Merrill-Lynch

ON 11/24/2020 9:30 am place a trade on Merrill Edge app, AAL short 2,000 shares at 14.31. A few minutes later I tried to place a buy to cover at 14.18 which would have resulted in a profit of 260.00. The app just spun and spun and trade was never placed. At the time I thought it was my connection. The stock price rose, I went in to place another trade short 2000 more shares at 14.31 at 9:47 am. Now I have AAL short 4000 total shares at an average of 14.43. After this trade the whole site crashed completely, what I thought was my connection turned out to be a major system crash at Merril Lynch.

I had an account with Merrill for a few years. Used to meet 2 a year to go over acct with advisor. He then moved to Rhode Island so no contact. Ok. No problem. Well when IRA started to lose money wanted to move things around. Nothing. No response. When you're paying 1500 bucks a year you want at least your email answered. But here is where it goes down hill. I wanted to switch to Schwab. They did all paperwork. So merrill took forever to get another quarterly fee but they only sent 75 percent of the money over. After 3 weeks I wrote them a letter to close out account and send everything over to schwab. Took a couple of weeks before they sent it. No problem. They charged.

I wanted to close my personal IRA account at Merrill-Lynch and move it to my employer account. What a pain. I notified my financial advisor and gave her client associate a detailed list of instructions with a deadline as my employer was moving to another provider in 24 days (I gave a deadline of less than this to play it safe). Firstly they could not read and understand the instructions which were very detailed. It took them 2 days to understand the one page. Then they messed up a trade, which took about a week to resolve. They didn't notify me about the trade mess up, only after I messaged several times did they admit there was an issue.

Then they issued a check for left over money 3 days before the absolute deadline and claim it is not their problem to solve since it couldn't be deposited.

Ok, these are the facts:

I am the executor of my late brother and sister-in-law's estate. Good luck to any other executors out there who try and get a deceased person's 401K transferred to an estate. Prepare to spend hours on the phone with them, even after you've provided every imaginable document to their former employer and also to Merrill Lynch. One person will tell you one procedure, such as direct deposit (even going so far as to add and debit in the estate account) only to have another representative tell you no, that was wrong, when you call in with the deposit and withdrawal amounts. Then, to get a check mailed to the estate, prepare for 70+ minutes on the phone trying to prove who you are just to change the address from the deceased to the estate. Forgive me if I don't have a lot of confidence in the check showing up in the 7-10 business days I was just promised. Train your people, Merrill Lynch. How hard can that be?

Extremely dissatisfied with Merrill Lynch. Constant problem with their website, Login Issues, Trade issues, Long hold time when reaching for support on phone. Extremely high margin interest. Ugggh! I will be considering moving to a new broker and Financial Institution.

My credit union sent two checks in the same envelope to the Florida address at Merrill Lynch. They cashed the smaller one, for $8000, but lost the larger one, for $38,000. When the credit union requested assurance from Merrill that they would not cash the lost cashier’s check, they refused to do so for over two months. Finally, they sent the requested letter, but they failed to rectify the fact that I had no value for two plus months of lost interest, nor did they account for the dozens of hours of trouble to finally get this partially resolved. Very poor service at the highest levels of Merrill Lynch!

I opened my account 3+ years back and even after consistently complaining they have not improved. I lose money in many trades due to their error prone platform. When I contact them they say, their platform is not built to handle options and frequent trading. I am thinking of leaving them soon.

I had always managed my money myself until I was contacted by Sam ** at Merrill-Lynch. We went through an investor profile and my goals; which were low growth but capital conservation. Coronavirus comes and the investments that were supposed to go up when the market goes down didn't exist. The super safe investments also went down. Needless to say, I lost $100k with Merrill Lynch in 8 months. I basically paid Merrill Lynch to lose money - a lot of it. I would stay away and just invest in mutual funds or index funds. This was the worst decision I ever made.

I am a preferred member with Bank of America and have been with them for almost 10 years now. My experience with Merrill Lynch has been extremely painful and I regret getting involved with them simply because BAC owns them. They found every excuse not to allow me to trade options even with high balances and prestine History. I will be taking my business elsewhere and my savings and checking accounts to another company as well. This has has been a joke. I cannot recommend these guys even to my worst enemy.