1st World problems -Morgan Stanley/Smith Barney sucks

[Neil]

So I wanted to close out my kid's college funds (4 kids, 4 funds) because the Mutual Fund they are invested in consistently under performs the market, and the fees are excessive. I can't get on-line access to the funds because they are custodial accounts, and for some reason they don't allow on-line access to custodial accounts. What that means is I have to ask the guy at the call-center to tell me all the details of the accounts. I tell the call center guy to sell all shares and send me the checks. He can't tell me how much it will be yet because the sell order executes at the closing price of the fund at the end of the day. No problem.

A couple days later, I get two checks in the mail for the same amount (down to the penny same amount) but no details on the selling price, shares sold or fees deducted - just two checks. (they only executed 2 or the 4 sells for a completely different reason, which cost me even more in fees) Now, I know that is not right, because the two accounts had different numbers of shares, and they were invested in the same fund. I knew some fees would be deducted, but it is unlikely that the fees would cause the two accounts to be exactly equal. I call up the call center and ask to see the accounting of the sale. I wanted to know the number of shares sold, the selling price and a detail of the fees deducted. The call center moron can't tell me how much the fees were, or what they were for, but assured me that the checks were right. He didn't seem to understand that it is not possible for two accounts, with different numbers of shares, invested in the same fund, to have the same amount of money. I even walked him through an example (random numbers):

Account 1 has 100 shares of LMVTX
Account 2 has 105 shares of LMVTX

If LMVTX has a share price of $40, then account 1 is worth $4,000 and account 2 is worth $4,200. No matter what the selling price is, the accounts will never equal each other.

His argument was that the fees deducted from the accounts caused them to be equal, but could not tell me how much was deducted in fees, or what the fees were, of why the fee's would be different for the accounts. Now, the example above is simplified, since the number of shares in each account is in actually fractional to the thousandth (ie: 101.127 shares in one account and 105.769 shares in the other.) The bottom line is, they want me to 'take their word for it'. HELL NO. He promised to send me the detailed accounting in a couple of days, but I'm thinking the SEC needs to hear about this. It's not a lot of money, but that's not the point. Whether it's $1,000 or $1,000,000, the same documentation should be available.

Do you think the people is Somalia have these problems too?

[Spaz]

they ar erequired to provide you with that breakdown... call them and tell them you want it sent to you... if they do not comply go the the BBB and write a bad report for them so that it damages their rating... when you file with the BBB most companies will kiss your ass to make things right...

[GTP231]

Like Spaz said get the BBB involved. If they don't help send feds after them. Hell somethiing fishy is up call them both on them

[Paul Huryk]

All the big name banks screw you on fees, they really don't want any accounts with under $250k in them - I would suggest moving to Vanguard or Fidelity where if you have online statements, there are no fees.