Merrill Reviews

Today I went to log into my account and the site would not grant me access to my account. First, I wanted to make sure that I was entering the correct info, but surely that wasn't the problem. So, I proceeded to call Merrill Edge. The guy that picked up the phone said that he had to call another department, so he did. He came back to the phone but he couldn't offer me any info on why my account was locked. Mind you, I have trades that were in my account that I wanted to trade in order to increase my worth. These people are the worst. I'm basically stuck and I can't do anything about it. I went into the bank that I tried to open an account up at. They said that they couldn't give me info, but if anything they will send me a check for my money (**). What can be done about this?

Now, I again sent in for a hardship to have some dental procedure for my son. I sent them how much I need to pay and how much my insurance will pay. I recently received a letter stating that the balance I will have to pay says nothing about having to be prepaid. Also, I didn't have the appointment scheduled. This Merrill Lynch thing is hard to schedule an appointment and the company seems to always find a reason not to let you borrow against your own money.

I am going to continue borrowing for my son's dental procedure. If declined again, for whatever reason that Merrill Lynch will find not to let me borrow against my own money, I will look at moving to another company. They may all be the same but that's a risk that I am willing take. It should not be this difficult and stressful to try to get some of your own money to have things taken care of.

Despite speaking with customer services reps and their respective managers, nobody at Merrill Lynch's has provided one single reason for this "restriction" and promises that the phantom department, which placed the restriction, would call me at my home or office phone numbers within 48 hours has not materialized. Now, one week later, while stocks I wanted to sell continue to free-fall and I hemorrhage more and more money , all while having the horror of a forced margin call, which I cannot stop because I cannot deposit funds or access my account to see the correct margin and house maintenance has been maintained. Does your brokerage have a "PR" person, who is not scared of a story like this being leaked to the press? And this phantom department whose name I cannot be told, and who ML's own edge reps admit that they cannot even reach by telephone themselves is doing what with my account.

I have repeatedly offered to go into a Merrill Lynch office locally to properly identify myself and discuss the matter but have been told on three occasions that that would not help me one bit as my account is a Merilee ** account and therefore I have no physical building and no person whom I may go to visit in person to address and correct whatever concerns or misunderstanding must have caused this ludicrous situation, which I am still not privy to despite my dozen attempts to get answers by calling different ML phone numbers and local offices all to no avail. While I ponder how to bring, well, if I should file suit to protect my financial interests (referring to my ML edge account's holdings and losses resulting from this what I can only assume must be an unlawful way of placing such a restriction), as well as regain control of my account and transfer the holding to another institution, it would be conceivable that it would not end well for Merrill and I am only asking that attempts be made immediately, meaning post haste, to restore my account and or contact me as to why such action has been taken. Additionally, I am formally requesting that I be sent a certified letter detailing the reason's behind your actions and listing a phone number and address where either myself or my attorney may reach a representative who is versed with the aforementioned matter.

I am hereby giving formal written notice that I would like Merrill Lynch edge to call me within two business days at ** and **, both listed on my ML edge account, or I will contact my attorney to pursue this matter and attempt to recover any losses, due to your companies negligent handling of this matter, and if necessary file a lawsuit(s) if necessary, no matter if it costs me in excess of the value of my account or a $50,000 retainer, as I am now pursuing this as a matter of principle. Should your company comply and return the call within the next two business days, I will make every effort to work this matter out in a non-litigious, amicable and fair manner, which is all I have wanted since day one. Furthermore, if upon calling, I should not be available to answer the phone, you are instructed to please leave a detailed message on my voice mail including the name and phone number of edge representative who I may call back the same or following business day to discuss this matter and get some answers.

Merrill Lynch promised since April that I would get the money. They've given me so much of a runaround. Then on July it was approved, I moved, and yadda-yadda-yadda! They say they're working on getting me the money. I am ready to go ballistic! I have no job. My transmission went in the only vehicle I own, and I need to get it fixed to get it transferred. My wife is ready to lose her job because it requires her to have a car, and they are refusing to give me my own money!

I just got hired and then got laid off. I need help now! Please, help me. My wife is the only income we have; if she loses her job, we will be homeless. We are already struggling, and I have a 401K with money in it that they won't give me. Please, can you help us? We are desperate!

I complained and get the "Yeah, see you, from BoA", regarding the ethics of this person--a person who has previous bankruptcy background and is known to associate with a known felon. This ML advisor can not pass a cheek swab test for drugs, guarantee it. BoA refuses to investigate.

What a scam. I cannot believe that Merrill Lynch would stoop so low. Do not give a dime to Merrill Lynch. They are not your mother's Merrill Lynch. They have been Bank of America-fied.

Merrill Lynch sucks. Do not use them. They will sell your stock without your consent and then offer to charge you a fee to buy it back.

In an attempt to consolidate my retirement account, I decide to transfer my rollover RIA acounts to Merrill Edge. Bad decision! The advisor who picked up the phone try to convince me transferring my retirement funds to them by "selling the service free". Soon after I initiated the transfer process, it means whoever picked up your phone the first time, the assess will sit under his/her name for "managing". But the truth is, they neither manage nor provide advice. The worst thing is I made numerous attempts to make appointments with the advisor which my fund is under, I could not reach him repeatedly. My money transfer encountered an issue. After one month till today, the money transfer is still not completed. The issue could not be resolved. I could not reach the person whom I was dealt with the first time and no one else in the team can help me. I am stuck.

Finally I contacted the manager for the Arizona call center. At first, I thought he will assign me to a more responsible and reliable advisor. I am wrong again. Despite my initial discussion, the second person assigned to me seems fine. I thought we understood the ground rule for attending the appointment. I made an appointment for this Monday night at 7 p.m. to conduct "free" financial analysis for my household last Thursday when I was reassigned to the second advisor.

Here I am on the phone to call Merrill Edge call center and try to locate the advisor. I was put on hold for nearly 30 minutes. Finally, someone from a different call center pick up the phone and still not able to locate the advisor whom I am supposed to meet.

After nearly 50 minutes on the phone with another advisor from another call center and left a message for the Arizona office team manager, finally a lady from the Arizona office called me and informed me the advisor whom I made an appointment with at 7 p.m. is not in the office today. So I wasted a good one hour before I found out about this, despite the fact I requested the advisor to send me a short e-mail ahead of time if he can't make it to the appointment.

Totally waste of time. Now I spend another 30 minutes to type this complaint and hoping no one else will continue washing time as I did with them.

As part of my approval, ML also needed to submit a subordination agreement. ML's Ryan ** faxed it to the wrong address or bank and told me that it was done and pending. After waiting for 2 weeks, I personally called the bank and they had not received the documents. It was unknown where he faxed this information thus violating my personal confidentiality!

In addition, the good faith estimate proved to be wrong and omitted onerous legal fees totaling $1,625. I was also told that I would not need to bring cash to the closing. However at the closing, I was told that in order to close a bank check, $5,960 was required which I believe would violate ML's lending requirements and would cause me emotional and financial issues. I was also told that one-year homeowners insurance needed to be prepaid! Furthermore, I received another good faith estimate after closing!

Many discussions between agent and self (trustee for client who suffered from Alzheimer's Disease) regarding draw-downs of all accounts to meet client's needs. Last account to be closed was IRA. Attempts to close IRA thwarted by legal department of Merrill Lynch which demanded that durable power of attorney of 19 years be replaced with Merrill Lynch approved form for power of attorney. This would require a signature from a competent person. As Merrill Lynch acquired Bank of America after my mother-in-law had lost her ability to sign her name as well as any semblance of competency, this was impossible.

Merrill Lynch had never disclosed a policy stating that only their power of attorney forms would be acceptable and refused to grandfather in the previous power of attorney which had served my mother-in-law for many years including with other financial institutions. Only Susan *** responded to calls in a timely way and acted as an advocate. Casey *** had forwarded the activity to her as she was above him. All other attempts to contact people within Merrill Lynch received no response, including attempts from attorney Robert ***, son of the client, who had drawn up the power of attorney who asked why his legal work was being rejected when it had served in all other areas. He has been practicing 30 years and is a part time law professor for 15 years.

Legal department staff do not have any contact with actual clients of the company and never disclosed names or actual reasons for rejection. Client was literally dying during this process which has not been resolved in a way to benefit both client and company. Dealing with the legal department and Merrill Lynch has been more stressful than 8 1/2 years of being a primary care provider for someone with advancing Alzheimer's Disease. Primary rule to remember in dealing with Alzheimer's patients is not to try and reason with patient as they are always right and lack the judgement to be able to understand context.

One day, somewhere in the beginning of the fall of Ford stock, 2006/2007, I decided to call Merrill Lynch to shift $3,000 into Ford stock. At the time of purchase, the stock market was around $7.32. After allocating $3,000 to the Ford stock, my account was left at or around $4,134.00. The Ford stock continued to drop and I didn't worry because I knew that it would soon regain its strength and I would not loose.

Today, October 14, 2010, Ford Stock in $13.94almost doubled. I received my statement and the account reads, $4, 867.16. That's fine for the money which was left in the account after the investment meaning it gained approx. $733.16, over a 3 year period, but the investment that I made with Ford which was $3,000.00 should have almost doubled to $6,000.00 to total $10,867.16 or very close to it.

I called Merrill Lynch on the 13th of October and they told me that they didn't see any investment. I called today, Oct. 14th and they told me the same thing. I asked them to look back to the records dated 2006, which they did and they can see the transfer of funds and they can also see where the $3,000.00 was now $2,900.00 so I know they see the funds because Ford stock did drop to $2.00 but now that it has doubled since my purchase. They can't seem to identify with anything that I am talking about. I spoke to a Lori ** who got very nasty with me and put me on hold where I waited for 48 minutes until I hung up and called back. I am seeking legal assistance on tomorrow because I promise; if I have to take everything I have to make a point a point will be made.

One day, somewhere in the beginning of the fall of Ford stock, 2006/2007, I decided to call Merrill Lynch to shift $3,000 into Ford stock. At the time of purchase, the stock market was around $7.32. After allocating $3,000 to the Ford stock, my account was left at or around $4,134.00. The Ford stock continued to drop and I didn't worry because I knew that it would soon regain its strength and I would not lose.

Today, October 14, 2010, Ford Stock in $13.94 almost doubled. I received my statement and the account reads, $4, 867.16. That's fine for the money which was left in the account after the investment. Meaning, it gained approx. $733.16, over a 3 year period, but the investment that I made with Ford which was $3,000.00 should have almost doubled to $6,000.00 to total $10,867.16 or very close to it.

I called Merrill Lynch on the 13th of October and they told me that they didn't see any investment. I called today, Oct. 14th and they told me the same thing. I asked them to look back to the records dated 2006, which they did and they can see the transfer of funds and they can also see where the $3,000.00 was now $2,900.00, so I know they see the funds because Ford stock did drop to $2.00 but now that it has doubled since my purchase, they can't seem to identify with anything that I am talking about. I spoke to a Lori ** who got very nasty with me and put me on hold where I waited for 48 minutes until I hung up and called back. I am seeking legal assistance on tomorrow because I promise if I have to take everything I have to make a point, a point will be made.

But the more I thought about it, the angrier I got. These people continued to send me emails saying my address was wrong and to contact them or my account would go into abandonment again. When I called and talked to Steve, he said that that was normal behavior to see if they had the correct address. That is absurd. Steven was nice and told me he would find out where my money was and finally called me on October 12th saying he found my money that they had forgotten to put it in my account. I told him the same thing I told them since 2007 that I wanted to close my account. He is now telling me that the money will be in my account on Friday, October 15th. He said he will call me again on Friday.

He said I can either get a check or set up to get my money transferred to my bank. I am worried. What would have happened to the money if I had not continued to pursue this and why am I being charged for all those years when I asked them to close the account? I want all my fees returned to me and I want the original balance of $1059.81 that was in my account when I first asked them to close my account. I see a lot of complaints against Merrill-Lynch online. They are dangerous and disorganized.

When I arrived at the door Michelle ** was initially very hesitant in helping me but once I mentioned reporting this to the police she became very helpful in contacting Lakisha ** and Adam ** by phone. We spent close to 1 hour waiting on line. I was finally told by both mentioned individuals (Adam & Lakisha) that I would have my funds transferred by the close of business today on 09/10/10 and it is 5:46PM EST and my money has still not been transferred. I sure would like to contact a lawyer to place the fear of God into these people.

I also mentioned that I was going to close my account and I recommend that no one open an account at Merrill Lynch. I was depending on this money transfer to pay for my hotel stay, kids school tuition, food, gas, car insurance etc. until I got a job in Florida. Now I'll have to suffer untold embarrassment and lost credibility. My wife, 2 kids and I are most probably going to get kicked out of the Days Inn that I'm staying at in Orange City, Orlando if I don't find a way to get money fast. I'd like an attorney to help us.

In the last phone call she had with them, she was informed that everything they need is there and they will send an e-mail confirming that the account is being opened. This has not happened yet. It became so frustrating that I had to call them several times to find out but they won't share anything with me. I begged them to call my daughter or e-mail her to let her know what is happening with the account. They said that they can't do that and my daughter needs to keep calling.

Here, this consumer credit place is now lien holder of our vehicle and that same place didn't give me the title loan that they said had been approved. I want this handled immediately. Businesses should not be able to mislead trusting customers the way that these people did. I, as a customer, don't know the policies. I depended on these people to guide me the right way, not the incorrect. I want them taken off as lien holder and something really needs to be done about these kind of things. These people get paid good money to be deceived and mislead the way they are.

There on the paperwork of our vehicle, they wasted about five or six days of my time. I rushed at their every command and did exactly what they told me to do and they let me do these things as though I'm some kind of fool or like the things I have to accomplish in my life are a joke. I'm furious about what's been done. I want something done to this company. That's not the good faith customers should be treated. The business or daily things that I have to conduct in my everyday life are not a joke. I don't find it humorous in the least bit. I want this addressed, please. I have these things happen to me. It's too much. It's not fair.

I followed his advice and bought into these mutual funds and by March 2008 my portfolio was worth $292,659.72. This fund provided the larger portion of my retirement.When the market started to fall in late 2008 I conversed with Mr. ** and voiced my concern. He assured me that this was a short term thing and that the market had maintained a 7% yearly average through thick and thin.

In early 2009 I again voiced my concerns and stated if I had to take a reduction in my withdrawals I would not be able to meet my mortgage commitments and might lose my home. Again I was reassured and told to hold on. I told Mr. ** I did not want the value of my portfolio to go below $200,000. My instructions were ignored by Mr. ** and the mutual funds failed to do as promised, which was to protect the investor's investment. When my portfolio dropped to $167,000 I could no longer remain on the sideline so I removed my funds from Mr. **'s control and put them into a CD. Mr.** called me and expressed his dismay at being "fired", saying it had never happened before and that I was premature in closing my account.

When I first began to explore the possibility of getting my mortgage modified, I could not get any response. Later, at the suggestion of one of your customer service people, I missed two mortgage payments and someone finally responded by sending me some forms. I filled out the forms and sent in documentation and got a preliminary approval in July of 2009. I signed an agreement and began paying a slightly reduced monthly payment in August of 2009. The agreement was supposed to end in October 2009 with a permanent modification of my mortgage changing it to a fixed rate. I repeatedly attempted to get someone to finalize this modification and I was repeatedly advised by letter and by phone to continue making the preliminary payments after October. I have continued to make these payments from August 2009 through February 2010 to "Merrill Lynch, Loss Mitigation, *** **** road, Mt. Laurel, NJ 08054, Mail Stop SV-22."

At one point, I was advised that I was ineligible for a mortgage modification because I was only receiving unemployment compensation income and I didn't have enough months of eligibility left. I became employed in January of 2010 and advised the company of my new employment and income; however, on March 18, 2010, I was advised that I was denied because of an "NPV test". Now, the bank has been threatening me with foreclosure. I received an IRS Form 1098 from Mortgage Service Center early in 2010 which had an inaccurate amount of interest. From what I could determine, the form only included interest paid before the preliminary Modification Agreement in July of 2009. None of the payments that I made pursuant to the Modification Agreement were accounted for. I requested a revised Form 1098 and I received it; however, it still doesn't reflect payments made during the period after July of 2009 through the end of the year.

Similarly, now that the bank is threatening foreclosure, the records do not reflect all of the payments that I have made. Your company shows me being in arrears for over $8,000 with a last payment received for September 2009. This is not correct. I don't understand where my payments have been going. Your company returned my payment check for March 2010 and refused to cash it. I have proof of my payment history; all checks have been cleared through Sovereign Bank. I missed only two payments in 2009 and you cashed my February 2010 check. Therefore, I owe two payments of $1,161 for 2009 and three payments of $1,048 for March, April and May of 2010, for a total of $5,466, not $8,274.70 as you claim. When I speak to people in the loan modification department, they assure me that I should continue making payments in the modified amount and send them additional documentation for a loan modification.

5.) Her broker also knew she had other income, a Merrill pension and another company's pension.

Essentially, I believe there was no need to sell the stock out when in fact she was capable of paying her margin call. The loss of capital from $46 to $66 is a substantial sum of money plus given the stock purchase prices, almost zero cost basis, her tax implications were even worse. This hardship has also caused her undue mental stress which has aided in her mental deterioration.

We are forced to live in poverty, because this company refuses to pay out the one benefit we believed we had coming. My husband supported us well when he was alive and it didn't matter if we were married or not. Unfortunately, he got pancreatic cancer and died when he was 53. I tried to take care of many of the legal paperwork but did not know the intricacies of this pension fund. And he was too sick to take care of these things himself. In this case, he believed we were the beneficiaries and did not worry about the pension he had with Merrill Lynch through Met Life. Is there anything we can do about this great injustice?

Let me clearly illustrate this scam:

You deposit $50,000. They start giving you losing stock trades or no advise. Let's say you lose $1,000. Your account is at $49,000. Now, they charge you an advisor fee of, let's say, $500. Your account balance is now $48,500.00. You lose $1,500. They continue with this scam until your account has a substantial loss. If you complain or express any dissatisfaction, they will kick you out. You go to another firm, and the process is repeated all over again, and you're at further losses.

A second illustration:

Goldman Sachs went before Congressional hearings, recently, and told Congress that they place trades for their Advisory Clients and then take the other side of the trade. Their Advisory Clients lose against Goldman Sachs, and then they charge their clients Advisory fees. They further stated that this doesn't happen to their Institutional Clients (a clear discrimination).

As you can understand, this unethical scam provides them with a loophole to practice and profit from this scam. Five hundred dollars from your principal goes to the financial institution for total non-performance. To close the loophole and unethical scam, consumers request that financial advisors be prohibited from taking advisor fees from the principal amount initially deposited and profits made after advisor fees, i.e. Deposit $50,000 (Prohibited advisor fees), profit $1,000 = $51,000. Advisor fees based on deposit and profit = $500. Account balance $50,500.00 (This becomes principal and further advisor fees from this amount is prohibited until further profit is made). This will stop the scam, promote performance, and begin to rebuild confidence back into the integrity of the financial institution systems and the consumers confidence in the Government integrity in protecting the consumers from this abuse, and ponzi style scheme.

The above prohibition is needed as part of Financial Institutions' reform. Anything short of correcting this scam is clear support of it. How would you like it if they did this to you?

I went from $1.2 million (shot on the job, disability award) down to $20,000.00. This scam was perpetrated on me by Merrill Lynch, UBS, and Stifel.

The stepchildren received 75% of an account which was a marital asset and I only received 25%. I cannot pay my house payments and the stepdaughter let her house go back to foreclosure after receiving $70,000.

We have bank charges from Merrill Lynch; we have late fee charges from the credit card companies and bank charges. At this time, they owe us over $5,000 in bounced check fees. At one point, in a month's time, our account went down by $30,000 and we have no idea where that money went. We now have no credit cards at all that we can use. We have spent over 20 years building up our credit and have never missed a payment or written a bad check in our entire lives. Our last statement said that we had $27,000 in our account and we are trying to wire transfer money to our bank account but we have bounced checks so many times with our bank from ML that they hold our wire transfers for days before they will trust it to come through. Right now, we will have to file for bankruptcy to get through this.

Because of the actions of ML, we have lost the use of all of our credit cards and we have been Platinum American Express members for 25 years with no problems whatsoever. Because at this very moment our statement says we have $27,000 in our account but the bank cannot verify it, so we are completely broke. We are likely to be homeless soon. We cannot pay any of our bills. I have $600 i have to pay for medications each month that I cannot live without and there is $30,000 that is unaccounted for. They have completely ruined our lives. We had a credit score of over 700 and now it is probably nil. Please! Please help us; they have stolen our lives and our money and we will never be the same again. We did have a lawyer working for us but when he decided he might not get paid, he bailed on us. Please help us get our money back from them.

On Monday 06/15, I gave my mother $254 to pay this company and they had informed her that once they received this money, then they would return her car. However, once they received the payment, they told her that she needed to pay an additional $565 to get the car back. Frustrated, my mother agreed to make this payment that following Friday, 06/19, when she received her paycheck. After she paid, she called and talked to Brenda several times and she was told that she needed to submit a bunch of paperwork. My mother had already submitted this paperwork the previous day. Brenda told my mother not to call her anymore and never gave any real explanation as to when my mother could get her car back.

On Monday 06/22, Brenda continued to give excuses and was chronically unavailable to speak with my mother. She would call my mother, then tell her to call her back in 10 minutes, then when she would call back, she would be on a break and unavailable. This happened a total of 15 times throughout this entire process. Brenda was rude and extremely unprofessional throughout this entire process which took over a week to complete when we were told that the car would be returned to us within 48 hours.

As I type, we still do not have the vehicle because Brenda failed to disclose the fact that the company that is holding the vehicle charges a fee for every day the car is held. We now have to pay an additional $435 to get the car back. This now totals almost $1300 that we have to pay, money we do not have in these very difficult economic times. We believe that both of these companies are holding our property hostage just because we had a few late payments that we did everything we could to try and rectify. We also believe that our payments are not being applied to the loan as they should. Our loan balance was $2000 in January 2008 and now in June 2009, our balance is $1756. There is something wrong with that figure and we do not appreciate it at all.

The first broker was let go because of poor customer performance and I became the victim of the second broker. She told me to keep both institutional investments because they were govt. safe even though I later found out that an inside memo to their brokers had changed their recommendation from 'buy' to 'sell' and she did nothing.

I finally sold both of them for losses of over $25,000 on each. Like most all brokers, they are interested only in selling under the conditions where they make the maximum commissions rather than looking out for their clients.

when paying monthly payments, I have paid ahead on principal. I was just notified that they misapplied the entire check to principal instead of covering our mortgage payment. This has occurred at least six times now - they claim that I will experience no 'late payments' or negative reports on my credit but I have. And on top of that it has cost me HOURS of my time. As a busy executive I cannot believe that I have to deal with this yet again and I want some kind of recourse. Clearly I'm in an unenviable position but I have acted responsibly throughout the process and I'm tired of the late fees, time involved and their utter incompetence. Clearly they should appreciate the borrowers who actually pay back their loans. wilshire refuses to refinance the loan. what incentive do they have to do so?! I feel completely screwed by this lender in so many ways.....

Lost $15,300 in Fidelity Account, approximately $10K in Merrill Lynch Account pending sales and $8,342.86 on Chase JPMorgan Account.

Having to borrow money from my family

We had a conference call with Merrill Lynchs mortgage loan officers, and asked all the questions that we could think of, there were actually two different conference calls that involved everyone that would be affected. After the conference calls, we decided that we would use the program and spent every waking moment getting all the required documents to the mortgage company. We were assigned to Sydney P. My wife made it a point to contact Sydney every day to check on the status of our loan, most of the time, my wife could not contact her, nor leave a message on voicemail- she had none. I tried to email her everyday as well. My wife and I have over 50 emails from her. In the course of the emails and conversations, we found that she would consistently didnt know her job and would make it a point to confuse us, as this is how we felt. She would tell my wife one thing, and then send me an email telling me something else.

Over the course of a month, we were told that we were approved for the construction of our house which would be located on a private airpark. In the beginning, I sent to her all of the restrictive convenants of the airpark. In addition, I also sent her the contact information of us, the builder, airpark VP and everything and anything that she needed.

About a week before we were to close on the construction loan with Merrill Lynch, I got a phone call from Sydney stating that there was a clause in the covenants that stated:

This is what I got. The state of Texas is a right to own state. It is simply a matter of requesting that you live here, and the airpark association can not deny you from living there. Well, it seems that their lawyers thought the other way. I had two attorneys review what was written and they both came back with the same opinion.

Please reflect again upon the wording and I think you will see that it is hardly perilous to the lender and is in keeping with custom and habit.

I am not upset with process. What I am upset about is the fact that they could have told us a month earlier that they would not be able to fund our construction loan because this was a special case- ie: living on a private airpark. I would have been happy to say thanks?
and move on to someone else. What upsets me the most, was my wife and I were constantly lied to and promised something that was really never there. Then we were lied to that Sydney was removed from the process and actually still working on it.

In the end, I spoke with my money. I am in the process of moving my money to another institution.

The stock closed on 6/4/08 at $47.01, and initiating the buy on 6/5/08 gave me a buying price of $47.15. It wasn't a lot of money, but it's the appearance of mis-handling my investments.

All could be good as Wilshire would still get 95% of the loan value minus the fees, but Wilshire will not respond. They never take calls or return calls. At this point after six months of fighting with Wilshrie, all I have to get to Wilshire is a HUD 1. So, I think I am about to get this behind me and the relocation company even though they might be buying the house does not provide HUD 1 statements. They provide Settlement Statements which provide the same information as a HUD 1 but Wilshire will not accept this form. They told me that if they don't get a HUD 1 the house will go into foreclosure. I have talked several times to the relocation company (SIRVA) in regards to getting a HUD but they say they have closed on an unmentionable amount of homes and have NEVER had to supply or had problem providing a Settlement Statement.

So, I am going back and forth at this point trying to get the two companies to talk but, SIRVA can never get ahold of Wilshire and Wilshire will never and I mean never return any calls. I just can't believe this is happening to me. The house is basically sold but Wilshire wont allow it. I am at my wits end and don't know what to do at this point. I hope that there is a class action law suit going on with Wilshire because I will definitely tell my story. This is a scam if I have ever seen one. House goes up for auction July 21 if the short sale doesn't happen soon. From my experience with Wilshire I see it going into foreclosure.

Merrill Lynch immediately blocked Internet access to our account and returned the check to Piper Jaffray for nonsufficient funds. As of Friday, the account still wasn't transferred over and we have had no access to our money or information about the account. I find this extremely inappropriate. We should have been allowed to check the progress on the Internet and not denied access until the entire transfer was completed.

We have not had access to our money or information about the account once they found we intended to transfer the account to Piper Jaffray

About two weeks prior to this call, Merrill Lynch sent out to all of its clients soliciting a survey concerning the company and its employees performance. I filled out the survey, quite honestly, and the two financial advisors mentioned above became upset and is now conspiring retaliatory actions against me. After complaining to: Jean DeP (whom I filed a complaint on late in 2004, for a total unprofessional manner in which she handle my complaint about my then advisor Robert S, which she stated on the phone Robert is a senior around here, we are not going to do anything to him --- I still have not received a response to either complaint).

SO upon their recommendation I signed the form and returned it. Subesequently they changed the account and MADE IT A NON-IRA. Now nobody told me about this. I had received the regular monthly statements but I did not examine them every month as to title only that the amounts looked right. Then I get the 1099 and I just about faint. I called the ML planner and he was as surprised as I was. He didn't seem to know about this either. Then I contacted my accountant and tried to work with ML, waited a couple of months, phoning regularly without results.

Then I hired the attorney that had set up the trust fund to begin with and he tried to work with ML to make corrections. Also I need to mention that if someone had told me what happened I could have rolled it into another IRA within 60 days. Now it was almost 12 months and ML isn't making any comments until the attorney contacted them. ML told him that they DO NOT MAKE corrections to fix this mistake, which I clearly see as their fault. They admit that this happened but that I had signed the form and therefore I am stuck with this. The fact that I could have rolled it over into another IRA was ignored.

I am 60 years old, retired. This was to be part of my living expenses. The taxes on this IRA that I owe are $228,000 + $2,500 to the accountant + $$ to attorney. Still waiting to hear from IRS.

I now have to pay this unfair charge and redeem my coins.