Merrill Edge

I have been waiting 30 days to try to get my money back out of Merrill Edge. The telephone number is the only way, I am told, to get someone to help me but as of now I've spent more than 700 minutes on hold. I've spoken to two separate supervisors both of whom indicate their hands are tied and I have to continue to wait. They have blocked and put holds on my money for no explainable reasons. I am finally filing formal complaints and hiring a lawyer. Please avoid this company at all costs.

I chose Merrill Edge because of the Investment Broker I was fortunate to find at Friendly Center BOA in Greensboro, NC. I have only good things to say about his skill of his field, knowledge of his business, and his refreshing professionalism. I have received nothing short of "Top Shelf" performance from him; because of this Merrill Edge is my choice.

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.

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.

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.

Opened an account on line coiuld not fund it due to thier cumbersome and rediculous process. Contacted thier customer service team and none of those people will tell you the same thing. They give you lip service all day and accomplish nothing. Transferred some small assets to the account to see what benefits they might have I became so frustrated with the platform and the customer service I had to transfer everything out. They hit me with a $50 fee for transferring assets out. The most money grabing low rate people I have dealt with in 10 years of trading. This is the WORST people you could get involved with. Keep in mind Merrill is a Bank of America company and Bank of America operates the same way. STAY AWAY, FAR AWAY!

Been with them for over 15 years. They only get worse. As a Premium Select customer I wait on hold for an hour and then they hang up and on hold again for another hour to be hung up on again. Don't bother with this company. Their new hires have no idea what they are doing. If you need assistance to make a trade, better off not trading as you won't get the share price your looking for due to Merrill's long wait and hold time.

Literally the worst! I should have read the reviews before contacting Merrill. My first time opening an IRA and by the time money was pending I made the mistake of trying the debit card they sent me. Within 24 hours it was under investigation and my account terminated. The gentleman told me they no longer want to do business with me. There was no business done. The hold times are definitely out of this world. I was on the phone for an hour and spoke to a human for 5 min in that whole time. They have no answers, don't do what they say they will. I'm still waiting for 2 emails which I haven't received. I only get info if I call and that's when I have hours to spend not knowing how long it will take to get no where. I would not recommend this company to my worst enemy. HORRIBLE!

I wrote a letter regarding my account and received a form letter from Merrill Edge Pennington, NJ signed by **. At the end of the letter was the useless 800 number to Jacksonville, FL. So I did a bit of investigating and came up with *******200. Dial that number, press 4 for the company directory. Then spell the person's last and first name. So, when you get an unhelpful response form letter signed by someone, Enter that person's name in the directory, get their phone number and 'reach out' to them!

Getting your money from Merril is like pulling teeth, do not bank here. They are unfamiliar with state laws and employees seem to think they don't work for you. I suggest Schwab.

Merrill Edge is the only brokerage I know of that doesn't even have a way for clients to get in touch with a live person. Seriously, you can't sent them an email, can't chat with them. Only "option" is to call and hold times are about 45 minutes if you don't get hung up on first. All of which wouldn't be a problem if they can keep track of simple things like margin applications and did I mention that account setup takes 4 business days, so any positions that you have planned are long blown up by the time they "get to your file". If you don't value your time or money, then Merrill Edge is awesome!

We have been trying to get money from our son's account to help pay for expenses. He had emergency surgery this summer and we needed funds to help him with school fees. We have been told several times over the past 3 months that they will send us a check and it will be mailed and arrive in 10 business days. When it gets close we call and there has been nothing done and zero communication about the cancelation. Then we are given another promise just to repeat the process. Hours upon hours on the phone and on hold with zero follow through. We are at our wits end with this.

They provided incomplete information to start my sons account, wire money, customer service and setting up our financial institution to the Merrill Edge account to make purchases ( unless you are a Bank of America account holder). It's like they don't need or want new customers. If you call customer service you are on hold minimum 30 minutes. Staff is pleasant but I don't know if they have the knowledge of how to set up accounts. They nicely provide incomplete or wrong information. Misinformation caused stress ( they couldn't find $3,000.00 of wired monies), loss of time, loss of money, headaches & frustration. When I ask to speak to a manager there is never one available, during business hours and after hours. Why do I have to provide a rating in order to write this review. They should have a no star rating.

They Stopped Message sending service from online account, while other companies are leveraging more and more chat based support.
Their Phone Support Sucks as well. You have to stay on phone for 3 hours at-least. If you step away for am minute and unlucky you have to try same thing again. Also, Their staff has not much experience. Trying to contact since 3-4 months and still no luck for issue of their Trading platform bug.
My advise is to tranfer to another trading platform.

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

I opened a Merrill Edge account as I have been a customer of BofA for many years. I simultaneously have an account with Fidelity. The Merrill account is awful. Comparing it to Fidelity is night and day. The site is slow, the research is not at all user friendly, market/stock alerts come hours after the alert is triggered. Add to that the inability to get in touch with a human unless you want to sit on hold for 45 minutes makes the entire experience awful. I'm definitely looking at other options. I read all the available reviews prior to opening account and most rate it fairly high. Don't believe it.