I have had an account at Fidelity for many years and it has been frustrating. The salesmen have become very high pressure, getting your money out of your account is difficult - I have had to call the chairman's office 3x to get my money, and they charge you to close your account. I am closing my account this month.

I am generally fairly calm and patient when it comes to dealing with customer service people. I know they take a lot of heat from people on short fuses, and I endeavor to take a spiritual approach to life in general, including business.

However, I have not gotten the runaround from any other company to the extent that I have Fidelity, and yesterday's 2 hours of run-ins with their phone tree, disconnected and disaffected staff, and rampant misinformation and lack of responsibility led me to need to inform others.

It is taking over a month for me to get the correct information to simply liquidate my funds and have them sent to TIAA-CREF.

I have made no less than 20 calls in the past few weeks, some of them with a TIAA agent on the line to help "translate" what the Fidelity folks are saying.

The closest to a helpful person I have come is when I just stumbled by phone tree shot in the dark to a woman named Mary in a back office somewhere. She had no idea what I was talking about, said her office had nothing to do with it, but she did look at a piece of paper and give me a recommendation for where else I could try calling. Even though this also was inaccurate information and that call also led nowhere, I was literally glad that someone was just willing to take a moment to look at a piece of paper and tell me ANYTHING.

I ended yesterday's last call on the verge of tears and saying, "I feel like you guys are just stealing my money at this point". That's what it feels like. A big bully has taken my lunch money and is now just ignoring me. Except it's 80% of my retirement funds just sitting there, in cash, doing nothing, while I try to find out how the heck to get it where I want it to go.

If Fidelity offered a guaranteed 50% return over 2 years, I would not do business with them again. My trust and confidence is completely blown.

As a financial counselor, I will strongly recommend against anyone leaving or putting their money in Fidelity.