Ameriprise ... UGH!!

[gman57]

Ameriprise == crappy customer service!


I have a relative that has had money at Ameriprise for over 15 years,,, (they are not into investing) paying them 1%. A pretty good chunk of change too. I looked over their accounts and talked them into moving it to VG. They were paying all that money each year and their MM is paying a whopping 0.3%. We initiated the xfer and there is one mutual fund that that can't transfer over in-kind so he called his advisor to sell it and move it to a MM fund. The advisor said "do it yourself". I told the relative I would be so ticked off if that happened to me... 15 years paying all that money and they tell you to do it yourself!! I tried to do it online for my relative but apparently it's in an "advisor" account that clients can't trade in. I was livid and it's not even my money. We put together an email to the branch manager saying we're still paying you until the accounts are closed so do the trade. The branch manager got back to us that he'd help us out. Ameriprise... ugh... I'm just sorry they wasted so much money for so many years. They have them in 28+ funds in 3 accounts. I told them once we get it over to VG we'll get that down to about 5. I also explained to them they'll really only need to login once a year and rebalance to their target AA. Easy..peasy... If they invest for another 30 years they'll save over $250k in advisor fees!!

[gman57]

One other item.  There is an account with a non-tradable asset in it, nothing else.  How do you get rid of that kind of account.  Just thought I'd ask here before I try and get help from a lousy customer service company.

[graust]

@gman

I would think you could transfer over all assets as just cash, with no need to transfer in kind. Even the “non tradable” stuff. If it’s an Ameriprise account, there are probably a lot of class A or class C (?) funds, which may not be tradable at Vanguard. Unless there are tax consequences to worry about. Then everything moves over as cash and can be invested into Vanguard/brokerage funds.

Hope that makes sense/helps.

[gman57]

Yeah, now that I think about it I should have sold everything in the IRA/ROTH before the xfer. The trading costs should have been covered by the advisor agreement.  It might costs a couple bucks to sell them once at VG. Shoot... too late now as the xfer paperwork is already on way to VG. The taxable account I need to look over and figure out cap gains etc... before selling after getting to VG.  I just wanted to rid of Ameriprise ASAP. In the long view those selling costs (much less than one months advisor fee) are peanuts when looking at savings on advisor fees and the high fund ER's. 

ADD: hmmm, maybe it's not too late.  I'm going to  tell Ameriprise to sell all IRA/ROTH mutual funds Monday. I think it'll be before the transfer paperwork makes it from VG to Ameriprise.