Merrill Lynch

We are first time homebuyers and my husband's 401k is allowed to be used for a down payment under a hardship withdrawal. We have been waiting 22 days for the money. We literally only need this check to be able to close on the house we are purchasing and underwriting has been complete for 19 days. I can’t imagine if we had a true hardship (god forbid such as a death) and needed the money urgently. They refused to direct deposit it. And now Wells Fargo will no doubt put a hold on the check. Our withdrawal has been approved since last Thursday (even though it shouldn’t take that long) and we were assured they would next day us the check. The check was not mailed until mid day Tuesday and they didn’t even send it urgently. Now it may arrive up until 7pm. Merrill Lynch has the worst practices of any banking entity that I have ever experienced.

My father passed away in January. He had several accounts with this company. My mom is hard of hearing pretty much deaf so I have to handle all her affairs. We have reached out to the associates that opened up my fathers accounts since his passing and it’s impossible to reach anyone. They never answer almost never return voicemails I leave. I have emailed and faxed all documents they requested, even took them into the bank as well and still have not heard back from anyone. It has been months with no answer. As I type this I am literally trying to get through to the estate unit and have been on hold over an hour and fifteen minutes. This is horrible that both of my parents have accounts with this company yet this is how they treat their customers. I would never recommend this company to anyone ever. I have even reached out to supervisory office and of course no one answers.

You do not get true advice and support. Everything done by the agent was to get credits for self-earnings including bank transactions usually done for free. For example, transfers between the existing accounts in the same bank of America. My adviser was able to take my money and after $23,000.00 was lost in three months, she was able to transfer it back to my bank account. No actual advice was received regardless the money paid for it. Just to add, I invested with Merrill Edge because no one responded when I was trying to invest with Fidelity. It was disappointing three months ago, but now I understand that not taking money at that time was the best advice. I am sorry, I used Merrill Lynch Edge.

I retired Jan. 1 2021 and had all my retirement money under advisement. $1.4M was transferred in Feb 2021. I sent email April 2021 asking why positions not taken. Finally, in May $300K was invested, then $400K in Sept, then $700K in Nov. I was now pretty much screwed having most of my funds invested at market all time high. When I sent inquiry/complaint, they said they did nothing wrong and matter was closed. Thank God I closed my accounts and now repairing damage. Beware!! - they are not looking out for your best interest. You are a number, nothing more.

I closed my Merrill Edge 401K account because I reside in/am a citizen of Australia. I asked Merrill to wire the funds to my Australian bank because not a single Australian financial institution will accept a check denominated in US$. So Merrill sends me a check in US$ that is literally worthless because I can’t cash or deposit it in Australia. I have spent 10+ frustrating and expensive hours on the phone from Australia trying to get customer service to solve the issue, but instead get transferred repeatedly (even when the agents tell me they won’t transfer me) or give me useless advice like "google how to deposit the check" or "open a bank account in the US" or “use the app”. Is there anyone out there in Merrill world who can help me escalate and solve this? I need my money here in Australia … And it cannot be in the form of a check in US$!

I have been trying to work with Merrill Lynch to assist my elderly mom with getting critical items handled so that we can use her IRA to pay her bills. The wait times are unacceptably long. One day we waited 40 minutes only to be cut off, then called back and waited 2 hours and 7 minutes before hanging up. This is not an unusual occurrence. When we finally do get through, we are given conflicting information from different representatives. I have spent anywhere from 7-12 hours this past month either trying to get through, or trying to re-explain our issues and still have not resolved the problem. We may try to move her accounts altogether due to their incompetence and complete lack of customer care.

Do not use this firm. I invested my life savings with them and for 2 years they bought and sold stocks showing a realized gain of about 5% each year, sounds great, but they kept the "losers" in unrealized gains and are now selling those stocks at a huge loss of about 10% for this year so far. I understand the market goes up and down, but the reason for me choosing them was because they are supposed to know more than me. They apparently know how to make money for themselves. Now each year we paid taxes on those gains, and this year we will incur losses, but the government does not allow writing off more than $3,000 of losses per year. At this rate we will be dead before we can write off this amount of losses. They know this but I was just informed by my accountant who I also had to pay for his time to do our tax return with all these stupid trades. NEVER use this firm!

This company has the customer service I’ve ever came across. I’ve had to call for a number of times a week for month just have them address one issue. If you don’t call to follow up the they will assist you. Extremely long hold call times.

Well, after 3 weeks, almost a month, to transfer an IRA into a State Retirement Account, I called dozens of times, I spend at least 8-10 hours a week calling Merrill Edge, sometimes 12 hours a week. They never email me, and pretty much say that they are working on it, give them another week each time. Even though when I talk to customer service, I submitted the paperwork and started calling them on 03/06, they said even today on 03/25, we just got the paperwork and started working on it. Every time I call every other day since 03/06. They just got the paperwork and started working it, give them until next week to do it. That was weeks ago they said they would be done.

They absolutely waste your time. Tried to call 4 times. Was on hold for a total of 5 hours and still have not talked to anyone. Don’t waste your time with these guys. Complete idiots. Recommend taking your business elsewhere.