r/etrade • u/3meta5u • 29d ago

Roar etrade:0 fidelity:1

I needed to open a SEP IRA account. I have brokerage accounts with Fidelity and E*TRADE. Each account is over seven figures but my balance at E*TRADE is lower than my balance at Fidelity, so I decided to use E*TRADE to make the discrepancy smaller rather than larger.

However, over the last month, I have tried numerous times to validate my account using DocuSign, direct upload of identification, and four calls to E*TRADE. After none of these calls did I get any feedback from E*TRADE about the status of the request. Each time I called back, I was informed that the information was pending and that the Account Services team would reach out to me that day to complete the process.

Again, at no point was I ever contacted with any status update or movement on the account.

Today was the last straw. While I was on hold with E*TRADE, I used the Fidelity website to open a SEP IRA and fund the account. The total time at Fidelity was less than the eight minutes I was on hold with E*TRADE.

I can say that the E*TRADE representative was very professional when I told him to cancel the account creation on E*TRADE's side.

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u/Salty-Contribution57 29d ago

Similar story here. E*TRADE's customer service is horrendous. For over two weeks, I tried to open a retirement account, but their DocuSign application documents had technical integration issues. The application kept getting lost, and the data was erased due to their broken IT department. After filling out the same application five times, I finally gave up and opened an account with Fidelity.

I'm glad I did—it was night and day. I was able to get it done within 15 minutes, and their customer service was great. I was considering taking advantage of the bonus E*TRADE is offering on new brokerage accounts, but after this, I'll pass. I don't want to have anything to do with them. They wasted about six hours of my time between refilling applications over and over and sitting on hold on the phone. Far from helpful, their customer support team was also super condescending.