I mistakenly purchased their bonds outside of my IRA. When I told them of my mistake, they seemed eager to correct it, but it has been almost a month now and they are requiring such a convoluted process that it is making me very nervous (roadblocks keep appearing). They told me they couldn't wire the redeemed money from the original investment to a brokerage account, so I gave them a statement, bank verification form, and drivers license (all at their request) to have it wired to my bank. After I gave all that info to them, they decided that they couldn't wire it to my bank, either, and they had to mail a paper check to my unsecured home mailbox. They would not let me hold the bonds in my current IRA, and required that I open a new one with the provider they specified. They would not allow me to initiate the transfer wire from my old IRA to my new, something that my broker said he had never heard of before (me neither), and required for me to sign a form allowing them to initiate a wire from my current IRA. Finally, they want me to buy the bonds in my IRA before redeeming the existing bonds and STARTING the transfer, meaning I have to expose twice the cash of my initial investment. This should have taken a couple of days, and I have already logged more than 120 emails trying to work this out. Admittedly, this was my screw up to start with, but all of the strange things they are asking make me suspicious of their legitimacy.
Update - I was contacted by Phoenix shortly after this review was published, and they created a plan to resolve all of my complaints, which was much more in keeping with my initial contact with them. They say that this whole process I went through transpired during a season when they were modifying many of their security procedures. I will update this review again when they have actually implemented the solution they proposed. Updating review from 1 to 3 stars, pending resolution.
Update on 3/18/24 - updating my review to 4 stars from 3. After 2 1/2 months and 190 emails from my first request, the bonds seem to be transferred successfully into my new IRA. Not quite 5 stars for four reasons: 1) much harder than I felt it should have been, 2) still feel like there were a lot of unorthodox practices, but that's likely a consequence of working with a relatively new and smallish organization without benefit of some of the things I probably take for granted with my established broker, 3) it took the initial negative review to get past some roadblocks, and 4) the balance in my IRA is not being updated with monthly compounded interest payments - the only place I see them is on the Phoenix site. I admit I am new to private bonds, and perhaps this is normal, but it seems strange to me that I won't see any change in my IRA value until the bond matures in 7 years. On the bright side: 1) they did accommodate my request to move these bonds to an IRA (a huge plus), 2) once higher management got involved due to the review, they were very accommodating. My sense was that the rep I was working with really wanted to help but just didn't have the authority
Overall, I feel like these guys want to do the right thing but are extremely cautious - I'm guessing because they might have been burned in the past.
3/20/24 - changed the title to be less negative and more reflective of the final resolution
