I have the misfortune of having not one, but two Fidelity accounts. That is the first bit of nonsense dealing with these people. One of my accounts is a 401(k) that I earned, and the other is another 401(k) that I was awarded as part of my divorce settlement QDRO. I understand that these two separate 401(k) accounts cannot be merged, but it's stupid that I can't access them both from a common portal. As it turns out, this stupidity extends to Fidelity internally. If you happen to have more than one account with these idiots, you should make sure that you let them know every time you call, because they will have no way of knowing and may access the wrong one. I set up an automatic withdrawal from the QDRO account over the phone, and they managed that without any stupidity, but once I decided to cancel it, it moved beyond their ability to cope. Evidently, they didn't notice that I had more than one account, and when I requested a cancellation of the monthly withdrawal they assigned the cancellation to the wrong account. How can an automatic withdrawal be cancelled on an account that doesn't have an automatic withdrawal set up? And why would I set up a recurring automatic withdrawal on an account that doesn't have enough money to complete two withdrawals? This was more than they were able/willing to answer. When I received a payment after my first attempt to cancel it, I called to request the cancellation again. I was told that they saw it wasn't canceled, didn't understand how that happened, were terribly sorry, and would take care of it. So why, do we wonder, did I get another payment? It was during my third call in as many months that I finally figured out they weren't accessing the right account. I thought this was pretty clever of me, since I had no idea that they were unable to see all of my account information at one time. I asked that they expedite my request to avoid yet another unwanted withdrawal. Despite the fact that they repeatedly failed to process the cancellation, they were unwilling to expedite my request in order to avoid another withdrawal. The "customer service" manager with whom I spoke was very patient in his explanation as to why I would be put in a queue just like anyone else, as Fidelity did not have any responsibility in this matter. He wanted me to be sure to know that it was incumbent on me to be sufficiently clairvoyant to anticipate the failings of their internal systems and account for that accordingly. He was really very thorough in his explanation of their internal processes, and quite patient while explaining to me that I was no better than anyone else. While I am indeed, no better than anyone else, Fidelity is unwilling to accept responsibility for dropping the ball. They will not make any extra effort to correct their own errors. For that matter, they don't accept the fact that they made an error. It was my responsibility to know that they weren't accessing the right account. Period.

Stay away from Fidelity financial services, especially the financial advisors in their South Bend, Indiana, office. The first meeting with my financial advisor, he asked me about my financial goals and gathered as much personal information he could about my family. He was very personable and persuading. However, the financial advisor used this information to lull me into a false sense of security that he had my family's best interests at heart.
At over 50 years old, my wife and I have been very conservative about investing in the past. We had about half of our life/retirement savings in CD's that were expiring in late 2020. The interest rates were close to zero at that time, so we decided to try investing. He convinced us to split our lifetime savings into three different investments.
He presented us with his first proposal to invest our money into one of their VIP annuities. He displayed a spreadsheet showing our money doubling in 10 years. He called this a passive investment with a minimal management fee and very good returns. It was amazing. I jumped on it and told him to invest half of our own lifetime savings into the fund. I signed all the paperwork he gave us because I thought he had my families best interest in mind. Now, two years later, I realize that this was a huge mistake. The combined expense ratio and active management fee was over 1.1% and he had made a large commission by selling me this investment. We are locked into this investment until age 59.5. I could only move our money in between their limited options of VIP annuities, which have all performed horribly, and have high expense ratios. There is a surrender fee of 10% if we try to get out of the VIP club before age 59.5. After almost 2 years, the return on this investment is -7% and they had taken over $6k in expense ratio and management fees from us.
We already had about 25% of our lifetime retirement savings in a Fidelity target date IRA fund. His next proposal involved selling us on their actively managed IRA plan. He showed us a slick presentation on how they monitored business cycles to stay ahead of the market. I was blown away, and being a novice investor, did not think twice about the 1.2% management fee for doing this if they could limit my losses during down markets. After two years of Fidelity active management and paying over $12k in expense ratio and management fees our investment return was -7%. Fidelity active managed accounts are a complete joke. They just initially split the investments into a stock/bond mix and sat on the investments, while only making minimal changes, and completely misread the market cycle. My financial advisor, and portfolio specialist, admitted this to me in a phone conversation this year. Their approach is basically to sit and wait down markets out, meet with you once a quarter to show you a nice PowerPoint presentation, ask how your family is doing and then tell you about their family. Our investments were performing so poorly in mid-2022, that they did not even bother to schedule a quarterly review with me. I had to reach out to them to get one. The first thing they did was ask me about each of my family members and how their activities are going, so I feel like they care about them. In another conversation with their portfolio specialist in March 2022, he sold me on being more aggressive in my investments, due to the time that I had left until retirement. I, of course, deferred to the specialist's advice and let them change our stock/bond ratio percentage split from their initial proposal of 70/30 to 85/15. Our total active management IRA investment return approached -25% during this year. The investment fee percentage had increased because they had lost so much of our money. There are total account thresholds that we had to maintain, or our fee percentage increases. Our financial advisor failed to mention this at any time. I did not realize this until I read the fine print in my quarterly statements. He had basically set his company up to collect large expense ratio and management fees from us no matter how much money they lost us. I emailed him later asking why he did not advise me not to go more aggressive on my portfolio, he said that this was my fault, because it was ultimately my decision, and I had given him written approval in an email.
His final proposal was to invest over 25% of our lifetime savings into their Individual TOD stock investments which utilized tax harvesting to help us save money on our income taxes. This would be part of my actively managed account with an additional annual fee of 0.6%. Again, I agreed, after his slick presentation, promising annual returns that beat continually beat the S&P. Fidelity purchased over 200 stock holdings for me using my savings. They "harvested" over $22k in losses just this year, by selling off the underperforming stocks, then purchasing new ones in their place, to falsely inflate my total return on my account page. Our return on this investment has been -4% in almost two years of management and I have paid them almost $1k in management fees. Also, tax harvesting does absolutely nothing to help us pay less income taxes during the year. The maximum annual income tax deduction is only $3k. We will be writing off these limited losses for almost the next 10 years, after almost 2 years of tax harvesting.
After I filled out a company survey regarding the services that I had received from my financial advisor, and rating him very poorly, I was contacted by the branch manager. He offered to have a more experienced person oversee my account. I agreed and he scheduled a meeting. One of the first things that he mentioned, is that if I keep investing with Fidelity then I will leave a legacy of $30M to my family. I knew at that time this was another scam.
After 2 years at Fidelity, I have absolutely no doubt, that their services are not worth the costs. I have paid almost $20k in expense ratio and management fees and my total return was -6%. I have recently liquidated my actively management account and I will probably take the hit to move my annuity, too. Looking back now, I should have invested our money into low cost (0.08%), passive index funds, or ETFs, but my financial advisor and branch manager never mentioned this option at all.
One of the first things the Fidelity customer service agent told me, when I called to liquidate my investments, is that I will be charged a pro-rated portion of my management fees. This had solidified my decision and did not surprise me at all. Fidelity tries to collect as much of your money as they can while providing the least amount of service possible.