade will have a $7 commission for limit orders as well as for market orders--but I couldn't find anything about that on their website.

--SirTas