On January 24,2025 Merrill Edge liquidated my joint account for no legal reason. They cited the Patriot Act - no specific section, their member agreement - no specific section and even one guy claimed they make mistakes. They are completely unwilling to correct their error. Under no circumstances should anyone trust their money with this company. If you do have an account I HIGHLY recommend you move your money somewhere safe.
Hard to get your money from them, my wife recently passed away, her and I had account with them, and we made each other beneficiary on the accounts, well in 2012 they moved hers to a cma account, I guess the beneficiary paper work didn't follow, now that's all tied up with red tape. Now trying to change my beneficiary and a power of attorney, and now they have my account locked up, my retirement withdraw has always hit my bank on the 10th of the month, it is now the 16th with no deposit from Merrill, as soon as I can get control, which will probably take a lawyer, I'm going to take ever bit of it that is left and move it somewhere, and never recommend Merrill edge again
Very disinterested in my questions or concerns. Merrill employee just sat and stared at me. Very unhelpful! I needed help with a CD that had matured. Attitude was, do it yourself. I am a platinum BOFA customer
The absolute worst company I've ever dealt with. Poor service, they lie to their own people and when I tried to leave them, for a better company they delayed transferring the bonds for more than 6 weeks.
Steer clear of Merrill Lynch as they are habitual liars and incompetent on top of that.
I just opened a new brokerage account. I can't even link an external bank account. The page says:
"Site no longs supports"
What the hell does that mean? Can they even come up with a grammarly correct sentence?
When I tried to fill out the online pdf form to link my bank, I can't even put in my account number. It says "The input information is invalid".
This firm should be put out of business instead of wasting people's time.
After a year of owning an investment account with Merrill and constantly calling customer service just to be let down again, I am finally calling it quits and leaving them. I opened an account around this time last year and still have not been able to place a trade. Every time I call them they say "You should be able to place trades, this is an issue from up top but I will let them know and it will be fixed soon". Heard that at least 10 times now. One of them even said she'll call back when it goes through - never heard from her.
I have been waiting for thirty days to attempt to get my money back from Merrill Edge. I've been told that calling the number will be my only avenue for assistance, but so far, I've spent over an hour on hold. I've spoken with two different supervisors, and they both say that they are powerless to help me and that I will have to wait. They have blocked and placed holds on my money without providing an explanation. I am grateful to CON,.>\>
No matter what transaction I try to do, within the app, outside of app, website etc. NOTHING BUT HEADACHES! Nothing ever goes smoothly! So frustrating! For years...this is. I will be moving our funds out to another bank.
MerrillEdge was happy to take my money of over $100,000 which made me a premier customer but they do everything in their power to waste your time and not allow self managed accounts to make money. They basically take your money and treat you like crap and you are locked in with no chance to speak with a person of authority to complain and get resolution. If anyone is interested in doing a class action lawsuit against Merrill Edge. Sign me up Please.
They are the most incompetent organization that I have ever dealt with. It has required 17 phone calls so far to get them to help me and theythey dropped the ball every time. I still haven't been helped at all even though i've been calling for over two months and have spent over twenty one hours on the phone. The people that they hire are completely incompetent and seem to not care at all. I advise everyone that I care about to never have anything to do with Merrill Edge.
My advice to anyone that has to call these people to make a transaction on your portfolio is to get your favorite beverage, and pop corn if you like, and put in a movie, because while your waiting for them, you may be able to watch it in it`s entirety!
They are horrible. They give different answers to questions depending on who picks up the call. I had one returned check I didn't know about so they blocked my account without explanation with why and what the resolution is. So now my retirement IRSs are hostage. I can't even take my own Money out ( liquidate). WTF. I wrote a check that bounced by accident and did not use those funds. I am guessing that is what it is since no one has officially reached out to me by usps or emails what, why, when, and how. It has been 10 days now and I still have my ACC blocked.
They are inexperienced, they are incompetent, and they make it almost impossible to get your money out of your account. You have to jump through days of hoops to get any money out. If I could give them a negative number I would
I have been trying to withdraw money from my 529 to pay my son tuition fees since March 13th 2023, last Monday I am very shocked that I have not been able to withdraw my money today is the Tuesday 21st. Your lack of competence is affecting my life, now I have not yet pay the tuition fee with late charges on top. Stanford University will drop my son's classes for non-payment soon. I know you do not care. Unbelievable! I will not recommend Merril Edge to anyone and I am seriously considering moving my money elsewhere. I need to post my feedback on google and other social media for everyone to know Merill is lacking in professionalism and customer service.
Incompetent, arrogant and no one takes responsibility for anything. Merrill Edge sold my 83 y/o father an annuity for $84,000. He has had it now for 12 years in the greatest gains in the stock market and with frees and a yearly pay out of $5,000 they have reduced the amount to $78,000. Everyone says that it doesn't look right, but all investment come with rusk and my father should have been aware of the risk and that he should have read the documents for the fund, 160 pages of legal gibberish to mask the facts.
Multiple excuse, phone calls not answered, not returned, not familiar with the issues. This assumes you can get past the robot call system.
Get your money out of Merrill Edge before it is gone.
Garbage company, I've been on hold now for half the day trying to get my account unlocked. Why have a phone number? Just advertise that you are not reachable and you don't practice customer service by any means. You suck Merrill $#*!
Seems like I need their permission to withdraw my own money. The account rep I dealt with was a complete idiot. Not helpful, just quoting company policies.
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!
Words cannot express how frustrating it is dealing with Merrill Edge. Customer service is nonexistent. Expect hour plus holding times for any communication with them. They try to be nice but are unable to fix anything beyond what can be done by yourself online. Trying to escalate your situation to a supervisor leads to a we will get back with you, which doesn't happen. There is absolutely no advantage of dealing with Merrill Edge over Fidelity, Charles Schwab, or Morgan Stanley all of which provide much better customer service to their clients. Do yourself a favor and bank elsewhere.
My mother sadly enough past away June third 2022. I had to spend 9 months and at least 50 phone calls to get the money my mother (a retired school cafeteria worker for 25 years and my father a factory worker for 41 years). After having our lawyers legal aid fill out the mountains of their paper work and my countless calls to their life services department (what a joke) it was never enough. Either my paperwork was wrong or one of my sisters paperwork was wrong or some other off the wall thing was wrong. Hard to believe since the legal aid filled all of the copies out exactly the same. I had to fax numerals piles of nonsensical documents and then I was required to call them 48 hours after the fax was sent to see if they received it. Several of there employees told me on numerous occasions that if they were overloaded with faxes they would just throw them away which is by the way illegal. I could go on forever about this but we did finally get our money. Oddly enough after receiving the bulk of our money we all received a check for $4.33 and another one for 1 cent. In my opinion a person even thinking about using them for anything would be asking for a long road to no wear.
Merrill Edge has a rating of 1.4 stars from 70 reviews, indicating that most customers are generally dissatisfied with their purchases. Reviewers dissatisfied with Merrill Edge most frequently mention and customer service. Merrill Edge ranks 103rd among Brokerage sites.