1. Outdated computer systems and they cannot calculate accurate cost basis on portfolio reports so they have removed that and have no plans for several years to include it again. You read that right, brokers are supposed to trade and sell to customers using reports with no cost basis on them. And we pay extra for these reports.
2. Compliance lies, they tell you that you can have a certain office and do things and then a month later you cannot. Even having Compliance directors on a call to sort out a solution does not mean they will honor that solution six months later. Compllance also requires many forms and procedures where there are no regulations requiring them and there's zero legal liability value to having them as well. Compliance has also given me grossly inaccurate advice ~ "Of course a 529 Account is a college account, it has an IRS code number on it." Really you can't make that up.
3. Their portfolio reports make up return numbers and give bad data because they've outsourced their IT to 1099s in India. I find major illegal errors at least 3X per year in their overall calculation matrices ~ not on just one report, where their IT department has coded calculations incorrectly and even giving illegal data on reports ~ because no one in Compliance is overseeing what goes on client-releasable portfolio reports. This is true for more than 10 years now.
4. They forgot to pay their entire sales force in January 2015, paychecks went out late.
5. The internal computer systems are so badly designed you cannot find anything, not even basic forms to do business.
6. There's no accountability in back office operations and people there are so poorly paid, with such high turnover, that no one cares about the clients. Customers leave out of frustration with the back office not with the broker.
