Morgan Stanley Smith Barney

This year my accountant recommended Morgan Stanley (NY) to manage my retirement fund. My profile is conservative saying I want principal as safe as possible. If I eke out 2% I’d be happy. Morgan Stanley Broker put me in Highland HCOCX –now losing 40%; ivy WASCX — now losing 20%. Ivy WSTCX losing 17%, Wells Fargo EACFX losing
12%. These downslides happening when all indexes were down only 1.5%. Morgan Stanley only pretends to listen to individual needs. I reminded this irresponsible broker that some day his security will be in someone else’s hands, be it financial or medical, and he will only hope that person has his best interest at heart. Hopefully time will remedy these losing high risk mutual funds I’m now stuck with.

Morgan Stanley is outrageous. When you dial their toll free customer service number you are put into a loop regarding ‘winning a free cruise’ that you cannot escape. At first I thought their phone lines had been hacked! And now there’s a cruise company calling me endlessly! Really unhappy.

Terrible no customer service. We needed a name change. Every little step was processed very slowly. It’s been almost three months and the account finally got changed. I cannot believe how rude Patsy Lara was on each conversation. I still haven’t gotten what is needed.

Morgan Stanley is by far the worst wire house!!! They rip people off and treat their employees like dirt. They don’t even give their advisors and expense account!!! My broker asked me to split the dinner bill with him. WOW! When I dug a little deeper, I found out that the firm makes incentives their advisors to charge high fees. I have $ 1million at the firm. My advisor informed me that I pay a 1.5% management fee. Of this 1.5% morgan stanley keeps 70% off this fee. Only 30% of the fee goes to the advisor. When I asked my friend who works for Morgan Stanley about this, it got worse. She told me that the brokers push people into managed money and don’t cost average in the money because they are on a strict sales quota. Its the PITS. Stay away from this place. Its a low class operation. I moved all of my money to another firm. This place is a JOKE.

These guys contacted me to set up a financial adviser account. I decided to go ahead with it and filled out and provided all the forms. It took me several hours to get all the required info needed. It all ended up being a complete waste of time. They failed to set up the account and just left me hanging on my account setup. I recommend working with some other financial adviser firm than these guys.

Google sadly picked Smith Barney to run its stock program. After no less then 5 calls to Smith Barney, I’m still without my wire transfer. If I do get my money I’ll give them an extra star.
2007÷10÷16
Call 1:
ME: My wire went to a bank that’s incorrect. Can I update that information with you and have it resent?
SB: Yes, just update the account info on the website and it will be sent out the next time they run the wire.
2007÷10÷19
Call 2:
ME: My wire still didn’t get run, I still haven’t see any cash yet, what’s going on?
SB: The new wire instructions didn’t show up under all your accounts (WTF?), we have to transfer the wire instructions to the other account then we’ll or a re-​wire.
ME: Okay.
Call 3:
ME: My wire still didn’t get run, I still haven’t seen any cash in my account yet, what’s going on I called last week and they said they would re-​wire it?
SB: Weird, I don’t see anything about that, we’ll have to cancel the original wire then resend out the wire it will take till Friday.
2007÷10÷26
Call 4
ME: My wire still didn’t get run, still haven’t seen any cash in my account, what’s going on I called 2 times to check on this wire, what’s the deal?
SB: Just wait it should be wired by today or tomorrow (friday or saturday)
2007÷10÷30
Call 5:
ME: Where is my money?
SB: You need to send a letter of authorization for the wire information update otherwise we can’t wire it.
I asked to talk to the manager at the end of the call and he claimed that they would review the tape for training purposes. These guys need to. This is sad and I would never give these guys brokerage business in the future.
UPDATE:
Got my check Nov 3. Bumping up to 2 stars.

I was a little nicer than Michael. I gave em’ two stars ONLY because I’m financial-​planning challenged and they were patient with me on the phone a couple of weeks ago. BUT, that’s where my niceties end.
They don’t keep very good records of your previous inquiries or account info. They’ve constantly made errors as to how many options I have available and when I can sell. They’re not very good at updating my account information when I do cash in.
It’s annoying. Especially for someone like me who needs these people to be more up on their game.
C’mon guys!!!