Fidelity Investments

This particular fund is (supposed to be) composed of shorter duration Treasury Notes so I have no idea how this was down so much. If it is to preserve principal, I cannot imagine that they would be going out a far duration on the bond fund - which would expose it to interest rate sensitivity. If there is a legitimate reason that it is down that much - great, educate me, but if not it looks like you sold me a 529 plan under the pretense of protection of principal at this age and it has failed miserably. When I told the rep this she said "well, every investment carries some risk," to which I replied that I agree with that but the risk/reward with a bond should be much lower than with a stock investment and she had no response.

The idea of having a conservative allocation was to protect the principal (or so that is how it was marketed to me) and they absolutely refused to be of help. I was transferred multiple times and then they told me that an explanation as to how a treasury bond fund had gone down that much fell under "analysis" and they could not assist with that since they don't provide guidance or analysis. Keep in mind that this is a FIDELITY fund that they manage and not one person there could tell me what was in the thing. Information online was clear as mud as well in terms of the bond holdings.

At the end of the call, they took great zeal in telling me that Risk Management was giving me 30 days to move my account. Translation? This is what happens when you ask us questions about our funds and don't like it when we refuse to give you any logical information. As a note, I did not curse/swear/use any slurs, etc. The conversation was factual but they just didn't like being challenged. At this point, I was going to transfer anyhow if this is how they treat customers who call in with simple questions about their funds!

Also, I had a similar experience a month ago with others where they just locked me out of my accounts. No email/text, NOTHING to let me know that they had locked the accounts, I just got a notice that a check was returned as a result of the lock and had to call them. Unbelievable! If you have a question if a customer has fraud - call them! Text, or email! Don't just shut down someone's accounts without notifying them! I also filed a complaint regarding what happened and (big surprise) no one had the courtesy to respond.

Either way, if you want to get locked out of your accounts and not get notified - OR- have what was marketed to you as a safe investment for your Child's education decline dramatically in value and have them offer no explanation why - and then tell you to leave Fidelity within 30 days, then you will find yourself well served here. If, on the other hand you are looking for some semblance of customer service, you will not find it here.

I called in before 1PM on Thursday and they said if I was closing out the account, I had to wait 2 business days for the sale to take place. I insisted that the sale needed to take place that day because the Fed had just raised interest rates, and I wanted to get out of the market ASAP. They told me that it was in my contract with them, too bad. Neither the ETFs or the mutual funds were sold until Monday and it is now Wednesday and I do not have access to my proceeds at a cost of over $20K to me.

The reason I was getting out of Wealth Management was because of, what I considered, a poor selection of mutual funds to my account and other issues discussed here. The majority of the accounts are Fidelity funds, some with low capitalization and less than a 5-year track record. Less than a week after purchase, one of the so-called index funds dropped 16% due to, I think, a capital gains charge. Some of the Fidelity funds only had a 2 star rating due to poor performance.

The first days after starting into Wealth Management, I realized that the funds in my account had no or few index funds as I had been promised. I called my advisor and he apologized and had the brokers make changes, adding more index funds. The problem was that indexes used were not the standard indexes, like the DOW or S&P 500 or MSCI indexes, but were "indexes" set up by Fidelity using their unknown criteria so comparison with other funds was impossible. Also, the entire month I was in Wealth Management, I never knew for sure what the balance in my account was. The Portfolio page and Account Summary page would show greatly different portfolio totals. The top line total and bottom-line total on the Account Summary page were frequently different. I called my Fidelity advisor(s) almost daily and they would give one of the totals seen on the website as the correct number, but the issue was never fixed.

Another big problem is the separation between the people selling the product and brokers administrating the buying and selling of stocks and bond funds. I got into Wealth Management because of my 20-year relationship with one of their financial advisors. I didn't like that he couldn't show me the portfolio that was being offered or any historical data on the portfolio. That would have in the past been enough to make me take a pass on the offer, but at 68 years old, I felt it was time for me to release the reins of my account management. And Fidelity had always treated me well in the past, and as I said above, I had a long-term relationship with one particular advisor at Fidelity. The sales advisors I spoke to were saying the right things, including using words like "Fiduciary" and "no expense ratio charged above the 1.13 % account management fee."

After seeing the actual portfolio and asking about how the expense ratio was refunded back to me, I was told that the expense ratio was an expense I had to pay. “Fiduciary” also went away. While many of the index funds did have nominal 0.10% expense ratios, upon making a spot check of the funds they had investing in, at least one of the funds, FADMX, had an expense ratio of 0.69%, making my yearly costs closer to 2%.

As far as I am concerned, the broker end of business just views the clients as chumps to make money off of. The couple of times I talked to the back-office broker they were arrogant and rude. The holding of money for days before buying and holding of mutual funds for days before selling stinks and opens the opportunity for games to be played with my money. Especially with the attitude shown by Fidelity's brokers. Something wrong is going on here. My advice: Avoid Fidelity Wealth Management.