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Tosh Mcintosh - Smith Barney Tosh Mcintosh - City Group Smith Barney La Jolla Village Drive San Diego Bad professional practice as a financial planner, ask us to transfer all accounts, not succeeding, then ask us to get out and smack us with a big termination fee San Diego California
We were introduced by one of his buddies also worked in Smith Barney as a financial planner in November 2006. After we met couple times and after we were slow in transferring all accounts to him as he suggested. He gave us a call and said that he does not want to manage our account any more early last year, and asked us to transfer our account out.
We were shocked to hear that mainly because we were just too busy with other things in life and never got to it. However we are not the type of people who would insisted on something that other people does not want. Respecting what he wanted us to do, we started looking for another place to transfer the account.
The transferring process was made by Smith Barney to be very time consuming and exhausting for us. They held papers for month and would not let the account go. We started the transfering process in early April 2007, the account did not get transferred until lat week, and that is more than 10 months.
During the time period, we called Tosh Mcintosh and asked him why Smith Barney would hold the account and not to let it get transferred as he wished. He said it was the problem of back office, nothing to do with him. However, by talking with employee also from Smith Barney, we were told it was his BS, basically he was the one who was witholding the paper. Even if that comment is subjective, at least, he never showed any willingness to help during the whole process.
And what a nighmare and what a painful process that we had to go through trying to transferring out that account! We filled out countless forms and papers in countless times because Smith Barney would just simply say they did not receive it, even when we sent the mail by signature confirmation. I would never want anybody going through this torture which is the main purpose for this report.
However not only that, after all that lengthy and painful process, finally we got the statement summary from SmithBarney saying our account was transferred, but unfortunately because Toshi Mcintosh does not want us to be our financial consultant any more, we ended up paying for more than hundreds of "termination fee" and account "custodian fee" which was charged in December 2007. (No wonder they did not want to release the account earlier!)
You know what is another great coincidence? the interest money earned from the whole account was just enough to cover the fee charged!
If it is a termination fee, shouldn't it be paid by Toshi Mcintosh who was the person who wanted to terminate this account? I even have the email from him as the proof.
So is this a good professional pratice for a financial consultant? I do not think so. What do you think?
But should I get people to think twice before they sign up an account with Smith Barney's financial accountants so they will not make the same mistake as mine? Definitely Yes. Otherwise my own concience will be eating me up even though I still like the guy. By the way, he is likable.
Just a caution for you before you hire anybody from Smith Barney as your financial consultant. You might be involunteerly fired and ended up paying for a big termination fee as well.