Merrill-Lynch

I bought stock with Merrill-Lynch from within my employer. They added hidden fees to my account and decided to sell my stock to cover the fees without my permission. I planned to hold on to my stock but just to cut ties I will be selling what I have left so I can end my relationship with these crooks.

I have just been through a huge nightmare with Merrill-Lynch and the investment team. Buyer beware. I'm doing you a favor. They may hear what you want but they do not listen. I felt pressured into signing things that were not understood or told, not to worry because they have me covered. WRONG!!!! Run from this company.

If there is a possibility that at some time in the future you may want to move your money to another investment company, never EVER start with Merrill-Lynch. My new investment adviser has been trying for almost 2 months to get my money transferred from Merrill-Lynch to TD Ameritrade. They have thrown up one roadblock after another. Today I had to resign a bunch of documents because Merrill did not like how my signature "looked"; OUTRAGEOUS!!! It's the client's money! They should be able to do what they want with their money without interference by Merrill-Lynch!!!

I have been dealing with them for 3 weeks now. I’ve been given misinformation as to what they need to complete my residential loan. I’m suppose to be closing on my home in 2 days and they are dragging their feet with giving me my money so I can close. Now I have to push the date back again because of them. I would recommend anyone to apply 2 months in advance to keep from going through this nonsense.

After my father passed away, my ex financial advisor of 16 years played a fast one. My mother had a meningioma that was almost an inch long in 2009. She never had surgery or did anything for it. My father died in 2015. Two weeks after my father was buried, my ex financial advisor had my mother sign a Trusted IRA document with no legal representation. My father always handled the finances. My mother had no idea what she was doing. She did not pay her mortgage for months, her electric was about to be shut off.

It’s mind blowing that you must lose everything to be able to take a hardship withdrawal. Instead of being proactive when struck with a medical issue. So thanks for the customer support and while I lose everything just to get what is mine that would keep me out of the hole.

ABSOLUTELY DO NOT USE. THEY ARE NOT HERE TO HELP YOUR FINANCIAL SUCCESS. Let me first start by saying that I'm not a financial professional and and have always been told to let the professionals manage your money. This company is a professional at making themselves money and spinning statistics into something that sounds good and then use scare tactics to bully you into making decisions because they're the professionals and you should not try to do this yourself.

I called a week ago to have my account closed out from Merrill-Lynch and was expecting a check that I still have not received. After contacting them, the rep stated that I was going to have to wait another 5-7 business days before receiving the check that I had to supposed to have been received. STAY AWAY FROM THIS COMPANY. The service is poor and the products. All you will get is empty apologies and the short end of the stick. Invest your monies elsewhere, with a company who will work for you and not against you!

Stay away from this company. I currently have a cash account with approx $200K that I should be able to access whenever I want. I’ve spoken with Chris and Brian who both assured me I could withdraw same day. I called early Friday am, 2/15/19, to get $150K transferred to my local bank account. I am transferred to the distribution dept. and spoke with Sam who proceeds to say I must complete another form in order to obtain the money. She stated she saw where I had withdrawn before (2017 where I went through the same red tape), but I have to complete a form AGAIN in order to get the money wired.

I made the mistake of going to Merrill-Lynch for financial advice after getting in inheritance. I was in a very vulnerable place after my mom had passed away. They steered me into an annuity, and then although they didn’t do anything to actually service the annuity besides purchase it, they were charging me approximately $200 a month simply because the annuity was under their name. They never made a single trade on the account in over a year, so I don’t know what they consider servicing an account. I then closed both my stock portfolio account and the annuity account with Merrill-Lynch last summer.

My mother's Financial estate was with Merrill-Lynch. The snake oil salesman broker talk to me into staying with them and opening a managed IRA account. Three months later I was out $17,000 in lost money from their bad Investments, and exorbitant fees. This was in Spring of 2018 when the market was doing very well. The Fidelity portfolio that I manage myself with absolutely no Financial background just common sense earned about 16% in the same time period. I am SICK about this experience.

Despite being a customer of Bank of America (who owns them) for many years and keeping their large sums, for a very long time, was called a fraud, basically, when tried to open account with ML. Also, they requested impossible/ridiculous documents (utility bills: I happen to have none) to "verify my address", while they have all kind of info on me through BofA (their parent company), and this happens to be my BofA address on file.

Requested a hardship withdrawal on 12/1/18 (it was a Saturday and started the process). Had to also fax the documents as well... They claim it takes 48 hours for them to receive a fax... The check was supposed to be sent via UPS on 12/18/18 and it was sent US Mail. After talking with a supervisor I said I would wait for the mail and he said I would have the check 12/21/18. Guess what??? It has not arrived yet... Plus they charged me the $45 hardship fee twice. They won't send hardships via direct deposit as the previous company Mercer did. Unreal!

My father passed away in November 2018, he had several investments in this company and started the paperwork to take out his money for his funeral expenses since June 2018 so my mother would not have any issue along the line, never-heard from anyone so I stepped in and made several calls and still kept getting the run around, they would say you need to sign some paperwork. Got that taken care. Called back again and said it was pending? Then attempted to call again on the status and said We need to call the trade team in order to give them permission to liquidate. Called them and they said they showed nothing on file ever being processed.

My mom had a lot of stocks, CDs, money, etc. with Merrill-Lynch for many years. When she passed, my sister and I inherited them. Her longtime adviser became our good friend. I took the test to see if I was high risk or very low risk. Low risk was my choice. The stocks she had me in did absolutely nothing! I lost money, portfolio was not even balanced out for my risk assessment. I moved to another financial company and Merrill-Lynch took almost a week to transfer all my stuff, they also rejected my disability check after they said they'd deposit it in my account! It was plain evil on their part and the adviser Cheryl **. I had NO money to pay my bills, buy food and I had to call all my creditors, VA disability center about my check and go into my change jar to get $5 so I could open up a credit union account.

I opened my account with them, and after a month of it being in review they without any reason closed my account. Causing me to lost my disability check that I desperately need. I will never in my life have anything to do with them again. They have no right to close someone's account without notice or reason. Whatever you do, do NOT GO WITH THIS COMPANY. THEY SUCK!

I also had Platinum status at BOA, so free trades with Merill. Out of the blue, they tell me move my IRA or they will liquidate it and send me the check in 30 days. No reason given at all. Luckily, I had an account at a competitor. They are total jerks, will never recommend or do business with them again. Funny thing they still send tons of junk mail and spam asking me to open account.

I am a platinum honors client of BOA/Merrill. I maintain a 6 figure balance between my checking and savings, and I had roughly 35k in investments with Merrill Edge. Out of the blue, I received a notice that my 2 accounts were being terminated. I called to ask why and no explanation could be given. The "investment specialist" said there aren't any notes as to why, and it just appears that they don't want to do business with me anymore. He apologized, but nobody could give me an answer. I just can't believe they would treat a customer that way to just terminate his accounts? My options are to liquidate, or pay $49.50 to transfer to a different institution. Unbelievable...

My mother placed stock orders on 10/21 to be filled 10/22. Discovered orders were “missing” late 10/22 & was told they’d had a “computer glitch’” and if she wanted those trades she’d need to place them again. Market had gone down so she decided NOT to replace most of them but did place 4 new trades for 10/23. The “new” trades went through & all seemed well. Late on evening of 10/24 she discovered 8 ADDITIONAL TRADES in her account that’d been back-dated to 10/22 (all of these trades were the ‘missing” trades from “glitch” but now the stocks had gone down even further and she was out approximately $10K++). She spoke with people on 10/22, early and later 10/24 and 10/26.

Our money was supposed to be invested. We were told the money was invested. We never received statements and tried to follow up and were pushed back that things take time. Months later, we received a statement that showed that not only had our money been sitting in cash for months, but we were being charged a fee for them to hold it in cash. Now we want to transfer the money and they do not want us to. They are not willing to invest it, which makes no sense to me at all. They just transfer us around and we always end up speaking to someone who says they are not the person we are supposed to talk to. I just want to transfer the money away from them. We are about 50 yrs old and never ever had this trouble with Fidelity in the 25 years we have used Fidelity.

This is a very honest review. I am using Merrill Edge for 1 year now as my primary broker for stocks primarily. The commission of this broker is at $6.95 per trade. The reason I am still with them is that I get 100 free trades per month thru their reward program (besides the free trades, everything else is a disaster). They been around for years, I am sure more than most of other competitors. Their trading platform (Marketpro) sucks big time. Very based web-based. All active traders should stay away from this disaster 100 miles away.

Once again I am on hold waiting anyone to answer. They received and held funds from my disability checks without authorization, and now I cannot reach anyone for a disbursement of the funds. Just today I have been on hold well over an hour, and their website states disbursements cannot be done online. You can get account information online (as the recording has stated 100 times now) but can’t do anything with the information you find. I didn’t think anyone could do a poorer job than FI, ML proves otherwise. It’s frightening to learn that you really have no control over your own money, isn’t it!?

Since the passing of my mother-in-law last summer, Merrill Lynch has used every trick in the book over the past 6 months to keep my husband from his rightful inheritance. Stonewalling, sending us on all sorts of crazy wild goose chases, and the latest, "requiring" an IRS document for transfer of funds that the IRS has notified us that we do not require. They have $230,000 of our money, and reading the reviews on this site, I know that our experience is not unique. I always try to think the best of people, but it has become transparent that ML employees seem trained finds ways to keep beneficiaries from their inheritance, exploiting the pain, grief, and embarrassment tangled up in the process of having to "gravel" for a deceased family member's money. They are counting on us feeling this way!

For six months, we've been waiting for a small partial payout (about $7000 times three people). These guys promise date after date, inching along by two days, then a week, then another two days, over and over. I guess they figure that if the payout is just around the corner, they won't get sued for no performance. However, each time the day arrives, they simply say they're not distributing the money, don't need to explain. We even took them to court here in Florida, they just gave them an extension, the date and time came and they did the same to him. No payment, no reason.

Just wanted to post two annuities were placed within the IRA. Each annuity had its own fees in addition to the wealth manager's agreed upon monthly fee for the total IRA account. Ouch. Check those paper statements. Figured out the cost to have such a product did not make sense. There is an agreed upon timeframe for each annuity before you can dump it. There is a dollar penalty if you ask your wealth manager to dump a product before whatever date has been set on yours. Overall, the wealth manager does not want to dump an annuity within your account because of the commission they are making. Also, if you have one be sure to ask if it is transferable to spouse in the event of your death. Many are not. They are complicated and expensive. Requested advisor to get rid of annuities. He did it; he was not happy. I sure was!

Asked Merrill-Lynch to transfer 401k to a Fidelity IRA, and they only transferred part of the total. When called them back to ask what is going on, they now said had to fill out a form to transfer the rest and it would take 90 days to get the money! Sent form by mail and after 90 days - NO MONEY! Called them and was advised they didn't get the form and will have resubmit form to get the money and wait another 90 days! This firm should have been put out of business instead of being bought by Bank of America. They are the biggest fraudster on Wall Street. BUYER BEWARE!!

Terrible performance on managing over 1 million dollars. Then we I decided to move the funds from Merrill-Lynch to another investment service, Merrill-Lynch starting a stonewalling and slow work in actually transferring the funds. Got several calls from people I didn't even know asking about the transfer. One lady named Morgan actually said she would hold the printing of a check and wire the funds and she would wait for our wiring instructions. Got wiring instructions but when I contacted them back it was after 430 PM and they were closed. Called this morning August 28th and no one knew a thing and this person Morgan wasn't in today. As of now, I don't know where my money is.

If you or a loved one, use Glenn **, make sure and double check your paperwork, especially when it comes to transfer on death. One day, you will find out his assistant, Klair, mishandled the paperwork, filled out the paperwork wrong while Glenn was on vacation. Their manager will call you and admit a mistake was made, but will explain there is nothing they can do. The more you look into the financial advice that was given over the years to your family member, the more questions you start to generate. Thank you Glenn for your incompetence, you made a blatant $600,000 mistake and do not even have the honor to apologize, you have your manager clean up your mess.

Merrill Lynch has devolved into an incompetent bureaucratic organization that is unresponsive to customer needs. An attempt to close an account required numerous emails, phone calls, and requests from ML for paperwork that had been previously sent. When ML originally divided the account, they made a calculation error and left $42 in the account and did not close it. When the paperwork was finally complete, I was told that a $75 fee would be charged to close the account!!! Never ever choose this organization if you value your time or your money.

I moved my account from Sharebuilder as they were closing, by the way never had an issue with that broker to Merrill Edge. I joined because of the Bank of America Preferred Rewards which are nice. Read lots of reviews good and bad. I figured any major bank going to have some issues but it seems to be one after the other. They messed up my transfer that I had put in months before as I knew I was deploying and took weeks of calling every day for hours right up to the day before I was deploying for military duty to get fixed. Luckily I got one representative who understood and worked the issue to the end which was nice after going through 5 different ones before who did nothing but repeat same thing over and over. That was the start of issues. Now I can't reinvest dividends from certain companies which raises my taxes when paid as cash which is unacceptable and each representative gives same excuse with no real answer or fix.