Merrill Edge Reviews

by Jon_quinn

I’ve been using all the major brokerages and I assure you Merrill is by far, the worst.
1) merril customer service is filled by a bunch of idiots who clearly know nothing about brokerage service or industry. I asked to close and transfer out one IRA account and asked it be done the very day. The idiot rep didn’t understand what that meant and I had to explain to her over 1+hr call. Eventually by the time her associates got around to it the order was delayed and executed the day after, resulting in considerable losses in my portfolio
2) Merrill promotions were disingenuous at best. Every other brokerage facilitate accounts based on SSN and balance, with Merrill you need citizenship as well. Funny this wasn’t outlined in any pamphlets prior to my money brought into the system. This kind of cheating behavior is why Merrill’s reps have such bad reputation as swindlers.
3) Merrill edge app itself is terrible and doesn’t sync well with other BoA apps. The interface looks to be something designed by a highschool dropout over a long weekend, and the backend interface for linking across accounts is so terribly designed one wonders why they even embedded the function. Seriously do yourself a favor and move your money out to reputable brokerages and save yourself the hassle of wasting hours upon hours of chat with account reps clueless about their own industry, profession, and company services.

by Giveclash1star

I’ve used E*TRADE fidelity td robinhood and a slew of others and Merrill edge is by far worse app of all of them. This “new” update was cosmetic and it literally killed an already garbage slow app. You can no longer login and if you do, good luck getting anywhere as it will sit there spinning. Oh and if you get anywhere “try again error” will pop up 70% of the time. You guys are completely worthless. Complaints have happened for three years and they just don’t care. This is not the institution you want to go for your trading and investment needs. Go elsewhere. I only stuck with this because of the access via BofA but now I’m really considering cashing my 1 mil proflio and moving elsewhere

by TheDistrict11

MerrillEdge needs some serious UX redesign starting with app performance.

It’s extremely difficult to make a trade. For instance, I select a ticket and click through to trade. I then select the appropriate account to trade on and the stock ticker gets cleared out and I have to go and search or input again. Worst yet, if I mistakenly selected the wrong account and filled in all trade information, when I go select the correct account MerrillEdge clears out the entire trade and requires me to fill everything in again.

For an organization so big with so much money, take MerrillEdge seriously. No wonder Robinhood is growing so big. Get with the program soon or else I’m taking my entire portfolio elsewhere.

by FSnap67

I chose to open a Merrill Edge account after reading an article that said Merrill offers Zelle functionality with their brokerage accounts. From my research, they seemed to be the only ones offering this feature. Zelle was the most important thing to me, because funding of brokerage accounts from competitors can take up to 5 business days. Pretty useless when you’re trying to execute a trade quickly and need to fund your account first. Well, turns out Merrill is useless too. Zelle is nowhere to be found on the website or mobile app, and the only options for funding are a transfer from a Bank of America account or a check. So there’s no option for instant funding. Merrill also doesn’t have a chat or email feature. The only way to get help is to call, and wait times can be ridiculous (especially with the current market volatility). I’m regretting my decision right now.

by Sundog111

I’ve banked at BofA and am not moving my accounts any time soon so I’m stuck with this platform for BofA. I have trading accounts at several other places like Schwab, Fidelity and other banks. MerrillEdge is the worst. The UI is awkward, it’s slow, login repeatedly seems to lose my info. Merrill was the last to support Touch ID only getting it running in time for Face ID to replace it. Worst is it costs me money. Their price improvement is non existent. Buying at the market you might as well buy at the ask. You really have to do limit orders on everything which is annoying when you don’t want to helicopter an order. I’m only writing this in hopes it spurs investment to improve MerrillEdge . If they did I would trade more in the account.

by RiderRich

I’m not one to criticize, as I understand that, overall, apps are amazing and make my life so much better. However, this update is painful. I won’t be updating the BofA app, till I must.
First, too load, every aspect take much longer than the previous version I had. And that wasn’t fast at that.
Scrolling is now choppy, noticeably so. I have been spoiled with the smoothness of the previous version and other apps.
The tile format dictates that more scrolling is necessary, why?
The loading time, when viewing my holdings, is seriously long, and the coloring of the gain/loss in the green/red is very slow to load. The first time, I thought the market was closed, due to all the information displaying in black and no updates in pricing.
On the account page, the gain/loss for each account was displayed. I liked this as I had an over view of each account performance. Now there is a gain/loss for all the accounts, and you have to view the holdings for each account, to see it’s performed. Again, with the painfully slow loading time.
I truly hope someone reads this and makes MerrillEdge a user friendly experience again.

by Julianappa

MerrillEdge is terrible compared to the competitors. It's full of bugs. For example, when I try to sell shares I can't select the order type (market) unless I click on sell all. After I select and deselect that then I'm able to choose order type, but then cant proceed with the order because the preview order is grayed out. I've literally lost thousands of dollars because I couldn't sell when I wanted and had to wait to get on a computer. Also, after every order, the page defaults to my IRA account instead of my investment one, so when if I want to rapid sell a few stocks, I have to make sure I revert back to my investment account. I've sold things on my IRA that I had no intention of because of this poorly designed UI/UX.

by Blues Man 22

As the title says the Apple Watch (series 7) does not display all the items in the device watch list. I have 13 stocks in the list and the watch only displays 11. I have rebooted the watch and phone and have also deleted everything from the list and re-added them but it still not working. What’s even more frustrating is that I cannot find a way to report this to Merrill other than to call them. Using the links on MerrillEdge Store take you to a page asking if you would like to open an account. If I had questions about trades I would call the number provided. I have technical issues that I doubt phone support, since it is a general number, will be able to assist. I want a way to email directly to technical support. I like MerrillEdge in general but the lack of ability to get in touch with tech support to report app issues and enhancement requests lowered the rating.

by Semitrader

Unlike Schwab and E-trade that load in a couple of seconds, this apps loads half a minute on iPhone 6S (20+ sec to offer fingerprint auth); therefore, if I wanna sell a sharply falling stock, I may lose significant money due to price changes. Similarly, in the stock buy/sell dialog it doesn’t offer any insight into CURRENT price (yes, it takes a lot of clicks to enter the order), so I can’t know if the market has (suddenly) changed the direction until it’s too late (competitors’ apps allow you to refresh and see current price on the same screen you hit Confirm). Lastly, upon executing the sale, it’s not transparent what the ACTUAL sell/buy price (it’s blank unless I navigate back to specific order, takes 10+ sec). No wonder why they offer “free” trades for preferred customers!

Bottomline: traders may want to steer away from MerrillEdge, as it’s clearly not designed for market volatility in mind.

by DCBCeagle

Just tried to sell Berkshire class B and system doesn’t recognize Merrill’s own symbols. Also a problem, the system does a horrible job of executing cash transfers to the Merrill account. Merrill edge takes 2-4 days longer than any other financial institution’s system of the 6 or so that I use. Also, Merrill Edge has poor integration with other systems that Merrill is using in its back office since the system continues to send our insufficient funds emails even when funds have been transferred. It is a lot of superficial nonsense missing some effective functionality and integration.

by Ty.wicks

I’ve been a BofA client since I emigrated to the US a decade ago. I have a top notch credit score and BofA extends me some very decent credit. MerrillEdge (and the whole website) is clunky, not intuitive, and entirely fails to assist individuals in what they are trying to do - trade and save.
I had it when they banned me for quite literally something they didn’t warn me about - buying stocks, and changing my mind. Apparently, you cannot do that - even if you’ve paid for them in full and up front.

All I can say if that Merrill has no Fidelity towards its customers based on my experience. I will be moving my entire portfolio to someone with more Fidelity with a more user friendly experience and more willing to warn their customers that they cannot spend their money as they please.

by MSucur

Have been using MerrillEdge more often for about two months now with the longer experience of using some competing apps. The way MerrillEdge is setup is much less intuitive than the other apps - at least for me. In fact it’s so less intuitive to the point of confusing sometimes. I will not go into detail s of this statement but I’ll just say that I use for reasons of some other benefits I get related to my bank’s integrated service access. One way or another, if you don’t have other important reasons to use MerrillEdge , there are much better choices to manage your investments out there. It almost feels like MerrillEdge caters to investors that are much less of a self-managed and much more of a hands-off type of investor.

by 2 Mmaannyy Komercials

I have been using the ML website for 5 plus years on a daily basis. Please put an edit key on the unrealized profit/ loss screen in order to be able to change the column preferences. I use an iPhone specifically and when opening up that p/l screen, the column order will change with the slightest movement of my finger on the screen. I would like the opportunity to have my information columns (cost, price, # of
shares, etc) to remain in the order I like, and the edit would be optional, but lockable as well. 2nd request by the way. Thank you

by Tanpham10

One of the worst trading platforms apps on my phone. I am forced to use MerrillEdge because we have Bank of America checking account for the last 25 years and are very happy with Bank of America app, the best in terms of pay bills, credit cards rewards. But the Merrill Edge app is lacking soooo many features that others (TD Ameritrade & E-trades) offers much more. It lacks of (1) current stock news (2) trades stayed in “pending” for days to complete (3) can’t execute using trailing stop in $ and %, no matter what percent I entered, it always errors “much enter from 1-25%” which I’ve already bought entered 2%. Overall, it just not up to par with TD Ameritrade “think it swim” app or E-trade app, those two are my favorite trading platforms apps. I would delete MerrillEdge if I didn’t care amount meeting minimum amount assets with Bank of America to get bonus 75% cash rewards for my credit card.

by Erictran95

I like the professional look of MerrillEdge overall, but I think it would be great if you guys can simplify the design more, such as: instead of having customers to manually select “Normal Hours” & “Extended Hours” by jumping back and forth 2 tabs, creating single page where customers can click on a button to select “Extended Hours” if they want to trade in those hours automatically. I like Webull app because of that automatic extended-hours trades feature. I would love to see that feature on the Merrill Edge app because I don’t like to transfer my main portfolio ($200k+) out from Merrill Edge to Webull, but I will if this costs me my profits, simply because I have to manually set up the extended-hours trades every time.

by Jlisko

I opened this acct bcuz I heard good things about Merrill’s Roth platform but this should get looked at quickly.

I often have times in MerrillEdge where things take lots of extra loading and then don’t go through. Then there’s no pop up that shows why it didn’t— the research is difficult to access really. And it’s difficult to search for equities to buy just not a fluid experience.

Robinhood does all of these better and then some. When I transfer money in I can use it immediately, on BAC’s app it takes FOREVER for my money to get in and be invested. It should be easier to add money to my account in order to invest under your company.

by Yamoinca

This is mainly delight having come from E*TRADE as a comparison. If you’re looking to keep an eye on stocks both what you own and just for speculation, MerrillEdge outfperforms E*TRADE. Basic stock monitoring flow is so nice since it always shows your positions no matter where you are looking at a stock from unlike E*TRADE where it might tell you you have holdings. You can details to a stock in a watchlist as if you bought X shares at Y price on Z date. In E*TRADE you can just add the stock name.

And of course it is great because you can easily move money in/out from BoA account and keep level of service.

by Siva4

You need people with knowledge to help rollover 401k accounts. Also if some one starts helping they must assume it’s assigned to them. Then follow it with the customer till the money is fully rolled over into the Merill IRA. If you amuse my file you will understand that how many Meryl people I dealt with and how many Merill hours is wasted. I am pretty sure by the time you roll my 401k it would have cost you at least $2000 to do this transfer. I am pretty sure you can create a better system with little cost. Thanks

by EcklarA

With this new Merrill Edge App I can no longer enter extended hour trades that was and still is available on the old app. Also, MerrillEdge does not allow you to enter any fixed income trades such as insured CDs or bonds. Why do competitors offer these expected basic functions but you do not when you are suppose to be the best?

Furthermore, when selling a position, this DOES NOT allow you to sell versus a purchase date for tax loss harvesting or simple tax planning. It is time for the creators of MerrillEdge to seriously update it to exist in even the most minimal of modern worlds.

by Jay336.rdr2

I switched over from robinhood to Merrill edge about a hear ago but missed the user interface of robinhood for a while; i always felt the ME app was a little clunky, but as of the last few recent updates they added many features i approve of and appreciate. It could still use some better organization as it can currently have a lot of text/info on a page or screen and look messy, but it’s good info. I think their charts/graphs could use improvements also and would like to see something similar to what robinhood has set up in that regard - easy to slide around and see info on the charts.

by Tazo89

MerrillEdge is not very intuitive, easy transactions that should just take a few clicks like buying a stock can be frustrating. For instance I decide to buy Apple. I search for the ticker symbol and click buy, after select the account I want to use, I have to search ticker symbol again, then place the order. If I change the account I want to make the transaction at, i have to do it all over again. Why can’t I click on a stock and click trade and it automatically be selected as the stock I am wanting to trade. MerrillEdge needs a make over. Please check our Robin Hood and see how easy and intuitive it is to trade and it’s free.

by Craig8009

App used to be ok but never good, but after recent updates, it’s useless at the best, it takes long time to log in to it and after that menus are not well laid out, the investments are not readily available to view and again super slow.. just not very good over all.. also there is one big security glitch, if you have a bank of America account and you click on that account it takes you directly to your BOFA accounts which is not bad but it bypasses the two step verification process which is normally required by BOFA log in.

by Hershy D

I’ve been using apple and MerrillEdge Store for 6 years now and this will be my first review I ever made.

I used Fidelity, Robinhood, TD-ameritrade and multiple other platforms (and of course their mobile apps), I’m shocked with how inconvenient MerrillEdge is.

I can see that you based this off the BOA mobile app (which I love as I’m a BOA client for 7 years now) but the issue is, this is a brokerage - not a bank.

You’ve designed this like it’s a bank, Copy/Paste of BOA.

It’s very slow, slower then your bank app, features are missing, design is incompetent, wording is small and unclear to differentiate. It needs a lot of work.

I run a technology company myself, with a website and mobile app, (not in the FinTech area) but come on guys..... you can do much better than this.

Hope this gets to the right people.
Thanks.

by Kamfone

I’ve used a few different investment/trading apps including Etrade and Yahoo Finance. Compared to those, this ML Edge app is far below the other apps user experience.

Here are two examples:
1) MerrillEdge signs signsoff if you are not using it for just 5 minutes. It doesn’t give you any options to extend the timeout period to something longer. Their customer service reps have said the desktop vers. allows up to 7 hours before timing out.

2) When you move to a different menu tab on the bottom of MerrillEdge , the prior tab resets. So if you were to go back to it, you would have to go through various links to get back to where you were. For example, if you have a trade ready to go on the Trade menu tab, but switch over to another tab for some reason, the Trade tab is reset and you’ll need to re-enter your trade.

Bottom line, the ML Edge app is inconvenient and needs to be improved a lot.

by J35321743631111

As a data visualization consultant, I was never really impressed by MerrillEdge . But it was serviceable. You could quickly see your top 5 winners and losers for the day. Navigation felt appropriate for each click.

Then it was updated. And the update seems to be, “show 1 thing at a time” so my top holdingS (plural in MerrillEdge )? It’s 1 holding. My biggest one. Some stupid mutual fund that barely moves. What moved today? Who knows. I could click, but then I get an indecipherable table.

It looks like this was built by a “paint by numbers” designer. Check a bunch of boxes that make it look modern. No understanding of WHY modern clean design works and how to taylor that to the audience. Cover that mis step by simply linking to a table of everything and leave the user to figure it out. Sadly, I’m sure this was really expensive and is just how it will be.

by Alanbike

Clicking on my option to sell it should serve up the usual assorted list of input and actions. Instead, it serves up a blank screen requiring me to know the symbol to proceed. If I don’t have it ready, I must enter the underlying stock’s symbol. Only at that stage does it identify my option associated with that stock and give me the chance to place an order

Another extremely annoying bug is serving up an order entry slip for the wrong stock. I have very carefully touched a stock in my portfolio and instead of it, Edge serves me a slip with the symbol of the stock one row below the one I want. I have asked witnesses to observe and they verify what I’m describing.

by Estes,CO

MerrillEdge is rudimentary and hard to navigate. I have just spent 5 minutes looking for ACCOUNT BALANCES before I stopped doing my business here to answer your rudely intrusive survey. I usually avoid using MerrillEdge , because this is my experience. You are also in the process of ruining the website experience with that awful “We are here when you need us” bug on the right side in the middle of the page, no more roll over quotes, no more hi lo quotes within the charts. Just sad colored dots to remind us of what you have taken away. Huge drop down for quotes that cover half the page, and fit poorly so the whole page becomes weird.

by BobP63

I’m a Platinum Honors customer, so I stick with Merrill Edge for the benefits I receive. To be clear I don’t consider this application one of those benefits, it’s always been very slow to launch and has a number of idiosyncrasies when placing a trade. The thing that’s driving me crazy now is the options dates are no longer in chronological order, ie their all mixed up. This problem showed up within one of the recent updates and it really makes selecting a date super error prone.

Please BofA go headhunt an app developer that has a clue how a brokerage app should work. Their are a number of brokerage companies that do a much better job with their apps, ie Fidelity is one that comes to mind.

by Marlay53

I previously had ETrade. It was so easy to read and interpret. I wish Merrill would follow their example. The reason I switched was the connection to Bank of America. I like that I can transfer money in and out of my checking account. I don’t like that they are difficult to read. I like to look back at the history of stocks I trade. I never can find that feature on Merrill. Please compare to ETrade. Perhaps you can improve your app. Thank you.

by BurberryKid

I love MerrillEdge. It’s easy to use. My only Changes would be that

1. You have the option to sell individual shares from the mobile app. What is this first in first out non-sense lol. We all don’t want to get hit by the tax man when we are selling positions.

2. The historical performance shows the principle amount and then the returns for that principle amount. If you add more principle, it needs to reflect the added principle and then the return on that capital . Can’t just keep lowering the returns when you add new money.

by MRezayat

The controls and app features give you the power to securely see real time market data while studying topics that could eventually lead to a productive trade. Secure portals and emails make it feel like your in control and there’s no incorrect data on price range and popularity that could make trading hazardous.
Thank you Ladies & Gentlemen

by War Eagle 2018

Merrill Edge offers state of the industry trading capabilities along with research and analysis expected of the Merrill brand. Linking to our BofA banking accounts facilities transfers and account awareness, which is further supported by insights provided by BA/Merrill (i.e., spending habits). Add the bonus benefits associated with account size, and it’s hard imagine a better set of bundled services.