Do not use if living outside the US – StockPlan Connect Review

When attempting to liquidate my shares, my account became automatically locked pending an ID verification. This is understandable because of the size of the transaction, however the process of unlocking the account has been unbelievably frustrating. I’m 31 years old and this is the first one -star review I’ve ever left _anything_. tl;dr lost $11,000 and counting due to delays. ___ The primary ID verification procedure seems to be a standard “callback” - they call your phone to make sure that you are associated with the number they have on file. I won’t get into why this is not an airtight ID verification in the first place, but sure I’m happy to comply. Except that apparently none of the 4 different Morgan Stanley employees I spoke with are able to dial an international number. “We’ll just hang up and call you back to verify the number” and click - back to square 1. So the fallback is to send in a photo of my passport for manual verification. Still not an airtight protocol but sure let’s just give it a try - except it takes 5-8 business days to process. I needed to sell my shares when they were at a certain price. It’s for a down payment on a house, so it’s kind of important. Of course, the market changes every second, and 5-8 days of fluctuations can make a significant difference on the value of one’s holdings. I currently have a loss of over $11,000 (account still locked so we’ll see where it ends up) because of the delay. I called to ask if the verification could be expedited, and all they could do was try to call my phone number to verify it that way. Emphasis on “try”. Needless to say, they still couldn’t figure out how to dial international and here we are. This is perhaps more a critique of the service overall, but my experience thus far concludes: if you’re outside of the US, it seems wise to move your holdings to another broker ASAP, lest you end up in this position at a critical time.
Review by Chris of the Fuentes on StockPlan Connect.