E*TRADE Reviews

Wife had 38 grand in a account, 14 grand in stock, the rest in cash. Called Etrade rep about adding myself after 5 years just watching hers. He told me how, hung up then the account was frozen. He tells them I was buying selling on wife's account. I was only advising her account. They will not let me have access to this large amount of money. Now 8 days later stock went way down almost 41 hundred dollars dropping fast. They would not let us sell it or get our money until suspension is over. What they wanted is her ID. After all these years 3 banks hooked to it, then not see her ID. Going on and on 21 days until we lost about all on the stocks and the frozen money hurt us. We needed some. Soon as they lift this so called restriction I am done with the horrible expensive folks. They can suspend your account leaving you hanging anytime they want. Think twice.

BEWARE!! I was told by an agent that I owe 24% interest for withholding taxes because they didnt have my latest w9. I sent it in and when I say the $800 removed from my account I asked what happened to it. We have it sitting in your account as a debit until the next time you sell any stocks. So he told me we took out of the stocks you sold yesterday. I noticed on 8/4/26 that I was missing my dividends and called them to find out where my dividends went. I was told by a supervisor Ian that the dividends went to pay of my margins. Unfortunately I didn't know what margins were or where to find the info.

E*TRADE/Morgan Stanley locked my savings account over one month ago and still has not returned my funds. I opened an E*TRADE Premium Savings account through Morgan Stanley Private Bank on July 1, 2026 because of their promotional offer and deposited a substantial amount of money. On July 3, 2026, my account was restricted, and I lost access to withdraw, transfer, or close the account. My online access was later disabled entirely, preventing me from viewing statements, balances, transaction history, messages, or notices.

Customer service avoids in every way not to help you, it’s the worst I’ve ever dealt with. W.O.W.

My name is Etna **. Worst Customer service I have ever in my life. They hold my fund and restricted my account.

I cannot buy stocks because it takes WEEKS for them to verify my new cell phone number, what idiots, and you cannot use your STATE ID, or passport, and Customer Service cannot help you add your bank account to your E*Trade Account. What a disgusting MESS in the year 2026!

Messed up my line of credit transfer. Ruined closing day of home purchase. Email said that it was already processed and it was not.

My experience with E*trade has been good for about 2 1/2 years until there was a negative balance on my account which I was not made aware of until the point when I attempted to access my account and funds from a recently executed transaction. The ensuing wait, and attempt on my part to clear the account restriction was riddled with frustrating calls to the team at E*trade. After four days I am still unclear as to when I will be able to access my funds. When I called in the last time I was told by the supervisor there was nothing more I could do and no one else to speak with that could move this along quicker. I was told to just be patient. I find this unacceptable and if my company RSU's were not tied to E*trade I would close my account and be done with them.

Avoid E-trade. It takes you less than 5 minutes to open an account and fund the account. Nice, right? But it would take them 10 WEEKS to verify your ID before you can access the account you created! You are putting your money in a stranger's safe while that stranger would not let you know where your money is or how much money he receives.

The one good thing I can say about E*Trade is that their system informs you about any incentives you sign up for. I appreciated knowing that I'm enrolled in the bonus program. I think I got 3 notifications about this program to tell me the progress. But the really bad thing about E*Trade is if you deposit money with them, they'll lock up your account and make you jump through hoops to prove it's legal money. I made 3 deposits to my account: ACH transfer from an existing account at another brokerage, check deposit, and a direct deposit from my employer. They locked up my account and made me prove these deposits are legit. After 9 calls to them, I finally got my account unlocked. In one case, their back office rejected a request from the support people due to some internal issue, so my call was just to get E*Trade to review the rejection and resubmit.

False advertising for promotional welcome offers. Horrible customer service. Don't waste your time.

I opened a premium savings account during a promotion period and transferred in funds. A little later, I found out they wouldn't honor the promotion, which was the main reason to open the account. I got a call from a "relationship manager" who said he would look into the glitch, but never followed through. Needless to say, I closed the account.

Horrible experience with E*TRADE following the passing of my mom. They require you to open a account but will not let you open a account, their customer service team cannot determine why the online portal will not let you open the account and each time they say they did something but it will take 2-5 business days for it to take effect. If you ask for the inheritance off their platform they stop responding to you.

After seeing an advertising for ETRADE that stated, "... you can open your account today and begin trading today...", my wife and I did so ~ or rather, wasted our time attempting to do so anyway!!! After wasting a great deal of time providing our personal and banking information, we received an email instructing us to login to our account. Upon attempting to do so, we were asked to confirm our phone number. When we did so, the site said our phone number was unrecognized. It was the only phone number we put in our application.

I invested 8k to make a trade in your platform. 5 Day potential warning to actually use the money. Hot stock. Waited, money is still not available. I JUST WANT TO BUY A STOCK AND I CAN'T BUY STOCK ON YOUR PLATFORM. This is absolutely insane. I will literally recommend your platform to no one. This is a terrible customer experience. I reached out to your "customer service team" which is a bunch of bots that have no idea how to help a customer. If I could rate you a 0/10 I would.

I submitted all of the required paperwork to open a trust account to receive the transfer and, after more than a month and many calls to MorganStanley/Etrade this was finally done. Although the account and funds are in place, MS has placed a hold on half of the account. I have made repeated calls to both customer and estate services and have been given multiple assurances that the issue would be resolved. I was even told two days ago that the problem had been fixed and that I would receive a confirmation call the next morning. The call never came. Again this morning I was told by a “supervisor” after requesting that the case be escalated that he would call back in a few minutes. This was 6 hours ago.

High yield savings acct is a joke or scam whatever you want to call it. My wife had a acct and I tried to open a bank acct. They took 2 weeks and after sending them pics, docusign stuff, letters (ridiculous amount) they closed my acct because we use the same computer and therefore they automatically assume that when she logs in it is me, even though we don't log in to each other's acct and besides We're married. Now they want to close her acct. They're coming up with reasons to not honor their promotion. Stay away unless you like headaches and wasting time. I went to another bank and opened my acct 1 day and it's fine.

74 years old with joint account then with wife tried to access account. Account has been locked and required to provide ID; provided verbal ID to someone on the phone. Still would not give access to account. Insisted that wife also had to be ID; wife stumble in the process so they locked account and required to upload legal ID; provided driver's license. Uploaded it and then they required a picture of driver license next to face of wife that they said they could not verify. Went to Morgan Stanley yesterday in Palm Beach Garden office and associate SVC manager said they could do nothing for us.

I am writing about both eTrade's high yield savings and brokerage accounts. I am especially upset at the savings account. You claim to give 3.5% on the deposit when we open a new account yet one week after we opened the account, you dropped our interest rate to 3.35%, while advertising 3.75% interest rate on the exact same savings!!! That is just fraud!!! This brings back the bad experience from the brokerage account I had from a few years back. You have been doing an excellent job losing your customers! Even one star is too high for you. I am disgusted.

I have been an E*TRADE customer for almost 20 years and they have sucked since they were purchased from Morgan Stanley. Instead of getting any type of help the Platinum support they want to send you to a Morgan Stanley person to sell you something. I have a couple of million, and my Platinum guy is a kid that has worked in the industry for 3 years and knows nothing.

E*TRADE restricted my account 30 days ago after I initiated a wire transfer to pay my landlord, I’ve uploaded all documents they requested, even made a 4 way call with them to another bank to verify a cashier's check, I can’t speak to anyone when I call, only the CSR that can’t tell me anything or do anything but send a email to back office and request they call me and they never do…. This is completely unacceptable. Can anyone give me any other contact information? A number or email to the Compliance Dept.

Horrible - signed up due to promo. They keep locking you for no reason. When asked, Customer care just don't care. As the representative suggested, I am transferring out even if losing that promo.

AWFUL!!!! AWFUL!!!! They make it impossible for beneficiaries to receive benefits. My mother passed away 3 years ago and there has been more red tape with E*TRADE than selling her properties. Communication and customer service are a joke. Their fees are half of her investments. STAY FAR AWAY!!! There are much better options.

I have been trying to open an inherited account from E*Trade for over 6 months. Mind you, it is an emotional time because someone has died. Their instructions are terrible. When I call to confirm that they have everything, I have been told yes so many times, only to call back when the account has still not been opened when they tell me that they need another piece of paper. My account was finally opened 8 months after the death, and then they said my phone number was not put in the correct field and that it needs to be corrected. But that it would only take an hour. The next day, it still didn't work. And the next day I called, and they said maybe 3 days. Then I called again, and the agent said that I needed to fill out yet another piece of paper so that they could send me text messages. Still no access to the account. What a joke! Don't give them your funds. They are not serious people.

Horrible company. Had a checking account less than 60 days. Has been frozen twice. The first time there was minimal funds in the account, they reactivated right away. Now there is substantial funds, they are holding on to my money. Save yourself the grief; avoid these crooks.

Very bad company. I never receive statements. I never receive email. Customer service is extremely unprofessional. Caution: use eTrade at your own risk.

Very disappointed in the way Etrade MS has handled the issues with the Roth IRA I setup last year. I had two instance where the limited sell trade of the option contract did not execute on the last day of trading, resulting in the execution of the option contract. As it is a Roth IRA I could not transfer money freely into the retirement account and had to rely on the proceeds of the sell of the executed option to fulfill the obligation (the money was there in the account but still in the clearing process) as well as there was plenty of cash and margin in the regular brokerage account. Despite that Etrade-MS basically forced me to close the IRA and transfer the money out of the account. Basically a lifetime punishment for letting an in the money option execute.

Do not trust this company. They make it as easy as possible for them to get your money, but as difficult as possible for you to access your own money. They should be investigated, they operate much like any criminal enterprise you have heard of.

My experience with E*TRADE has been overwhelmingly negative. While I will acknowledge that individual customer service representatives were generally polite and professional, that is the only positive aspect of this platform. My direct deposit was withheld without clear justification, multiple accounts were frozen, and my brokerage account became inaccessible with little transparency or timely resolution. Despite repeated calls, I received inconsistent explanations and no meaningful accountability. The operational handling of my funds created unnecessary stress and financial disruption.

Absolutely worthless set of customer service reps. Wanted to do a transfer to another account (They handled ESPP from my previous employer). It's now exactly 1.5 months and each time I call them, they guarantee that this will be done in 2-3 business days. No notifications, nothing. I have escalated and now cannot even do that!

Horrible experience ongoing... MANAGERs need to be retrained. Park your investments elsewhere!! Run away from ETrade!!! 49 calls and locked out of my cash account?? You cannot fathom how dismal my experience with this CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES and they have me locked out of using my cash account balance for a month over a pre auth from a hotel???

After a recent ATM withdrawal, Etrade blocked my account access pending a code sent to my phone. Unfortunately, it was not possible to access the phone and when I called the overseas number provided, I just received a recorded message (something within the country). They should consider, many moons ago, that they are causing serious problems, totally unnecessarily. Had Etrade wanted to do something by email to verify, that is usually more accessible for people.

They are a scam. They will charge a fee without notice and explanation. They will tell you to be aware with company that I bought trades with. If something wrong with the company, you will lose all your shares and owe them a fee.

In one word this company is HORRIBLE. And at this point I am ready to pull all accounts away from them. Started with opening a personal brokerage account. This shockingly took 2 weeks for them to accomplish... A simple brokerage account. Next I tried to move my IRA from William Blair to eTrade. This took about 5 weeks of back and forth and resending the application, paperwork, statements multiple times because they couldn't find it. At the same time I was trying to move my wife's IRA and rollover her 401k into an IRA with etrade. Her IRA was just as miserable of a process as my own taking about 5 weeks. The 401k though... Took 2 months for etrade to get themselves in order. In that time the 401k was emptied but it took nearly 2 weeks for it to show in etrade. Simply unacceptable.

I have been an E-Trade customer since they first started operating. All these years I have had a great experience. However, recently and after its acquisition by Morgan Stanley, we have had a very unpleasant experience. We opened an E-Trade account for my 23-year-old daughter. Opening the account was a little cumbersome (had to take pictures and send DL) but within reason and funding the account directly from her bank was quite easy. However, when my daughter tried to access the account, the E-Trade system could not verify her mobile number (supposedly because she was under our family plan and their third-party verifier could not handle it). As such she could not access the account or the funds. E trade customer service instructed her to go through an additional arduous process of sending a multitude of additional information via some nebulous process using a different mobile phone app in conjunction with Docusign.

Terrible bank, Run! Continually restricts account with an intentionally difficult process in place to further frustrate customers. They provided no answers, no help and wholly ignored my customer needs. Almost 2 weeks without being able to access MY money because E-Trade restricted my access to my money. Theft is described as permanently or temporarily depriving a person of their personal property or finances, They continue to hold my money, while providing no answers and even less help.

I am giving Etrade a 2 star because when it was time for me to make a withdrawal from my Child's Coverdell Account for College, instead over being able to transfer the cash proceeds to my checking account or my son's they said a check would have to be mailed out, Now if this was 1984, I would have been cool with that, but this is 2025, I invested thru electronic transfer from my bank amount to fund this account for 14 years, and when I needed some of the funds they said a check would have to be mailed out, for this type of account. Now I have owned another coverdell account with Janus and that was not the case when funds settled, they transferred to my bank account. This policy of sending out a check is bogus, and charging $25 for expedited delivery is extra B.S.

They froze my account without telling me because I asked about giving power of attorney to my Son, I had some accounts on auto pay with them and they returned them all, they destroyed my credit! DO NOT USE THEM! THEY ARE CROOKS! Have been with them 17 years.

This is the worst financial institution. I can't wait to get my money out. The account was set up by my company, but it is just such a hassle dealing with their poor systems. Do yourself a favor and sign up with Schwab.

Etrade has completely failed us in the worst way. I work with my son to manage his Roth IRA account at Etrade. We are trying to do an asset transfer of over $40K to a rollover Roth IRA account. We started this process over 5 weeks ago. Our first attempt we used the transfer form for the firm we were transferring assets to. Etrade’s first response was they did not accept e-signatures. We provided Etrade a wet signature. They then said they don't accept transfer requests from outside banks, so we filled out an Etrade form to initiate a transfer to another bank. They responded that they needed a color photograph of my son’s drivers license, and we sent that.