I’ve finally made some significant progress in my quest to use my stock options.

I’ve finally made some significant progress in my quest to use my stock options. After a great deal of bureaucratic hassle, including fillout out forms and sending them via snail mail, I finally got an e-trade OptionsLink account set up. The process was very confusing and required a call to their help line (and a very rude support person) because the necessary user ID and password had not been sent. I think it’s safe to say that once I finally do get my options disposed of, I will never have anything to do with e-trade again.

The hassle has been so extreme that if Symantec said to me, “we’ll pay you $1000 to give up your options,” I would probably take it. I wonder if they make it this hard deliberately. After all, it must cost the company something when people use their options, so if they can discourage people from using them by making it too much of a pain, they save money.