Wells Fargo Advisors Reviews

Do not ever use if you want your heirs to be able to receive money. I've been trying for four years to have money transferred from my Mom's IRA and they just keep requesting useless documents or saying the documents are not filled out correctly just to screw with me. If you want to throw away your money, this is the perfect place to do it.

I am not one to write negative reviews, but I can not in good conscience ignore this terrible trespass I witnessed..... please protect yourself by reading this. When my mother in law passed away a year and a half ago, it was decided that I would help take over getting my father in laws finances in order. The experience we had in trying to help our Dad with his retirement accounts at Wells Fargo were beyond horrific, and I would say classify as criminal and elder abuse. There was so many irregularities, it was just unbelievable. Where do I start? 1. He had two annuities, one of them had a death benefit of $75,000. When we inquired about this, his advisor, Chad Holtz from the Minnesota branch informed him that there was no death benefit. Then he was told it was "$5,000". This was inconsistent with what we understood to be the case and reached out to his former advisor who left Wells Fargo a year prior. We were right: it was a $75,000 benefit. How does that get overlooked? When we pushed the issue it suddenly materialized...... that was a huge red flag. 2. Both annuities were set up in Wells Fargo's name as the account holder. You are reading that correctly: Wells Fargo took my in-laws money and opened accounts with Wells Fargo as the account holder and my in-laws as "beneficiaries". This is a highly irregular practice, and I've never seen anything like it before. So when Wells Fargo dies (corporations don't die), the in-laws then receive their benefit..... but..... what happens when my in-laws die?..... There was no explanation for this, and it made getting the annuities converted to cash impossible and a truly hellish experience. There are only two possible explanations. A) It was intentional (criminal). B). someone at Wells Fargo was too incompetent to fill out the account forms correctly when establishing the account.... neither of those are acceptable reasons. 5 months later and we are still unable to covert his annuities to cash. We've had to submit the forms to surrender the annuities over 5 times, hire notaries. It's just insane. 3. Wells Fargo has been truly difficult and keeps saying "they can't help" and we "need to talk to the issuing bank". Last we checked, the statements say Wells Fargo on them and the accounts were opened through Wells Fargo. So what exactly is the role of Wells Fargo if they can't do anything? 4. In early / mid 2024 Wells Fargo had a 75 year old in poor health invested in highly volatile funds where he was earning a whopping 2% ROI. I could take him to just about any other banks and open a money market savings account during this time and gotten him 5%, fully liquid return, at zero risk. Wells Fargo decided his retirement was best in non liquid, high risk vehicles, with returns almost below inflation. What exactly is the value there? With advisory like that, who needs enemies? So it is over 5 months in, we still do not have control over his funds. We get zero help from Wells Fargo, and our plan to reinvest his funds in a treasury bond ladder now will yield 20% less. They cost my father in law a LOT of money, unnecessary stress, and had him exposed to unnecessary risk. It's the worst financial advice I've ever seen given to anyone in my life, and for 25 years I've been the custodian for a small businesses 401K for about 20 people. Shame on you Wells Fargo. To say this has been a disgusting saga would be generous.

My parents had an account for 10 years, and then I inherited account - and, unfortunately, advisor. I then had account for 10 more before I realized how bad he was. Even though he had CFP after his name, he did no planning. He was essentially a stockbroker with a discretionary account. When I said that I want to retire soon, instead of saying “let’s sit down and discuss”, he said “let me know when”. Well, duh. The time was NOW. I went looking for a REAL planner, when I went to transfer my account, he flagged it as “possible elder abuse” (which was bs). Bottom line, it took me almost a month to get it transferred. I ended up losing a lot of interest because of the game he was playing.

Had WF Advisors for over 15+ years and was reading reviews about the horror stories that people had with them. I began to see similar patterns with WF Advisors with the accounts that I had with them. Noticed that I was supposed to receive higher return rates with some of the mutual funds that I invested with and was not getting what was listed on the prospectus. Turns out, R. Chiriboga of WF Minnetonka, was holding out and taking more money from my brokerage account then what he was supposed to. Lesson learned: check around with other investment groups and find out what their rates are. Also make sure that you don't have any "C" shares in your holdings as I did.

Purchased an annuity through wells fargo (WF), 18 yrs ago, that is managed by an insurance company. WF only acts as a custodian. Told by WF solution folks if we moved annuity into solutions they could move into wellstrade. Pulling nails to get that done. Now, another Advisor (Egan McCarthy) telling us it's against WF policy to move an annuity into wellstrade. Good grief... Moving this money into wellstrade REMOVES ALL WF Advisors from an annual % for doing nothing!!! Insurance company who manages the IRA/Annuity is sending us the form to REMOVE WELLS FARGO AS THE CUSTODIAN all together!! Serious conflicts of interest with who those advisors work for and represent. Shame on you Wells Fargo!

I had a financial advisor in Grapevine, TX for seven years. In that entire time I never was given the impression that there was any kind of investment strategy being employed, just an unyielding confidence in equities. My three kids were in college and their 529 plans were in equities in 2022 and got hammered. Who does this? I am a bit emotional about my money and what I needed was a calm reassuring guide. Instead I got a guy whose English sucked and who was incapable of communicating the basics of why he did, or didn’t, do things. I can only guess how much this guys cost me, but six to seven figures easily. Go w Schwab or Fidelity, where you don’t pay five figures a year for advisory fees for someone with no imagination whatsoever. And for the record, on Oct 27, 2023 he told me verbatim “I wouldn’t advise anyone to get into the stock market now”. So I bought short term CDs. It was the bottom of the market and we all know what happened.

Our advisor Brian C got us into a 5 years (promised 5 years) investment that was a loser, forced us into tax extensions every year, (we we’re not told of this) and it’s now year number 8+, yes, year eight in a five year investment. When Finra contacted him he lied and told them 5 years was never promised. Lying and not knowing you’re doing, that’s enough. We Pulled 2m out already and the balance to follow

If you want an firm with outdated methodology that relies on paper documents and instructions that are misleading if not altogether incorrect -- please select Wells Fargo. Myself, I am switching my last remaining IRA funds to firms that have invested in technology solutions that are integrated and accurate. My withdrawal was rejected by their review of the tax withholding percentage. They have no notification process, require the customer to monitor the transaction status, force the form be resubmitted to reset the withdrawal, and inform the customer that the week delay is considered a satisfactory transaction. I recommend firms that uses technology properly to provide the minimum amount in the withholding form and rapidly complete transactions. Avoid Wells Fargo as they have not been investing in technology and appear to have no interest in customer input.

My team at Wells Fargo Advisors is excellent. They explain things at my level of understanding, keep me updated in a timely fashion, disclose all potential fees, and have done a great job with my money even in relationship to these trying times. I’ve had multiple financial services in my lifetime, including private brokers, and I have never before had such good service. I know Wells Fargo has had some challenges, but for me they have always been professional, trustworthy and successful.

My mother passed away and she had an account with Wells Fargo Advisors. My brother, sister, and me were listed as beneficiaries along with her significant other. Getting the money was a very painful experience and in addition to that they are charging a fee to transfer the money. Let me explain. First, the account person my mother dealt with took 3 weeks to get us the paperwork we needed to fill out and to get it submitted. Then after submitting the paperwork, it took them 2 months to process it. And this was after repeated calls asking for the status and badgering them. Until the very last days, their answer was that they didn't know the status nor the ETA, which is crazy. So they were basically telling me that it could take forever. Here's an idea, how about they give me their money and I'll hold it for as long as I want. Anyway, I finally got one of the accounts from my mother and promptly initiated a transfer to Fidelity. Little did I know that there is an outstanding dividend that they're "not sure" if they can get to me AND I was charged an account termination fee of $125. What? The only reason I opened an account with them is because THEY FORCED ME. It wasn't like I wouldn't have taken a check for my mother's account. When I called to complain I was told that it was in the agreement they sent which had like a hundred pages in it and that this was standard practice across the industry. Think about it. Even if they charged my mother a termination fee, that's only for her account. Now they are going to charge us the same fee 4 times because that's the number of beneficiaries. On top of it all, this is due to our mother's death which you'd think would warrant some kind of waiver. Absolutely unscrupulous.

Completely satisfied with this company and the interaction. Sound advice no fluff.

money grubbing hope the 2 dollar service fees are worth losing your reputation. they like to forget they work for me. stop opening fraudulent accounts in customers names to meet quotas.

I’ll keep this short. Couple years ago I left Wells Fargo advisors because my advisor of 19 years Mike Lavery conned me unload me to sleep in a portfolio that made Wells Fargo the lion share of the profit while keeping me down at 3% then he neglected to tell me of the fees the exorbitant fees for buying stocks through Wells Fargo advisors. When I reported him to Wells Fargo‘s Robert Brizer he sent back a letter saying that he reviewed everything and everything seem to be normal and straight of course it does it when your Wells Fargo advisers ripping people off these people are so jaded they don’t know which side is up run away from these people. Especially those in Richmond Virginia they have no moral compass.