Last year I wrote a few times about Zecco, the startup offering free stock market trades. I was hesitant to put any money there and I didn't know anyone else who quite trusted it, either. But now, a year later, a good friend of mine just told me he's a customer, so I interviewed him to get his impressions. Here's what he says. (I'll call him Sam for purposes of this interview; he wanted to remain anonymous):

ME: So, does Zecco work?

SAM: Yeah. I wasn't sure about it at first, so I just put a little money in to see if I could trust it. I'm satisfied that it works fine, so I'm putting more in. I think I'll probably put about $30,000 into that account, which is sort of my "play" account, where I trade more often, speculate a little. Which is why the free trades were attractive of course.

ME: Who were you using before?

SAM: I have an E-Trade account, and I won't be closing it, although I am removing money directly from it that is going to Zecco. So Zecco did bite into E-Trade's business, at least in my case.

ME: So why not switch completely?

SAM: Eventually I'd like to, but I'm not 100% sold on Zecco. And E-Trade offers some features that Zecco doesn't. If Zecco can get up to E-Trade's level in areas beyond straight trades, I might switch entirely.

ME: Examples?

SAM: Sure. Zecco is a little... primitive. Trading itself is fairly simple, but the account setup was kind of a hassle, and the interface for adding money, looking at balances and stuff like that is kind of a pain. It also doesn't register your trades immediately in terms of showing you how much cash you have left on hand after you make a trade. The trade itself goes through immediately, no problem there, but I think Zecco only changes your equity versus cash numbers once a day. And it doesn't have an easy way for you to see the latest news on your holdings; you have to search for each symbol to see what's happening. Just not enough information at your fingertips. E-Trade does a really nice job on that stuff. Zecco can also be a little slow to load at times, which hasn't been a problem so far, but that spooks me a little. I trade a lot at the end of the day, and sometimes it takes a little time to get logged in and get the site to load, you know. It's just not quite as fast as I'd like.

ME: What about -

SAM: E-Trade also gives real-time quotes.

ME: Zecco doesn't?

SAM: I think Zecco does for stocks you already own, but not for ones you might want to buy. So you might think you want to jump in on a stock, only to find that you're looking at its price from 15 minutes ago. More than once I've used E-Trade to keep track of the real-time price and then bought the stock at Zecco.

ME: Sounds like a hassle.

SAM: Yep. It's free, though.

ME: I guess we'll put up with a lot to get free.

SAM: Well, you know, I'm telling you the downsides, but at the same time I'm moving more money there. So, bottom line, I'm satisfied enough. And if they can beef up their offering, I could easily see myself using them exclusively.

ME: Does it scare you that they're a startup company without a long history?

SAM: A little.

ME: But the trades are free.

SAM: Well, I mean, who is E-Trade really? They're not backed by Bank of America or whoever. So they were a startup not too long ago, right? I don't worry so much about them being a startup; I'm satisfied that my money is safe. But I do wonder if their business model is sustainable. Can they really offer free trades and make enough money off of the uninvested balances to succeed? I guess we'll see. If they still have the trading interface that looks like it came out of the USSR in a year from now, then I'll wonder if they're going to survive. If I see improvement in the offering, I'll be more enthusiastic. It's a cool site, or at least a cool idea. I hope it works.

ME: So you can keep getting those free trades.

SAM: That's what it's all about, my man.