Ameriprise Financial Washingtonian Blvd, Gaithersburg

Ameriprise Financial Reviews

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  Shannon j
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  I utilized Steven's services for a little more than two years. During this time, I noticed that his communication skills were generally poor in regards to explaining financial concepts in layman's terms. However, he was responsive to requests for additional information about potential investments, for example, sending me a prospectus to help me decide on a specific investment. While I was with Steven, I got married. My husband and I both depended on him to help us make sound decisions regarding our investment portfolio, which turned out to be a mistake. We allocated a fixed contribution for him to invest on our behalf, working with him to set up a portfolio that included IRAs for both of us. When tax season came around, our tax professional informed us that we had incorrectly contributed to our IRAs, and that we would have to move money between accounts to correct this and avoid penalties. Steven was provided at the outset with all of the information necessary to avoid this situation when setting up our investment portfolio, and was thus negligent (or perhaps merely incompetent) in his role as financial adviser. I contacted Steven, who agreed to make the necessary adjustments to rectify our situation. To our surprise, he then charged us a highly dubious fee for transferring money between accounts, essentially asking us to pay for his mistake. This was unacceptable! Steven had full access to our accounts and charged the fee without notice. When I confronted him about the extra charge, he smugly laughed and acknowledged that it was his fault the we had to make the transfer. Later he left me a message apologizing and telling me he should "send me a plant or something." There is no excuse for supposed professional to behave this way. Needless to say, we went out and found a new financial adviser we could trust to help us with our money and moved it away from Steven and Ameriprise. As a final shocker, Steven charged us $100 per account to move the funds. Other financial professionals we have consulted with on this matter have indicated that this fee is nonstandard, leading us to conclude that Steven made it up as a punitive measure for us taking our business elsewhere. Let me be clear about that: Steven Rosner in my opinion has committed theft on us in his capacity as our financial adviser with Ameriprise. This is arguably the most serious breach possible of the fiduciary relationship between client and financial adviser. We chose not to pursue legal action against Mr. Rosner because we felt that a) it would likely cost more in time and legal fees than the dollar amount in question and b) my husband and I simply did not have the energy and wanted to move on with our lives and try to forget about our experience with Steven Rosner and Ameriprise. In summary, I cannot recommend more strongly against working with Steven Rosner, and by association, with Amerprise. We found Mr. Rosner to be a poor communicator, incompetent at his job, and shockingly immature and unprofessional when things went wrong. This experience has also led us to believe that Ameriprise does not care about customer satisfaction at an institutional level, as it is clear that Mr. Rosner's behavior was either tolerated or perhaps encouraged by his superiors. If you value your money, stay away from both. .