While working there - Paid me about half the base salary I would have earned at Merrill Lynch (if you're considering an offer from Ed Jones, go interview at ML instead). Talked ad nauseum about loyalty to their employees, but when I missed my sales goals by $300 (less than 10%) they fired me without blinking an eye. Now I could excuse them this if this is where my problems from Edward Jones ended, but its not.
After being fired, they have mistreated a number of my friends and family who became clients
They didn't pay me over $500 in insurance commissions which I was due
They made a deposit to my HSA with my last paycheck, and are claiming that I still owe them for pre-funding, but aren't competent enough to pull the money from the HSA they administer, so I have to take calls from them and explain to them to pull the prefund money from the HSA, still haven't been able to accomplish this simple task.
And finally the last straw, I had a decent amount of money in their 401k. Last week they decided to distribute this money without warning me first or giving me options. I could have processed this as a brokerage to brokerage transfer and avoided all sorts of tax issues, but instead I now have to front the tax liability of this money and put it into an IRA within 60 days in order to get my witheld money released and avoid taxes AND a 10% penalty on the money.
Horrible, Horrible, Horrible, Horrible, Horrible. Don't work here, you are just a statistic until you are grossing at least a half million a year. And if you don't make it, they'll keep kicking you for months after you're gone.
By the way, when they say that 90% OF 90% (which is only 81%, but they'll never say that) of their new hires make it, thats mostly counting ones given $5million in accounts up front. The truth is that those who start from scratch, at least half don't make it. I promise this is not an exageration, if you take a job at Edward Jones without someone giving you a chunk of their own sales book, you are more likely to get fired in your first year than make it. Hows that for loyalty?
