The following comment was left on the post, “Which Roth IRA is Best for Your Retirement?“
A reader of Investor Trip asked about the quality of TD Ameritrade’s online trading services. He or she seeks a few testimonials on TD Ameritrade’s quality of service and costs. I quoted the exact question from the past post here.
AgentSully said:
anyone have experience with TD Ameritrade? Is their service good? Sometimes with so many mergers and corp changes, it can change their service levels. Just wondering. thx
Since I have zero experience with TD Ameritrade, I’m asking readers who either own an existing account currently or did so in the past to share their opinions on TD Ameritrade.
Before TD Waterhouse and Ameritrade merged, I heard good things about Ameritrade especially, but as AgentSully noted, mergers can really mix things up.
*Update: You can write your personal reviews of TD Ameritrade at AwardWinningBrokers.
Bio: Tarik is the CEO/Marketing Manager of InvestorTrip.com. He follows a simple diversified value investment strategy that seeks long term equity appreciation. He studies economics at Dartmouth College, and plans to pursue his MBA at Morgan State University this fall. Tarik enjoys reading, playing soccer, and living life to the fullest.
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no, i have no experience with them. However. Suzie Orman endored them at one of here shows to save money.
I HAVE HAD LIMITED EXPERIANCE IN STOCK TRADING. I STARTED WITH SCOTRADE. THEN FOUND I COULD NOT MOVE MONEY WITH ACH. MOVED TO E TRADE, ALL VERY GOOD UNTIL THEY STARTED SITTING ON MONEY MOVED BY ACH FOR 5 WORKING DAYS BEFORE IT COULD BE USED FOR TRADING. MOVED TO AMERITRADE. SO FAR THEY HAVE BEEN VERY EASY TO DEAL WITH, AND I WOULD RECOMEND THEM VERY HIGHLY. BUT THE OTHER SHOE COULD FALL.
Moved from a full service broker about 3 months ago and couldn’t be happier. I was unfamiliar with online trading and had some dumb questions for them in the early days that were always handled politely and fully. Only compliant, sometimes the hold time for CS is overly long, 10-20 mins. In fairness, I usually call late at night and they aren’t fully staffed during those times. Trades have cost me less than 10% of what my FS broker was charging and I can place trades 24/7 which is a big plus for me. $9.99 per trade and they may still be offering a 45 day free trading window on some accts.
I started with Ameritrade many years ago, when Schwab kicked me to the curb for not having a minimum of $25,000 on hand with them.
I now have five TDAmeritrade accounts (non-retirement account, two Roths, two Traditional IRAs).
I love the service, and would recommend it to anyone. I’ve never had a problem with them, and the merger was completely seamless from my standpoint.
I’ve been with Ameritrade since 1999 and have no problems with them. I moved part of my portfolio to Interactive Brokers looking for cheaper commissions, but a lot of their services were blocked by my company’s firewall and I didn’t like how it downloaded to Quicken.
I came back to AMTD in full and really like them even more since the TD merger. Great customer service and really good bells and whistles for charting and free analyst reports.
I just read something a week or two ago about izone.com, their discount discount brokerage arm. It’s all on line, not allowed to call anyone for help, but at 1/2 the price for trades. I want to move, but they won’t do a direct rollover of my current three accounts (Brokerage which I blog about and my wife’s and my IRAs).
Wow. This is really helpful. Thanks everyone for the detailed information!!
Wow. Thanks everyone for the detailed info.
And thanks for posting my question!
I have never use TD Ameritrade trade system. Agent do they support multy contries?
I haven’t used TD ameritrade yet. Maybe the other commenters here know.
I have found that sogoinvest to be lowest in fees and very good trade times.
I used Ameritrade before the merger and really liked them. It’s been a few years though and now I honestly don’t know if they’re still good or not!
The recent revamp of TD AMeritrade’s website (5/07)leaves me cold…its overpoweriong in its displays, screens and such. They have accuracy problems frequently. And I find it very user unfriendly unless one is a day trader.
I have had absolutely no problems with Amertrade since I opened my account with them in 1997. Before that I was with Quick & Reilly, which i don’t think is even around anymore. I also had an E Trade account, but I’ve been happpy with the service i get with TD Ameritrade, and will probably stay with them unless they really screw up.
I am a very active trader with a large Ameritrade account. If you intend to buy and hold for long term I guess they are fine. But their trading systems go out for long periods of time on busy trading days and have cost me many many many thousands of dollars. After this happened again on Friday, June 15 2007, which cost me a couple of thousand dollars, I started looking for another broker. Haven’t decided yet. During the outage, I tried contacting a live broker and was on hold so long the stock I needed to sell incurred greater losses. This is at least the sixth time this has happened to me with this company. Don’t know why I even stayed this long, except that the Devil you know is better than the one you don’t. Needless to say, I do not think they are a good trading platform. Good luck.
I suggest staying away from TD Ameritrade. I recently had a very bad experience with them. I logged on to my account one day - something I do weekly on average - only to find my entire account GONE! Mind you I’m on vacation in Colorado where it’s not the easiest thing in the world to get a phone signal. Anyway, upon calling customer service (after a hold period) I was told that my account was closed due to “inactivity”. Well I suppose they consider monthly moving of funds inactivity. No one could tell me where the cash and investments went or how it would resolve itself. Needless to say, when the bulk of one’s life savings up and disappears at the hands of incompetent financial companies, one becomes quite disturbed. Well, after a couple days of frustrating calls with customer service, the account was “re-instated” with the full assurance that the incident would be investigated and would never happen again. Within a week, they bounced a check and refused my payroll direct deposit putting all my normal living expenses in jeopardy of bouncing - lovely…..Long story short, I have moved every penny from TD to ETrade. Good luck to those who go with TD!
P.S. TD was always good until the merger.
These guys SUCK. I was with waterhouse and Ameritrade when they merged. Now we have 1 ! company tnat truly is uncaring, unfriendly, and unhelpful. Can’t even log in, or even get to the site, off on for 2 days.
No problems w/TD Ameritrade…could always log on and trades are done in seconds. One advantage w/TD Ameritrade compared to Scottrade is that they reinvest dividends for certain stocks like Bank of America and Citigroup at no extra charge. You have to call customer service to see which stocks have dividend reinvestment. With TD Ameritrade, you can also invest in stocks under $1 w/o an extra fee. If you open a new account and I refer you, we can both get $50. Check out my site
http://www.realestateinvestor.com/Jane
Cannot stand them. Nothing but mistakes, bad customer service, ineptitude. Stay away. Even though not the cheapest, Fidelity has by far the best customer service. Their trades are 96 cents more than TDAm, but worth every penny to not have to be on hold for 20 minutes in voice mail hell every time they screw something up.
See my story with TDAmeritrade just happened in the last a couple of weeks, I am sure you’ll know what you should do: http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/mbtsdk/message/4495
I have very bad experience with TD Ameritrade. I opened my account in April, and provided all required documents to TD. It had no problem until September when I found the ACH was disabled, which means I cannot deposit/withdraw money to/from my account. That’s very bad to me since I need transfer some money to pay my bill. I called the client service, they said I needed to provide some documents that I already submitted when I opened my account. OK, I mailed all documents to them AGAIN but it didn’t work out. Every time I call them or email them, they keep asking me to provide the same documents again and again. It’s almost one month past. I still cannot withdraw money from my account.
Stay away from TDA. Very very poor client service.
GOOD LUCK TD Ameritrade!!!!
RE; TD AMERIRTRADE: Suffered major outage on Jan. 22, 2008 lasting for several hours, then on and off four three days. I was unable to trade as the system failed to accept orders. My total loss for the day was $600.00. That afternoon I tranfered my account to a new broker; Thinkorswim. They have been fantastic so far! TD Ameritrade has nothing but excuses… simply put they are theives!
I am with them for few weeks now and i find their service to be excellent. I only have one problem when ever i sell stocks i see the money in cash balance but can’t use it for trading for two to three days.
Nothing but trouble. No paper statement even though my wife gets one. Over charging then refunding if you call them. Stay Away!
Service is typically very good; however, today, September 15, 2008, the market is trading with very heavy volume as Lehman just went belly-up over the weekend. I am unable to log-on via their website as it appears to be down due to high volume, and their 800 number has a message that says due to a high volume of calls, my call can not be answered now and to call back later. Wow, with no web access and no phone access presents a real problem for investors trying to unload or buy a position in a moving market. I would like TD Ameritrade to put a system in place that can handle heavy volume.
Would strongly advise against. Just my opinion, but after this latest fiasco they will probably have to morph again. Once the meltdown hit, they changed our account - putting us into the Reserve Fund, although this was never previously disclosed. They have also been accused of selling those “illiquid securities” without proper disclosure.
Has anyone had trouble with placing orders on their system on 11/19/2008?
I have had trouble making trades and canceling trades continuously. March 2009 their platform began showing phantom trades that I didn’t no place. They put 200 shares short in my account and I lost money having to cover it…. there is no record on ay statement or order of me shorting the stock. 3500 it cost me. still working on trying to get it back. they admitted to problems with the trades but haven’t funded my account yet. I am hoping htey do but can’t tell with TDat
Has anyone had trouble placing orders with their system on 11/19/2008?
Hi system,
Did you try calling customer service?
Guys, I’m looking for you traders out there who already use or have used TD Ameritrade in the past to rate and review them on my new site. Any help will be much appreciated… by myself and others looking for a good broker.
Nice site. We have a stock broker reviews site of our own. I really like the design and layout. What CMS does that run on?