In Australia, a major bank bought out E-Trade a few years ago.
In a very short time the creme of the guys working at E-Trade Oz left the business, customer service became crap from my experience, imo, the bank used the buyout to gain market intelligence to further screw the retail trading guys.
Answer is quite simple, if you're smart, just dump using E-Trade which is what I did promptly. Idiots in banking only ever think short term and they only think in terms of screwing their clients for commissions to the max, this is their badge of honour I believe, "screw the client for as much as you can, new meat (noobs) will soon replace those we screw".
I worry about my present trading platform provider SierraCharts being gobbled up then shut down. Hopefully the present owners will not fall to the temptation of cashing out.