I'm dealing with this problem right now. I made five check deposits at my local Fidelity office on Wednesday 9/11, received email deposit notices for each one on 9/12, then receiving a bill pay account cancelation email on 9/13. I immediately called Fidelity and spent over an hour on hold waiting to speak with an "outreach specialist". When connected to the specialist, he identified himself with the fraud unit and spent almost an hour asking me highly detailed and specific questions about just about every aspect of the checks I wrote, relationships with other banks, reasons for having other bank accounts, etc. Not only was my individual account being restricted for the check deposits but our joint major bill paying account was also under restriction which was not specified in the cancelation email related to my individual account. Funds for our current Federal estimated taxes are held in that account, which is particularly distressing. At the end of the call, he put me on hold to review my responses, then after a prolonged period, said that the account would remain under restriction pending further review. Hopefully, I will have resolution by tomorrow.
I wouldn't call it nonsense. The issue is so prevalent that Fidelity itself has had to officially address a few weeks back (albeit by saying a whole lot of nothing).
Just peruse some of the account lock issues from the last year, it's a near hourly occurrence at this point: https://www.reddit.com/r/fidelityinvest ... 5e5&t=year
In the last week alone the number has skyrocketed supposedly in response to check fraud running rampant. Yet, you don't see Chase and actual banks taking the measures that Fidelity is taking by locking accounts, cancelling bill pay, shutting down debit card and ACH transactions -- all without notice and all to protect Fidelity, not the customer. And it's not just new users, it's users of various account ages and balances, Fidelity is taking draconian action across the board to cover themselves without regard for the customer. Go take a look at their reddit and see the countless posts about not being able to pay bills, transactions failing while at stores, and the inability to access accounts or get someone on the phone that can help.
Fidelity is not a bank.
Even if account privileges are restored, I expect to leave Fidelity, not so much because of the fraud investigation, but because of other complicating factors related to the restriction which I don't have time to explain now. I'm preparing for a trip and should be able to report back in about a week. Besides, I'd rather have all the facts in order to properly assess the outcome and impact. Needless to say, the "Fidelity as a One Stop Shop" approach or any other one stop approach is no longer a possibility for us. If not for other accounts, we would temporarily be in a world of financial hurt.
Statistics: Posted by Pu239 — Sun Sep 15, 2024 11:19 pm — Replies 7212 — Views 1385858