Merrill Lynch Bewertungen 

If I could give this place negative stars I would. I just started using them for walmart associate stock purchase program. I have had to reset my password 6 times in the last 3 days. Then they cant tell me when im gonna get my check if it has been sent out or not.all they can say is 7 to 10 days. There is no reason they cant ship checks overnight. Worst customer service ever.

Don’t invest your money within this company. A total nightmare. From managing my money, to getting help logging into the account/gaining user access since my account had a “sponsor” … I could never even get login information to create an online account for the 3 whole years of having this account because I was not the “sponsor” and I had left my job. I emailed my financial advisor to please mail me paper statements so I could see my balance and he never did. I had no idea how my account was ever managed. I had a profit share managed by them for 3 years. When I left my job, I wanted to transfer my assets out of Merrill Lynch and do a rollover into an account managed by a different financial group. It took 3 months of playing games, of them telling me what paperwork to submit - then telling me it was incorrect, to submit different paperwork to transfer the assets. It took 3 hours of phone calls, talking to numerous people who had no idea what a transfer of assets was… people who could not even locate my account or what kind of account it even was! It’s been 3 months and I still haven’t received my rollover check. This company is a joke. DO NOT INVEST WITH THEM

Wouldn't recommend at all. We use merrily through company I work for. It's US based and as I am UK resident. As such it's an absolute nightmare for any support requests. As an example I currently can't log in to my own account. To reset password it asks for details you only have if you are based in US. Then to contact support they have no email address. No chat option and on calling I've tried multiple times to be put on hold over half an hour each time. It shouldn't be this hard to reset a password. Other companies let you do this online in under 5 mins. It's honestly terrible!

I'm adding my experience to the overwhelming complaints about Merrill Lynch. I feel like I could copy/paste from many others. Suffice it to say that Merrill has held an IRA account that I inherited from my sister for more than a year and half since her passing. The bureaucracy, institutional incompetence, and so called "customer service" morass have caused me to give up more than once on completing an account transfer.
After finally breaking down crying on the phone during my umpteenth call to "life services" I finally got someone to actually give me the account number and amount of funds in the account. They sent me a transfer form through their secure portal. After completing and returning the required form and completing the forms with my receiving brokerage I thought I was reaching the end.
I got a call today from my brokerage saying their ACAT transfer request was denied. My representative and I then spent approximately more than an hour on the phone with Merrill to finally be told that rather than using ACAT through my brokerage, I would need a medallion signature guarantee.... original wet signatures, blah, blah, blah. My brokerage's representative seemed incredulous that this was being required and pushed back saying that no where in the Merrill website or communications is this process outlined. (And it had never been mentioned to me in at least 10 phone calls to Merrill). Given that sounded like a very arduous process (well beyond a regular notary signature) I relented and had Merrill move the funds into an inherited IRA account at Merrill that I will be able to transfer to Vanguard through ACAT.
The cost for this "service" will be a $75 account closure fee. I really have to believe that this all part of an unethical and predatory calculated business practice on Merrill's part to keep funds at Merrill. Obviously they need this kind of help because their poor customer service and incompetence must be driving people away in droves.
If there is a class action suit against them, I want in.

Not really a problem,but when I needed to change or confirm an address change I was on phone for 65 minutes and 6 different people(departments)to get it done? Really? Cant blame the people,just your system could use some work. When I need to withdraw i have little confidence it will be simple.

3 hour 18 minute hold time to be told I didn't have enough info to access my account (gave DOB, SS #, zip).
3 + HOUR HOLD TIME!!!!!!! BoA netted 30.5 BILLION in 2025 and they won't staff!?!?
The worst costumer service ever. Never using ML or BoA again.

Worst decision my employer ever made was making Merrill Lynch its employees 401k institution. First off it takes them 10days to make a decision on hardship withdrawal then if they approve it it took took them another 4 days to process the withdrawal and then ship it out. If someone was in dire need of they funds they would be in big trouble dealing with Merrill lynch. Why would it take that long for a hardship withdrawal this is very different from a regular 401k loan. Hardship means emergency right? Not only that I called them and no one ever answered after sitting on the phone for over an hour.hands down this is the worst company ever. It’s been over 15 days now and still haven’t received anything yet. SMH.

I'm serving as executor of an estate and have been navigating the transfer/administration of estate assets with several financial institutions. My experience with Merrill Lynch has been the most frustrating.

I had a scheduled callback that never occurred, so I ultimately called myself and spent approximately 40 minutes trying to resolve a documentation question. During that call, the representative identified that a required EIN/SSN field on a notarized form was blank. I asked whether I could use the estate EIN instead of my personal SSN and was told I could. After I added the information, I was then told the notarized document could no longer be accepted because it had been altered and would need to be notarized again.

The problem was not simply that additional documentation was required- it was that the requirements were not communicated clearly before I obtained the notarization, and I was then left with additional time, expense, and work. I had to have the entire document notarized again, which backed up the process.

I'm handling an already complicated estate process, and other financial institutions have been easier. . Based on my experience, I would strongly recommend that anyone considering Merrill for estate-related accounts ask very detailed questions about their documentation requirements and how notarized forms must be completed before submitting anything.

I have made repeated attempts to contact customer support to discuss some account information. On 3 separate calls, I stayed on hold for 1 hour each time. I called a 4th time given I still have issues, and the automated response said they would call me back in 44 minutes. Its been 2 hours and I have still have not heard anything back. How can a company like this continue to operate this ineffective?

The new holdings page is a huge disappointment. I loved merrill so much mainly because the holdings page was user friendly and intuitive, but this downgrade to the new style is bad and poorly designed, I am hoping that at least they will provide a button to revert back to the classic style.

I had 2 accounts with ML. I tried from July 13 to August 17th to rollover an IRA to a different company. New York Life. After several faxed transfer aplications and two in person visits to the BofA financial center in Eugene, I conferenced with the ML service team. Just like every other contact I had with ML, everyone We spoke to said they had no information about that and transfered us to someone else who said the same thing. ML was so obstructive and ignorant of how things should work I lost all faith in them as far as handling my money. I closed my other, larger, account with ML because anyone that inept is either cocked or has no business handling my money. My NYL agent had difficulty believing how poorly the ML team responded to our call. You have wasted about 20 hours of my time and several hours of New York Life's time. Get a grip! Tim Hunt

I do not recommend..they deceive me and drain me, I would have not get out this if not for tre-xiorab

Everyone I experienced was terribly rude. I opened an account with only a couple of thousand dollars, because if you cannot handle a few thousand dollars well, I'm not going to trust you with my estate and net worth.
I will be closing the account shortly.
Oh! A word of advice from a top marketing representative DO NOT CHERRY PICK!!

Horrible wait times on phone. Customer service should be a priority with a company holding my retirement fund.

My father had the incredible misfortune of having the company holding his Roth IRA acquired by Bank of America and subsequently transferred to Merrill Lynch when it was also acquired by Bank of America during 2008 Great Financial Crisis. Either BoA or Merrill lost my father's account paperwork including his beneficiary forms and literally every document related to his account since its creation other than a 2010 options application. Unfortunately, in January of 2023 my father passed away suddenly due to Covid 19 without a will. Due to ML having no records of my father's beneficiary paperwork, a rep from ML directed my father's heirs to probate court. Due to probate court complications, I was eventually made the administrator of my father's estate but Merrill Lynch did not want to transfer the funds in my father's IRA to the estate in accordance with Texas Probate Law due to Merrill Lynch governing documents stating that without assigned beneficiaries, all assets would be transferred to the surviving spouse if there was one.

This would have been fine, except Merrill Lynch had no record of my father ever signing any document agreeing to this policy or actually signing any document in their possession, ever. After being this account being held at BoA since 2004, and with ML since 2008, these firms had not a single signed document from my father or any account application or any correspondence at all other than the aforementioned options application for over 2 decades.

After spending 3 years in probate court, spending over $20K on legal fees, the probate court ordered Merrill Lynch to transfer my father's IRA to the estate and distribute to his heirs.

That was in May of this year. Since then, Merrill Lynch representatives have sandbagged beneficiary inherited Roth IRA account creation and repeatedly delayed the account transfers. ML representatives have repeatedly misrepresented timelines and lied about the transfer process and status. I have been told multiple time to expect transfer by "CoB today", "CoB Friday", "2-3 days", "3-5 days", "next week" and after 2 months, the account transfer is still incomplete.

For comparison, my father had multiple IRAs held at other institutions of similar age. They all had beneficiary paperwork and account transfers were completed within 1 week after inherited IRA paperwork was submitted.

This is absolutely baffling behavior and absurdly poor operations for a once prestigious wealth management firm. No surprise to me seeing a 1.5 star overall rating coming here to leave a review and honestly shocked that anyone would want to keep their funds at this institution after experiencing a level of ineptness and deceit from a fiduciary organization.

If you are a sophisticated investor looking to diversify into a wide range of modern products, stay away from Merrill. The platform takes a highly paternalistic approach, acting as if it is their responsibility to protect you from making what they deem to be financial or social mistakes.Their arbitrary product restrictions severely limit your freedom to trade. For example:Cannabis: Completely blocked from investing in this sector.International Equities: Foreign companies trading on U.S. exchanges via Global Depositary Receipts (GDRs) are unavailable.Crypto Funds: Spot or futures-based cryptocurrency funds are entirely restricted because Merrill "doesn't think it is a good idea."Advanced Income Funds: Popular, actively managed options strategy funds like QQQI or SPYI are also blocked.Merrill treats experienced investors like beginners. If you want full control over your asset allocation and access to a modern suite of investment products, look elsewhere.

I can’t say enough how frustrated I am the hold phone is absolutely none sense it’s been weeks I tried accessing them about my account when I finally got my phone call back it got cut off and nobody bothered call me back. Is really awful make people wait such a long time and won’t even bother about them she was answering my questions and got cut off after weeks or trying to contact them it takes half my day.

Very deceitful site. You can’t with-draw. I had to involve folks at Celestial~~Drifts and the whole mess was gone. Got my money now

My phone rep today had a very strange attitude with me. I was trying to retrieve a login ID, and she asked me If I was on the Merrill website or the BofA website. I didn't understand her question at first, and I told her that there was an account on both, and she said "Okay great but I'm ASKING IF YOU'RE CURRENTLY ON THE WEBSITE ON YOUR BROWSER." and I said "Oh, yes I am, sorry." and she said "You are." condescendingly, and I said yes to confirm. She then asked my mother some verification questions, as I was calling on her behalf (English is not her first language) and that is obviously necessary for authentication, but she acted suspicious of me throughout the entire call even though my mother was present. She then reset the account's password and gave me a random one, and I was confused as to why she did that. All I needed was to provide my mother's information to her and have her tell me what my ID was. She did end up giving me the User ID and we were able to log in and reset the password back, but I don't understand the stress she was under trying to figure that out for me. She misunderstood equally as much as I did, which wasn't a severe misunderstanding, and it was an honest mistake on her part. However, I definitely gave her more leniency than she gave me. Don't get it

The wealth management team at Merrill Lynch is amazing. While they have managed our financials for years now and done an amazing job, they have helped me keep my sanity while getting my parents estate in order after my dad died. They know me, my family, they care and it shows. My parents had accounts in 10 different financial institutions, which many I found are incompetent or potentially crooks, the team at Merrill Lynch helped me get through all those bank process, get the estate under control and protected. I trust them completely. They partner well with our attorneys and tax team to make sure everything is in order with limited effort required by me. I couldn't have survived this past year without them.