Merrill Lynch Reviews 

Don’t approach them. Without Cele__Stial__Drifts I wouldn’t still be able to with~draw.

Terrible customer service extremely long hold time with no ability for call back Thanks to vistarecon that help out

Terrible customer service. Been trying to reach to customer representative for last 2 days. The hold time is excruciating long and still no luck. The callback is a JOKE. They call at my call number and immediately hang up.

I wasn’t planning on doing review… I saw this interesting story said $.88 stock is your stock
I thought I was gonna recommend recommendation and be told about stock
That it was very surprised that I got a message. I thought I had to go to this group and sign up.
And then I’m gonna get a chat room
Strange and I wonder they have 187 reviews 12 star 15 star the rest zero so now they have another zero
And I found the one stock that was $.90 the time we was DBLI absolutely horrible numbers no I’m saying here is I am totally annoyed and I have no idea what was in there for them

Thanks, Bill, for giving me the attention….
I’m done for the night thank you very much

Without a doubt, Merrill Lynch is the most Unhelpful and laziest finance organization I've ever dealt with. I have nothing good to write - the LONG hold times are due to employees simply not answering the phones - why post hours of operation from 8am to 8pm when at 8:05am they still have the "out of office hours" message on a recording, and from 6:00pm to 8:00pm you are on a continuous hold while the people who are supposed to be answering calls are doing who knows what? And when the do answer, the process they follow is only what is easiest for Merrill Lynch - in my case, they refused to deliver a rollover to an estate IRA because it was 'too difficult' for them to process. What a bunch of lazy jerks.

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

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.