TD Ameritrade
reviews and complaints

Day 3 - TD Ameritrade still holding my money hostage!

I transferred into my retirement account and TDA snatched 20% in the process. I complained about their unauthorized taking. They admitted the mistake, and admitted that they had given me bad instructions, but too bad my transfer was treated as a taxable distribution which will cost me a huge chunk of the balance.

Complaining, appealing, begging, it doesn't matter, they simply don't care.

I just want to admonish your readers what a terrible experience I have had w/ a new account I opened at TD Ameritrade. Every month, for the past 3 months, I have had to re-set my password and "security questions" because they are repeatedly erased when TD Ameritrade does one of their frequent "software upgrades". The process must be done over the phone. Problem is, TD Ameritrade does not have enough customer service reps to answer the phone during normal market hours. If you want good service, stick with Scottrade, Fidelity or Vanguard. TD Ameritrade is a PITA.

I bought 80 bonds at what I thought was a very good price on the morning of 7/11/11. Within minutes, my account shows the bonds and their market price. Showing a nice profit, I put them up for sale a few hours later. About 15 minutes after putting them up for sale, my account value plummets by $70K and the bonds are gone. Not sold… gone. I call up and they tell me the original price was a mistake, and backed out of the earlier transaction. Don’t count your chickens even after they hatch with TD Ameritrade. I doubt they’d ever consider backing out of a deal if I was on the losing side.

I bought 80 bonds at what I thought was a very good price on the morning of 7/11/11. Within minutes, my account shows the bonds and their market price. Showing a nice profit, I put them up for sale a few hours later. About 15 minutes after putting them up for sale, my account value plummets by $70K and the bonds are gone. Not sold... gone. I call up and they tell me the original price was a mistake, and backed out of the earlier transaction. Don't count your chickens even after they hatch with TD Ameritrade. I doubt they'd ever consider backing out of a deal if I was on the losing side.

Every investor MUST check out www.FINRA.org and click on BROKER CHECK to find out what this fraudulent, unscrupulous, and extremely unethical TD Ameritrade (and its option branch THINK OR SWIM)did to their customers in the past. Numerous frauds/misconducts committed by this damn broker are listed there. Do not become a victim of this evil broker. We must make this evil broker go out of business to make a better society so that naive, unsuspecting, good people can invest with peace of mind.

As a new client I moved $4500 electronically from my bank into my TD Ameritrade account - the money has left my bank and has been recognized as being in my TD Ameritrade account. I went to do a trade and was told that since I electronically transfered the funds they will not be available to me for 3 business days. Nice SCAM - they collect interest on my money for 3 days - doesn't sound like much but my guess is that it adds up to a huge profit for them with all the investors they lure into their scheme.

Clearly my own fault - should have gone with a real brokerage firm with local offices to get face to face customer service. These guys are available 24 x 7 - but all the reps can tell you is "sorry I can't help you except to say those are the rules". Do yourself a favor and walk into a Charles Schwab office and get honest upfront service.

On this day this american greeting ecards took all my visa card information, and charged me $19.95 for not even see a card. made a confirmation no# but, kept making excuse that adobe had to be plugged in to even to make birthday card. then adobe 10.1 jumped on the site. I want my money put back in my account because I will get an attorney. this adobe 10.1 is trying to also attempting to offer a free trial but wants me to pay for the adobe which is $39.95 for a month. So they keep telling something went wrong with connection. Then my dial-up network turns themselves off. There are three(3) parties involved. For almost a month I have been trying to get hooked up the adobe so I can see my Ministry/my Church. I believe there are more involved too.

TD Ameritrade's ThinkorSwim traders engaged in Unauthorized Trading in a customer's account and wiped out his entire retirement portfolio. When probed by FINRA, TD Ameritrade's lawyers (whose client list includes Bernard Madoff associates) lied to FINRA investigators and committed fraud in arbitration in order to conceal their wrongdoing and get the investor's claims dismissed. The case is now going to court.

BUYER BEWARE AS YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR!

Stay away from Sctottrade as their computer/technology can tremendously offset their cheap $7 trades(you do get what you pay for).

I made a trade end of day that Scottrade lied and told me was made after the market closed and was sold for a $1000+ loss! It is bad enough for Scottrade's latency to cost you $1000+ but to have their Comppliance Dept either outright lie and say you made the trade after hours or for them to be misled by their obvious lack of technological investment is unacceptable. When I make a $30, 000 trade...I DO BELIEVE I KNOW WHEN THE TRADE WAS ENTERED!

Stay away from Scottrade or you will lose ALOT more than the meager savings due to those $7 trades.

It was several years ago now that TD Ameritrade stole $1200 from me. They did it legally (technically). I had shares of IVAX which was being taken over by TEVA in a stock and cash merger. TD Ameritrade contacted me asking me to send my request by mail as to whether I wanted stock or cash. I requested the TEVA stock as it was worth much more than the cash offer. A couple weeks later TD cashed my out of my IVAX stock claiming they didn't receive any communication from me. Now they didn't make any further attempt to call, email, or otherwise contact me. They just paid me off in cash for my IVAX shares resulting in my losing approx. $1200 on the transaction and having to pay tax on the gain. Now you and I both know they paid me off in cash and requested the stock from TEVA and kept it for sale themselves resulting in a gain of $1200 for themselves. I complained to the SEC, TD Ameritrade, WSDFA, FTC, and others to no avail. A very nice lady from the Federal Trade Commission was the only one who tried to help. TD snubbed their noses at her too. Watch out for these TD Ameritrade crooks!

there seems to be money missing from my account at Scottrade. this may have happened more than once in the past year. when i brought this to their attention, so maybe we could try to figure out what had occurred, they essentially informed me that this was impossible. when i persisted, they informed me that my account would be closed, not allowing me to trade, essentially freezing the account. the reason " they could not provide the level of service i needed". thanks Scottrade.

On 1/16/09 TDA confirmed in writing multiple times that I shorted UDR at $25/share and assigned it Transaction # XXXXXXXXXXX and CUSIP #XXXXXXXXX. $19, 979.89 was credited to my account.

On 3/17 at 09:39:01 I bought 800 shares of UDR at $7.40 to cover my position. Transaction #XXXXXXXXXXX and the same CUSIP Number proved that these were the same shares I had shorted. $5, 929.95 was deducted from my account. TDA provided multiple confirmations that my cover of the short was executed.

On 3/28, two months after the exercise of the option, I was told by a TDA manager that these profitable trades were going to be reversed.

The President's office has repeatedly denied my requests for the money to be replaced in my account.

I have reported them to the Better Business Bureau and on their recommendation to the SEC and the Maryland Attorney General who are investigating the case.

TD Ameritrade charges EXTRA fess on sell trades! THEY ADVERTISE " STRIGHT FORWARD PRICING $9.99 PER TRADE, NO HIDDEN FEES!" These guys hide these fees, the only place you can find them is to go into reports, pull up your cost basis for any sale trade and you will see this charges in the far right hand column, the column header even states "FEE" CAN YOU SAY DECEPTIVE ADVERTISING!

This brokerage actually took from my account twice the amount that was due after a short trade dividend repayment. Not only that I have missed so many opportunities on their live trading platform. It's quite ridiculous and it's happened right after the branch have a new manager. I estimate I could have lost up to a thousand dollar due to their crazy Java software. I even experiment trapping the stocks to four orders in a 10 cents range and it stand still in that range for hour. This is one of the top volume stock traded of the day. I think they are scandalous and I will take my business elsewhere.

I have had an $8, 000 plus credit from trading show up as a debit. I had to argue for 1.5 hrs with managing broker before he contacted the tech department. Uncovered the mistake... and apologized.

Today, I am selling and all my stocks are up significantly (5 -27%) and the account shows almost no gains.
The first is bad enough. Please email [protected]@gmail.com if you have similar problems. I want to show cause for some forensic accounting via discovery.

I went into the TD Ameritrade branch in Pasadena, California to open an account after speaking with one of their staff on the phone the previous day. I'd done this to make sure I'd have everything I needed with me when I went there as it would be tax deadline (April 15) and I'd have less than an hour to complete my business. The person I spoke with on the phone met with me briefly and put me in front of a computer so I could sign up online. I dutifully filled out the forms, but when I got to the final stage of agreeing to their terms, I could not find anyone there who could explain their privacy policy to me (the agreement stated that they had the right to share my information with third parties, in accordance with a privacy policy stated elsewhere and which was incorporated into the agreement by reference). No one could tell me who these third parties were, no one could provide a copy of the referenced policy; the staffer who I thought was taking care of me had disappeared. After waiting around for 15 minutes, I decided to go to another broker, terminated my computer session, and left. I thought that was it, until I received a spam email from them the next day. Obviously terminating my session without signing the agreement had not erased the information I had entered earlier, information including my email address, my SSN and my mother's maiden name, etc. That is still stored in their database. This worries me no end, as I now have no relationship with them and they're not bound by any agreement, as far as I can tell. I'm writing them to tell them to erase my information, also reporting this incident to FINRA, perhaps also the SEC. Can anyone suggest anybody else?

I opened a individual cash account with TD Ameritrade on September 5th, 2008. I agreed to have TD Ameritrade withdraw $10, 000 out of my savings account. I completed everything in the TD Ameritrade account and made a transaction to purchase stock the same day. The order was filled on September 5th.

On September 10, 2008 I received a phone call stating that TD Ameritrade had take it upon themselves to sell my stock. I was told it was due to insufficient funds. The account number that I gave them was correct however the money was in my money market account instead of my savings. My bank made a mistake and deposited my money from the transaction I made over the phone, into the money market instead of my savings account as I requested. I explained to three different people at TD Ameritrade this could have all been avoided if they had called me the first day that they had received a notice that there was insufficient funds. I explained to them that I could provide proof that the funds were the account. I was not lying. I understand they don't know me but the money was there. All I expect from them is that they would have given me the courtesy of a simple phone call to inform me of what happened. I would have resolved it right away. Instead, they waited until after their deadline and then they call me up and explain to me that they sold my stock at a loss and now they are saying I owe them $167.42. A simple phone call even the day of the deadline saying we need the funds in by noon would have been acceptable to me. But not for them. There policy is make the transaction and sell the stock without any authorization or notice of any kind and then after they do this, call the customer up and tell them what took place.

I came home today (Thursday Sept 11th) to have a phone call on my answering machine from Ameritrade to return her phone call. I did return her phone call and she Informed me again that I have an unsecured debt and asking me when I was going to send them their money. I informed her that I was not going to. She proceeded to tell me that she noticed I have other accounts with them and that they would take money from those accounts to repay the debt. Not sure here but I think there is some unethical practices going on here.

It is not my intent to blame them for the funds being in the wrong account. As a professional business I would think that they would call there customer to inform them if there were any issues so they can resolve the situation before they take action. Obviously not.