I’ve had the worst experience with Fidelity as an estate administrator out of 6 banks I’ve dealt with.
After submitting the initial death certificate for my father they made us wait 30-45 days to process the certificate. Tried calling around 25 days just to confirm that was real and yes it was. Then after 40 days I tried calling again (note they never once called me), they finally said they are sending a beneficiary affidavit. For the other 5 banks this process took 7-14 days maximum. Fidelity waste an additional 16-33 days of our time.
Fill out the beneficiary affidavit, it asks for contact information for our dead grandparents, aunts and uncles? No other bank asked for this information, seems totally unnecessary. Filled it out anyway. Made sure to take pictures of the forms. Faxed it to them so it would get there more quickly. No response. I wait 3 weeks, call them, they say to try calling in another week. Another 28 days wasted.
I call again a month after faxing in the beneficiary affidavit. They claim they will finish reviewing it while I’m on hold on the phone. Then they absolutely insiste I write “not applicable” on the surviving spouse section and send it back again. Now, this sounds reasonable at first however there are 4 other places on the form where it says he has no surviving spouse, I put a check mark in the “no surviving spouse” box. I filled out only the sections that say “fill out only if no surviving spouse”. So it makes sense that I left the “surviving spouse” section blank because that person doesn’t exist! Not to mention that the death certificate itself also says no surviving spouse on it!
So now I have to refill the entire form again, by hand, and just add the words “not applicable” (which by the way the form never instructs you to do this! They just expect you to read their minds). And I have to take time off work to get this thing notarized and faxed (more expenses). All so Fidelity can hold onto the money longer and send us around in circles.
There really should be a lawsuit against Fidelity suing for lost opportunity costs with how long they intentionally delay all of this. I’m certain they will now make me wait another month and tell me something else is wrong with the form I filled out correctly. No other bank did any of this to us. It’s beyond ridiculous and I’m going to look into suing them if this continues.
I’m also going to never invest any money with them and tell everyone in my life to never use Fidelity because of how bad their customer service is and how difficult this process has been compared to any other banks.