Merrill Edge (BoA) vs Charles Schwab

[eastsea]

I currently have Bank of America checking and saving accounts and a TDAmeritrade Brokerage account.  My original plan was to transfer the TDAmeritrade account to Merrill, not so much for the bonus (though it is definitely nice) but for the ease of management.

However TDAmeritrade recently announced it is becoming part of Charles Schwab.  My limited research indicates Charles Schwab has much higher customer satisfaction but I can't find anything tangible that makes it better than Merrill Edge.  

Any thoughts and opinions?   

[VPExecutive]

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@eastsea wrote:

I currently have Bank of America checking and saving accounts and a TDAmeritrade Brokerage account.  My original plan was to transfer the TDAmeritrade account to Merrill, not so much for the bonus (though it is definitely nice) but for the ease of management.

However TDAmeritrade recently announced it is becoming part of Charles Schwab.  My limited research indicates Charles Schwab has much higher customer satisfaction but I can't find anything tangible that makes it better than Merrill Edge.  

Any thoughts and opinions?   

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The website interface looks much nicer for starters. Schwab has a beautiful website, nice app, and clean interface that's being constantly improved. 

Schwab is the customer service satisifaction pusher in the industry... They started the $0 trade trend and everyone else followed suit. Merrill is simply a BoA puppet (since they're owned by BoA), although the customer service is quite better than on the retail banking side. I don't understand why anyone would opt for a BoA checking account instead of a Merrill CMA. 

I had two overdraft fees from Schwab in one day and they reversed them both, no huffing and puffing from the rep, or a rant about how it's a one time courtesy. 

From my experience, Merrill will hold your checks for many days before making the funds available... Schwab just matches the amount you have in your checking account and makes that portion of the check available, and the rest the next business day. 

Merrill has what's called a deferred debit card, which is cool in theory. Debits are taken out of your account once a month so you can continue to collect interest on the balance, a pretty cool feature. 

[wasCB14]

I have brokerage accounts at Fidelity, Schwab, and Merrill Edge. Fidelity and Schwab are pretty close, but Edge is vastly inferior. I keep $1 in my BofA checking account and use Schwab for actual checking.

I opened Edge before Fidelity and Schwab went to $0 commissions. I think BofA originally gave free trading on Edge because they figured savvy customers would go elsewhere unless it was free. I am, however, in a cash promo at Edge and just got a Premium Rewards card. I don't plan to close Edge, but I don't expect to trade much there in the future.

Fidelity is the only one that still offers reasonable money market options for most investors.

The best way I can describe the BofA/Merrill website integration is that it makes me feel like we're still in the middle of the 2008 financial crisis. It looks like BofA management told their IT people that they had two weeks to throw something together.