Betterment Reviews

I created my Betterment account on 9/28. Ultimately, I wanted to transfer rollover profit from my business account into Betterment to invest. I submitted a request to open a bank account on 9/29 since this is a separate step requiring more information verification than is necessary for signing up. On 9/30, I received confirmation and notification to link my current bank accounts to my new Betterment accounts. I set-up my Betterment Checking Account on 10/1 and received notice the same day that my debit card would arrive in 6-8 business days.

I invested with Betterment about 2 yrs ago. I can't even get through to see my account. Every I try to login my password does not work. They ask for my email address & they will send a link to reset password. Never happens! Never. So I can't even sign-in to see my account. I dont know to do. I think I will find another financial business to place my money.

I transferred my taxable Betterment account to Fidelity. They did not provide Fidelity with the cost basis information for my investments. Every time I call them, I have to wait several hours on the phone before being able to talk to someone. This is very frustrating and they should definitely at the very least provide cost basis information when transferring accounts, otherwise, one cannot calculate how much taxes are owed to the IRS!!

I started taxable wealth builder investment account at Betterment in 2016. I had a few questions regarding my account I tried to call Betterment customer service. I waited for several hours on the phone and still could not speak to a representative. I tried several time to reach out still could not get hold of a customer representative. I tried sending them an email with my questions hoping I would get an answer. I got an auto-reply email mentioning that it will take several weeks for them to respond to my email due to "COVID-19" situation. Finally, I decided to withdraw all my funds and close the account at Betterment. I initiated a fund withdrawal on Aug 3rd, 2020 and today is Aug 10th, 2020 still I don't see the funds transferred into my checking account. I am planning to share my experience with BBB and take legal action against this company. I recommend all to stay away from Betterment if you don't want to have my experience.

Rolled over my IRA into Betterment. HUGE mistake. Low investing fees but you get what you pay for...remember it is a rigged game against you and it is all for them and their multiple houses in NYC, Aspen, Vail, the Bahamas or Europe. You won't play 3 card Monte on the street but you'll invest your life savings with the white collar version of the street hustler. They have no cash option for your IRA, so even when I saw the pandemic was going to crash the market, and asked how to park my money in a no risk (OK cash still loses to inflation) position...sorry bud. Should have rolled it right out, but the GD 2 rollover rule would have cost me 10%...LOL would have been cheaper in the long run. Every chance I get to tell someone to save their money and avoid them... I pretend I get a dollar back. Never going to recoup my losses but WTH, only live once. STAY AWAY.

You typically don't find out how good a company is until you get burned by them. In my situation I needed to withdraw money from my account and was willing to deal with their already slow speed of 3 business days. Well 3 days came and went and so I phoned them only to be told that my withdraw had triggered a "extra 4 business day hold" policy. Well I asked for a written copy of that policy or explanation to no avail. I would completely stay away from a company like this if you want/need access to your funds. They are obviously playing games with your funds in order to benefit themselves. They don't even allow wire transfers out.

I decided to try Betterment for their integration of products; checking, savings and investment products. I have had nothing but problems since day one. Coming from Ally transfers between their banking products were typically instant. Betterment, on the other hand, I have been waiting for simple transfers for weeks. I had to verify an account external account was even mine with Betterment's customer service. The accounts I hold at Betterment will occasionally list as being unable to connect and I will be unable to check the balance. I was overdrawn on the checking account due to funds that were supposedly present not being present. The experience thus far has been beyond dismal.

If I could give zero stars I would. Betterment's as a vehicle for my 401(k) is completely and utterly incompetent. I left my job and decided to roll my money over to my main retirement accounts. The returns didn't justify keeping the money there. I've don't 401k rollovers before. It is a simple process. Betterment failed at every step in every possible way. As others have said, they are slow beyond reasonable with cutting a check. They are cavalier if not rude about it. Plus for me, they did not even get the final amount correct (and subsequently deducted some of my money as a penalty when correcting the amount). Stunning incompetence like this is truly rare. Like I said.. I'd give 0 stars if possible.

My personal overall experience with Betterment leads me to a decision to extract my funds from the grips of this outfit and not bother with these people again. The reasons can be reduced to three:

Betterment is very user friendly and simple. But trust me when I tell you, find another service to invest your money. I have my entire life savings in the account and because of the pandemic, I reached out and told them to withdrawal a pretty large sum of money. They told me it would take up to two days and there’s no way to expedite it. I asked to speak to a manager, they denied the request and said they would tell me the same thing.

I've had betterment for about three years now. I had just been depositing money for investment. However, every time I tried to withdraw my money, it would take a long time to do that. I guess I was ok with that since it wasn't something I would do that often, but the real nightmare started when I opened a checking account with them. First of all, they advertised it as "No withdrawal fees", so I'm thinking, that's great, because if one day I get a withdrawal, I don't have to worry about having all these fees.

I absolutely love Betterment and the automatic investing services they provide at a very low fee. Their website is extremely user friendly and you can make changes or withdraw your money at any time. I read the other reviews posted and have never had any problems with Betterment not wanting to transfer withdrawals to my bank account. I am a CPA and I have never seen anything that would make me think they are not trustworthy. I have been using them since 2015 and have seen my investments grow steadily over that time. LOVE USING BETTERMENT AND HIGHLY RECOMMEND THEIR SERVICES!!!

You can send them money, no problem but if try to get your money out, they act as if you're a criminal stealing "their" money! Mismanaged employees constantly contradicting each other, supervisors are clueless about banking etc. I spend hours verifying myself just to get my OWN money back out. And after all that they closed my account with no explanation or warning. Would gladly give back all the interest I made to get back all the time I wasted and hair I pulled. I'm genuinely surprised the FTC hasn't shut them down yet.

I requested transfer on Oct 1 and they intentionally put hold on my money so they don't have to pay interest. They also don't have a routing number when you take money out only when you wire in or deposit. they make it very difficult to withdraw and they lower interest without any notice. Is not a company I would like to invest or work with.

They paid me less interest than what I actually should have earned when I calculated it. They even do not provide any documentation of calculated interest that you earn and at what rate. Also, they promised 2.69% guaranteed for 2019 and then they did not keep that promise. They are literally scammers. They need to get sued.

I signed up with Betterment in 2013. Robo-investment firms were newer then. My experience has been largely positive. I invested enough to fund a major purchase (car). It was satisfying to set and meet a goal even though the customer service was ALWAYS minimally responsive, even rude, IF you could get someone to answer.

1. Yesterday (9/18/19) their website was down and I called the number listed on their website. My phone carrier (AT&T) caller ID automatically picked up the number to belong NOT to Betterment but to a company named Langstonegate. Lines were busy, and I opted for callback. Callback was immediate and caller ID was Langstonegate. I thought that perhaps Langstonegate was a parent or holding company for Betterment. The "Betterment" agent I spoke with, had no access to their systems to verify me and would give no reasonable explanation when site access would be restored or why he couldn't at least verify me and provide me with account info such as the balance.

I had to have money transferred from my ex's betterment account from a divorce settlement. This was court ordered, strait up, split the account in half. Betterment has been a deterrent the entire time.

Betterment advertised a 2.69 savings account promotion guaranteed until the end of the year, yet they dropped the rate a week later to 2.43. Why did they advertise the rate as "guaranteed" through the end of the year if it would fluctuate. Totally misleading. I am assuming somewhere in the fine print, during the account opening process there was some small print explaining that the word guaranteed does not actually mean guaranteed - like when President Clinton said "It depends on what your definition of "is" is." What a SCAM.

I've used several different investing platforms in the past and Betterment is hands down the most confusing one I've seen. There is very little (almost nothing) online regarding learning to use the platform. I suppose if your goal is that you'd like your portfolio to be 100% robo-invested, then this might not be a problem for you. However, if you're looking to robo-invest some assets but still manually invest on occasion, then Betterment is not worth the hype.

So-so performance on my portfolio, they made less than 9% on an aggressive (90% stocks) setting in a good financial year (2017). The worst part is they sent incorrect documents to the IRS claiming I had taken a distribution on an IRA. The customer service rep was also really rude when I enquired about this and asked me to consult a tax person. My CPA said it's their mistake. Won't be using them again.

I called CS for an explanation as to why my balance was different on 3 pages (overview, holdings, and performance). The activity page revealed no changes with credits or debits so it was not clear. After being told I'd be placed on a brief hold so they could obtain more information, the CS person came back after 6+ minutes and told me they didn't know the answer but would email me later. Seriously? Didn't know and couldn't obtain the answer over that hold time? This is the third issue with their website design and lack of information provided in a clear and concise manner by its functionality that customer support/service employees could not answer or resolve.

I tested their approach by putting in a static amount of money in and not touching it for the last 4 years. I had a reasonably aggressive investment mix geared toward stocks with some bonds. The S&P was up quite a bit during that time. My returns with them were not-5% annualized-pretty marginal. Yes, they may have low fees but then that may not matter if they have low returns. Further when I attempted to roll out my IRA balance the process was beyond horrible. It took over 6 weeks of back and forth, back and forth! It was like we were back in the paper days, not electronic. By comparison, I did the same type of rollover with Fidelity and it took 3 days-all electronically-no phone calls, no e-mails whatsoever.

I don't have a 401k at work so I needed to do something to prepare for retirement. After a bit of research I thought Betterment was a good choice. A few months later, I decided that I need more advice than what I am currently receiving (plus my lack of knowledge). On March 25th, my new financial advisor submitted the paperwork to get my funds transferred to their company. I have received several emails saying my funds are being transferred, then a couple days later I get an email saying the transaction could not be processed. When I call to speak to a live person I get the "all is good" speech. Then again I get an email saying there's a problem. THIS HAS HAPPENED 4 TIMES! It has now been over a month and I still have not received my funds. If you decided to go with Betterment, prepare yourself for a lengthy withdrawal or transfer process.

I have had my Betterment account for the better part of 4 years. Today, with yet another stock market decline, I have learned this one very important fact: Betterment is not a robo advisor as we'd like to think. Here's what they actually do: They invest your money in a few ETFs, collect the dividends, and then sit on their hands and ride the waves of the stock market. They do absolutely nothing to protect what gains you may have earned. That is not a robo advisor. That's just a basic hedge fund. You and I can both do that but without the fees. They're trash and a complete scam. In 4 years, I am in the negative earnings category thanks to them doing nothing. That means all dividends earned are gone. And I've lost money to their fees. Again... A COMPLETE SCAM!

Like somebody said earlier, they are a mafia. You can easily join, but you won't leave. I submitted every single document they requested. They took over a month to do a simple transfer. I've dealt with other bigger brokerage companies doing the same transfers from my late husband's accounts and it was a smooth process. Not with Betterment. I had to jump hoops and go back and forth with them a million times for simple stuff. The kicker is when their "Estate" expert gave me a wrong information and tried to argue with me. I asked for agreement as to where she was getting her opinion/"robo" answer from, and as I thought, she did not have anything to back her "suggestion" which was wrong to my situation. I'm glad, I'm not their customer. Awful experience, stay away if you can.

I signed up for a promo for a t-shirt = never got it. I called and emailed. They lied. I signed up for airline miles. It took a LOT to get them! They promise, but don't deliver. Also not great results for 1/4 percent. I closed acct after a few months. Disappointing. Great website. GUI however.

I've had two accounts invested with Betterment for more than a year. Both were mostly invested in stock ETFs and both generated returns far below their comparable benchmarks. The service is very easy to use and the website on a computer and mobile apps are well designed. But there are much better alternatives, including high yield money market accounts, that provide far superior returns.

Looks like Betterment has mafia style methods. I opened an IRA account with Betterment and they made it very easy for me to transfer my IRA account from TD. They said all I had to do is sign a paper to authorize the transfer and they would take care of everything else. But, they failed to disclose that my previous company (TD) may charge me a transfer fee!!! TD charged me $75 and Betterment didn’t even bother mentioning it before initiating the transfer! All they want is your money!!! Scam company!!!

My account was growing slowly earlier in the year (2018) and then the market took a nice upturn. As the Dow hit a record high I took a look and my account is down $800+ since May?!?! In this bull market I am losing money? My other accounts are both way up. I can’t imagine what Betterment is doing with my money so I am closing my account and moving on to someone else.

I have been with Betterment for almost a year and my annual returns are -1.1%, This is after factoring in $40 dollars of dividends I've earned and I'm still down -1.1%. I plan on having this account for a while so hopefully I see some turn around, I even changed my portfolio to very conservative so I could see some sort of return but nothing. I started my acorns account a year ago and have also switched it to a conservative portfolio and now have a 1.9% return. I wish I used Acorns for all of my accounts instead.

You will jump through hoops to get your money out... I tried to withdraw my funds, they want to insist on conference calling the bank to verify account ownership...over 25k in deposits from the account. How many people do you know that would deposit funds into someone else's brokerage account? Did I mention they recently got fined for how they handle their customers money? I agree with the person who made the comment that all they do is buy Vanguard funds... If that's all they do, then I'll just open an account with Vanguard and buy the funds directly from them for free; no trade fees. Shady... Shady... Shady...

Our company recently moved the 401K funds from Fidelity to Betterment and I wanted all my other funds in one place. I worked to move funds and they put my money in an account that I did not want. When I called they said it would take some time to transfer, I would need to fill out forms, AND then to speak to a 401K specialist. I would have to download the APP and communicate via the messenger link on the APP - ONLY on the app not the website (???). After doing this, the message I received was that someone would be in touch with me in 3 to 4 business days! Is this a pop-up shop investment company?? I immediately moved my money back to Fidelity!

I'm totally baffled with some of the poor reviews that I've seen here. I've used a few different investment firms, some of the usual suspects that have been decent such as Fidelity but Betterment is by far & away the best place for my money. I only wish Betterment was around 15 years ago. The growth I've experienced with my portfolio has been tremendous! The site is user friendly and the staff is extremely helpful and accessible. I normally don't recommend financial services to friends and family but I have sung the praises of Betterment to them without hesitation. It's comforting working with a company that puts the investor first.

I've been using Betterment for about three years and I've never had an issue with the company, website, or mobile app. I've put money in, taken money out, collected dividends, rolled over into IRAs, etc. In everything I've done with Betterment it's been utter simplicity. Deposits are made on schedule, with advance notice that a withdrawal is pending. When dividends are paid out, I also get a notification. All of my interactions, except during advice type phone calls I initiated, have been via the internet, with all payments being ACH style back to the original bank account. Not paperwork needed.

After reading some of these reviews I think most are based on ignorance or just flat out lies. You do not have to fill out paperwork to withdraw money from your account. It's web based. I started with a couple thousand dollars and experienced some minor losses and gains. But lately it's been kicking butt. My money is definitely doing better with Betterment than with a standard savings account at a bank averaging .5%. I'm averaging 12% so far with Betterment. Take some time to read reviews on other sites especially by financial professionals instead of people who have no clue what they are doing. :)

Attitude and Disrespect to A Disabled Person - I moved from Los Angeles to Miami and had to change banks due to my Social disability and my daughter. Betterment cared less and basically told me off multiple times. They banned me forever for having 2 banks. One was my daughter's (Discover) and the other was mine (Chase). I spoke to managers to find out why I was treated with such disrespect. I was talked down to as I was nobody. They honestly didn't care about my situation regarding my move and disability. I finally understood. Since I didn't make enough to invest they refused to deal with me. That is what was clear throughout the conversations. Don't go with this company. They are really rude. I had them on speaker and even my daughter, who is 5, noticed. An arrogance as if I was worthless because of my status.

I opened a Roth IRA with Betterment to try out the product. It was fairly seamless to sign up and deposit my 2017 year contribution. Then I ended up deciding to go with Schwab instead (more investment options and lower fees). The problem became getting the money OUT of Betterment. Betterment only offers PAPER transfers--that's right, you need to print out a sheet of paper, fill it out, and mail it to Betterment. They also don't accept amendments, so if anything is incorrect or not perfectly legible (as is often the case when dealing with multiple account numbers written out by hand) you need to redo the entire process.

I opened a retirement and a wealth builder account with Betterment on September 15 when DIJ was at 18,034 and SP at 2,125 and I closed both the accounts on November 16 when DIJ is at 18, 850 and SP at 2175. Both indices went up 2-4% during the time frame but my deposits lost more than 1.5%. Looking at what the Betterment claims as the robo-investing in a diversified portfolio. Can anyone explain as to how the value of a diversified portfolio is going down when the market has gone significantly up! How can one expect it to do it better in the long-term. On the contrary, Charles Schwab's Intelligent Portfolio seem to reflect the market. I would advise investors to keep a close watch on their portfolio.

Betterment seems to perform two functions, they are a phishing site to collect personal information which they refuse to delete and a front for Vanguard funds. It is amazing that the best investments emanate from Vanguard and Schwab. The investments they propose would indicate they get a commission from the seller and a fee from their client. My opinion - a bunch of lowlifes.

Agents were very thorough and efficiently walked me through the process. I was very pleased with the results and have lower payments now. There's a broad level of customization options available to create a portfolio that works and fits with just about every income. I was pleased with this product. There were no additional fees that I recall, unless they were hidden within the monthly installment. Overall, the cost was a bit high, but fair, considering what you get out of it. It took some time to get used to the interface, but once I was acclimated to it, I was working it like a professional. It's very nice to have a product you can use yourself, rather than paying an individual to do it for you.

They care and give great quality customer service. It was easy and very helpful. I had no problems and it gave me great pleasure and they put me at ease for my request. The customization options were great and easy to choose from. Had a great variety of options. I will use them again in the future and will continue. The fees were not that much and it was convenient and very easy to understand. There were no problems and there wasn't any hesitation into my decisions. I was at great ease using this because I felt confident in my decisions and knew I would not change my mind and will come back again.

The customer service was great. Any time I called having a question with anything, the workers were always very friendly and helpful with answering my questions. The customization options are great. I like that they offer many and that I was able to choose which one was the closest to matching me and what I could afford at the time. I don't really like the additional fees. I have been fined a few times for things and I just think the fees are expensive and I do not agree with them. I would say the ease of use is great. I have not had any major issues with visiting the website or speaking to someone by phone. Overall I am very pleased.

I didn't use customer service much but it is very much evident that they are extremely customer focused by being completely user friendly and easy to contact. The customization options are great. They seemed to have thought of everything when it comes to what a custom experience should be like. I was able to move things around to fit my personal needs. I am not a fan of additional fees but the additional fees that are offered are satisfactory and make sense. In a perfect world everything would be free but that isn't so logical. The ease of use is very good. Navigating the services it offers and other areas within are very much self explanatory, which I admire since I favor being able to figure things out on my own.

I lost 20% of my money. Their strategies are all wrong. It's not worth it even for the reduced fees. You may save a few hundreds in fees but lose a lot in principal. Don't invest. They have no FDIC insurance and regulation. It's a Ponzi scheme. You can lose all your money. It's better with a bank wealth management, they are regulated and insured.

I have been putting some money into this company. It seems like every month I see a loss. I understand the market stinks but is anyone managing this? I would make more money in a traditional savings account. Good thing I only have been putting in trial money.