Merrill Reviews

Terrible customer service ~ waited on phone for over an hour to be connected with a distributions specialist. Comparative poor performance with investments. Am glad to have transferred funds elsewhere.

Mother passed at the end of May. Merrill Lynch contacted me in mid September. It has been one thing after another. They want you to call them for every little thing because verbal verification is all that they have for security measures. thought everything would be good to go once Merrill received all of the paperwork from my credit union. Oh no, it wasn't that easy. They really are stuck in the 1980s. Even Social Security allows you to apply for benefits online, without having to speak to a human lol. I'm finally done having to deal with Merrill Lynch! They have been the slowest, most inept, and most frustrating financial institution that I have ever dealt with.

I am the beneficiary of a very large estate. It has now been 15 months and I am still awaiting funds. The transition department is incompetent at best as I have had 10 disbursement forms (prefilled by them) denied by the disbursement team. The last one denied for a missing check mark!! You can not speak to any management, nor can you have one transition specialist handle your case. It has been an absolute nightmare for a situation that my family member was ensured would be a smooth and quick process!!

My father died in September of this year and he had my brother and myself as beneficiaries of his inherited IRA. Paperback completed by the last week in September. But NO… every other day, I received a call from a different rep. stating paperwork was wrong. This went on with papers filled out wrong after they were right by others we spoke to through December. Then the papers started to get lost. They could not release funds and actually were withholding our monies. How much revenue did this company get from the account by holding our money?

Pissed that my company uses these scammers for our 401k, instead of Fidelity or Vanguard. Zero good, simple fund options. All their choices are composed of numerous other funds, just so they can charge you a bunch of additional fees, and force you to pickup trash that you wouldn't otherwise want! Companies who screw consumers this way are exactly why government regulation and oversight NEED to exist!

The absolute worst in trying to break through the automated voicemail system just to return a phone call to a live associate. I'm a legacy Diamond Honors tier client and I'm only still here because I have no confidence in their back office operation/administration ability to properly transfer my account to the firm where I have the majority of my holdings.

I recommend that anyone who has set up their affairs and used a lawyer to set up a POA never use Merrill. My father went to a top trustee lawyer and assigned me, his daughter as executor and POA. He has a small IRA at Merrill and when we wanted to transfer the IRA to another institution, they locked the account even after sending all forms and documents to their POA department in Florida. The documents were sent multiple times and were signed for and each time they lied and said they never received them. I recommend NEVER to trust your money with them as they are unethical in their behavior and tactics. FINSTRA was of no help. So in other words, they are stealing money from their clients.

The worst service ever, online issues with accounts and login issues, unable to trade online, so I had call and was on the phone for over an hour. Not to mention that every time I spoke to someone, I was misinformed about various things. Horrible experience, extremely frustrating.

So recently I run across a Bio Tech stock that I want to trade. Goes from $8 PS to $65 in under an hour. I put in Buy at $31. Says Can't Complete Transaction Online Must Call. 17 minutes to get to the trading desk! Stock already dropped below my buy in to $30.50!! While on the phone with trading specialist discussing why I can no longer self-direct my own account, I'm told Merrill is now a conservative platform!! What a joke! What they mean is they no longer want us regular traders to make money like they do. Dumping Merrill and BOA!! 40-year relationship down the drain. BOA no longer cares about their customers' best interests!! That should have been obvious when Bank of America voluntarily provided the FBI with a list of customers who made credit or debit card transactions in the Washington, D.C., area around the time of the January 6, 2021 without a subpoena!!!

I’ve had an extremely disappointing experience with Merrill Lynch’s 401(k) services. The customer service is poor, and the wait times for hardship withdrawals are excessively long. What’s worse, there’s no communication when withdrawal requests are denied—no explanation, no outreach, nothing. When my request was denied, I received no communication explaining why—despite their stated policy that “you will receive a communication with the specific reason your request was not approved.” The denial reason, buried in the portal, stated: “Your request cannot be processed because your financial need does not satisfy a qualified hardship reason under your plan's rules and the IRS regulations or the documentation you provided was not sufficient.” Yet no one reached out to clarify what was missing or offer help.