it doesnt seem as if you buy and sell stocks very often. so is it really worth it?

How do you get $8 trades at Fidelity ?
You need either $1 million or >120 trades.

Anyway, I have found chasing the lowest commissions often not the best strategy. Most of the low-to-no commission places pay so little on cash balances that if you keep any cash balance you can easily lose more in interest than saved in commissions.

Two other no commission brokers:

Banc of America Investment Securities
30 free trades per month
requires $25,000+ in Bank of America accounts

Wells Fargo
100 free trades per year
requires $25,000+ on deposit

Banc of America clears through FMR (Fidelity), so service is excellent !

goldsheet, my employer has a special agreement with Fidelity so everyone gets the Gold-level account if we choose to use Fidelity as the ESPP broker.

Interactive Brokers charge $1 for a 200 share trade, $2 for 400 shares and so forth. I also use Ameritrade who charge me $7 per trade.

Vanguard Flagship clients also get a limited number of free trades per year.

I haven't bit on the Zecco thing yet -- I can't see how their business model is sustatinable for the long term and I don't want to be faced with the hassle of them closing down or forcing me to transfer my assets to a different company.

I'm just waiting to get the minimum amount ( $2500 ) in "play" money so that I can get in on some free trade action. Until then, I'm sticking to no-load mutual funds.

The costs of a trade come in two parts. There's the commission, and there's the spread. I shouldn't be surprised if zero-commission brokers are routing their order flow in a way which doesn't provide the best execution, so you might save $10 on the commission and loose a basis point on the spread.

I've heard horror stories about Zeccos customer service so I am curious to see how it works out for you.

I think there’s nothing wrong with people, who say whatever they want. It’s just there way of communication, I think