Merrill EdgeReviews 71

Weeks and weeks and hours upon hours of conversations (3 separate calls in which my 85 year old mother who does not hear well has to struggle to be verified, re-verified and triple re-verified) for simply replacing a deceased trustee with the named trustee in the existing trust document. Today were finally assured the account was completely verified and promised it would be unblocked within 30 minutes. It's been 5 hours - STILL BLOCKED. Multiple "teams" involved, usual COVID excuses- short handed, etc. When you hear a "team" is involved it just means no one gives a damn and no one can be held accountable. We have accounts with Etrade, TD Ameritrade, American Funds, Fidelity and AmericanCentury and have never experienced the ineptness, non-caring attitude of Merrill Edge. Please deal with any other brokerage firm other than them. Wish I could give a fraction of one star.

God help you if you need a human or forget your password. Had to call to unlock my account… tried the number provided several times, all with "all of representatives are busy at this time"… my record is 2 hours waiting for a person… still no luck! Was going to roll a few MM into an IRA from a prior employer 401k… if you can't answer the phone, how can you invest money? You seriously suck bad!

I opend the account to get cash award. After adding money over $200k, i wasnt able to manage it and access my account... i called alot alot of time. 1hr on hold. It was nightmare. Finally they let me take my money out and lost months of managing my monry or put it in CD or buy stocks. Even one day they said dont call again... 2 months of worry and confusion... finally took my money out but they didn't even apologized... bad bad bad

They said there is investigation took so far 2 months,,, calling and waiting 1 hr every time. I called over 30 times and no good answer. Finally they said we dont know how mpore time will take but if you want to take your money out we can remove the restriction and take your money... lost 2 months investing my money because my big mistake mm. The worst nightmare ever. NO Merrill Edge

In regards to Merrill Edge
My father passed away in 2019 and I have been working on just transferring the funds into my mother's name ever since. The average waite time to talk to the life services department is 2 hours at least in my experience. They have set up appointment times with me, which means I have to get my elderly mother involved and another person then nobody calls. In my opinion it borders on elderly abuse because of the stress they have caused my mother whom is in 80s. They are happy to take your money but don't think you can get it out easily.

Good luck making a phone call to customer service.
You will be on hold for hours, waiting to speak with a customer service representative for assistance with your problem(s).

If you wanted to talk to a service associate on a phone, you will need to hold at least 30 mins. They are always too busy to answer your phone. And if they wanted to find you, they never call, they also don't know how to use email Simply mail you something can don' care if you can recieve it.

I made stock purchases on the Merrill Edge account, thinking I was using the cash I had in the account. No notice, no alert appeared for me to think otherwise. I had plenty of cash there to cover all of the purchases and then some. I would check my account regularly for my portfolio performance. It was only about 1.5 year later that I for a different reason checked the activity on my account - and there I saw large margin fees charged to me every month. Apparently - I bought the stock on margin because the cash I had there was in some preferred deposit, from which I first had to sell out. Nobody told me this and I received no notices that i bought on margin nor that I was being charged margin interest. It cost me $3.5k in interest charges - while my cash was sitting in a preferred deposit in the same Merrill Edge account at a 'whopping'. 04% interest rate. When I finally found out and complained they told me they will call back - and never did! It is ridiculous that such a large firm with so much money flowing through needs to purposefully mislead their customers about margin buying just to get some extra interest charges...

Do not trust Merrill Edge, I open an account with Assistant Vice President Financial Solutions Adviser,
He only show me Return Information (%), he did not mention May Lose Value, I want to close the account
After I am losing every day, but I could not find him, I left a message, he never call me back, He disappeared (run away), I Lost $2700

Closed my Merrill Edge 401K account because I now reside in / am a citizen of Australia. Asked Merrill to wire the funds to my Australian bank because not a single Australian financial institution will accept a check in US$. So what does Merrill do? Sends me a check in US$ that I can't do anything with. Have spent 10+ frustrating and expensive hours on the phone from Australia trying to get customer service to solve the issue, but instead they transfer me or give me useless advice like "google how to deposit the check" or "open a bank account in the US". Is there anyone out there in Merrill world who can help me escalate and solve this?

Moved small account to Merrill edge 15k in stock. The market has been moving down for several days wanted to do some dip buying. Linked my bank account to Merrill Edge moved over $50k to trade with. Money not available for 5 business days. Can't place a trade. Ok if that was 20-25 years ago, today other firms will allow trading within 15 minutes. Called to ask about it on hold for 30 min. Tried Chat Line no help tells me I have to call. So if you have an issue don't think your going to pick up the phone and be helped.

I have been trying to cash out my IRA for months. Just getting the run around waiting on hold 45 minutes to and hour every time. Say they need documents to verify i don't owe child support LOL! I am 60 years old my child support has been paid off for years. Send them documents from my employer and Child support services, stating i owe nothing but they say they need more info. WTF Closed is closed. So i am stuck with medical bills i cannot pay because they will not give me my money that i have worked years for. I would not recommend using this company to anyone. Now i have to take a loan out to pay medical bills, because they will not give me my own money..

Hold times for trading/account specialists is typically long but today, 3/1/22, it is ridiculous. I've tried to contact someone multiple times today and have been on hold for 35 min, 12 min and 15 min.

They turned off my online access for 3 weeks and never told me why and closed the account. All over someone used a personal check to deposit money in my account. Crucial sin I suppose. They refused to tell me why they shut off the online access until after they closed the account and wired that money back to its bank. Which they haven't saw yet. All i know is what Merill Edge tells me because my access is still off. They lied to me for 3 weeks saying,, it will be back on in 2 hours, tomorrow,, on and on. I probably spent 35 hours plus on hold with their customer service. I wouldn't recommend this company to my worst enemy

As an intermediate investor with over $1M invested with them I find trading and research OK. However, They don't allow investors to be truly self directed as they won't you let trade a lot of stock that they deem not appropriate for you. Half of the stock I try to invest in they don't allow and some of these make no sense. For example, they won't let you trade USO, NFTS, BTCS, JETS, and many many more. If you want to invest in crypto traded stock forget about it. If you want to divest your portfolio across the airline industry forget about it. They will let you invest in Southwest but if you want to diversity across the airline with an ETF like JETS they wont let you do it. Makes no sense and seems arbitrary. I had to move over $1M to ETrade so I can place trades.

Everyone I call there's always a 45 minute wait time i find this absurd and it's getting me frustrated at this point and I'm just really thinking if letting this go at this point!

ML blocks people because of their incompetence. Stupid, and stupid if you choose them. ML does not know the difference between an individual and a joint account.

Seriously check your trades. After a couple of years of T+2, Merrill Edge have gone back to T+3 without telling anyone. It now takes 3 days to settle a trade. Is this even legal? I can evidence this with actual trades in my account.