ComplaintsforMissionSquare Retirement

• Initial Complaint

  01/19/2023

  Complaint Type:

  Service or Repair Issues

  Status:

  Answered

  More info

  I have been attempting to make a withdrawal on their web site. When I call for help they tell me they cant help other than to have me mail and or fax in a claim form. I have always done online banking with them . I live on the road and don't have the ability to deal with the delays this will cause. I need access to my funds to pay bills ans avoid penalties. Spending over an hour on the phone numerous times and they refuse to help

  Business response

  08/11/2023

  August 10, 2023

  Dear Dispute Resolution Team:
  

  This letter is in response to your letter dated January 19, 2023, regarding a complaint filed with the Better Business Bureau of Metropolitan Washington, DC, and Eastern Pennsylvania (“the BBB”).
  

  According to your letter, the BBB received a complaint from an individual stating they have not been able to make a withdrawal on an account held by MissionSquare Retirement.
  

  Upon research into this matter, please be advised the issue has been resolved and the individual has been able to withdraw funds.
  

  If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me at the contact information provided below.
  

  Sincerely,
   
  Managing Vice President
  Client Experience Operations

• Initial Complaint

  01/12/2023

  Complaint Type:

  Customer Service Issues

  Status:

  Answered

  More info

  Customer service for this company is non-existant. They essentially make it impossible to access my money by denying me access to withdrawals online and saying call customer service. However, I have called customer service 8 times today alone (January 12,2023) and waited on hold for a combined time of 141 minutes and 3 seconds between the hours of 8:45 am and 6:30pm which are their active business hours. I did not get ahold of a single human being in that time nor have my issue resolved. I also messaged them twice via their secure messaging portal today and have not heard back.

  Business response

  08/28/2023

  August 28, 2023

  Dear Dispute Resolution Team:
  

  This letter is in response to your letter dated January 12, 2023, regarding a complaint filed with the Better Business Bureau of Metropolitan Washington, DC, and Eastern Pennsylvania (“the BBB”).
  

  According to your letter, the BBB received a complaint from an individual stating they were not able to contact MissionSquare Retirement to initiate a funds withdrawal. Upon research into this matter, please be advised the issue has been resolved and the individual’s funds were withdrawn from MissionSquare per their request.
  

  If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me at the contact information provided below.

  Sincerely,
   
  Managing Vice President
  Client Experience Operations

  Customer response

  08/28/2023

  [To assist us in bringing this matter to a close, you must give us a reason why you are rejecting the response. If no reason is received your complaint will be closed as Answered]
  
   Complaint: ********
  
  I am rejecting this response because:
  

  Although I was able to receive my money, the amount of time it took was unacceptable. It should not take 9 phone calls spanning multiple hours to get ahold of someone every time I need to make a withdrawl.
  
  Regards,
  
  

• Initial Complaint

  01/11/2023

  Complaint Type:

  Product Issues

  Status:

  Resolved

  More info

  My husband died September 1, 2022, and I completed all necessary Mission Square Retirement documents to roll out my husbands and my 457 funds to ************. Mission Square ICMA will not release the funds. I have been lied to and nothing has been done. The regional vice president of ICMA, *************************, has not been forthcoming. I cannot access the funds and I am losing substantial money as I wait for a resolution. My situation is very similar to the May 6, 2022, complaint on the BBB site. I think this is criminal and legally they should have released my funds within 30 days of submitting the paperwork.

• Initial Complaint

  01/07/2023

  Complaint Type:

  Service or Repair Issues

  Status:

  Answered

  More info

  I submitted two online payment requests to Mission Square Retirement (formerly ICMA Retirement Corporation) to the new Mission Square Website in October 2022 and December 2022, for Mission Square to draft payments from my banking account at **** ********************* to contribute to my Roth IRA. In both instances, both payments were posted to my Mission Square Roth IRA as being received but in neither instance, has the payment actually been withdrawn from my checking account. I reported the issues immediately to Mission Square and am going on two plus months now without any resolution. Calling the customer service line requires you to wait for hours only to then be told that they will document your issue and someone (a Manager) will get back to you. My calls to the customer service line have not been fruitful. I reached out to a representative directly as well, *************************** in early December and have yet to receive a response other than Mission Square is working on the issue.

  Business response

  07/14/2023

  July 11, 2023 
  

  Dear Dispute Resolution Team: 
  

  This letter is in response to your letter dated January 7, 2023, regarding a complaint filed  with the Better Business Bureau of Metropolitan Washington, DC, and Eastern Pennsylvania  (“the BBB”).  
  

  According to your letter, the BBB received a complaint from an individual regarding her  inability to make contributions to her IRA account administered by MissionSquare  Retirement.  
  

  Upon research into this matter, please be advised the contributions were made with funds  withdrawn from her checking account as she requested on February 3, 2023.The individual  was subsequently contacted, and she confirmed funds did pull from her account and post to  her IRA. She did not have any further questions or concerns. 
  

  If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me at the contact  information provided below. 
  

  Sincerely, 
  Managing Vice President  
  Client Experience Operations

• Initial Complaint

  01/05/2023

  Complaint Type:

  Service or Repair Issues

  Status:

  Answered

  More info

  I have been trying since October, 2022, to have retirement funds with this provider transferred out into another one. I have called dozens of times and waited indefinitely on hold to speak to someone, I've sent messages through their secure messaging platform, and have also reached out to my previous employer's Plan Representative for support. His advice was simply to keep trying to call. My money is held up and I have no way to access it, which is completely unacceptable. There has been no business attempt to resolve my issues. The couple of times there was a response via secure messaging seemed like more of an automated answer explaining the rollover process, of which I was already well-informed, rather than addressing my specific case. I unfortunately don't have documentation to support the dozens of phone calls I've made, only the correspondence through secure messaging and my emails to the plan representative through my previous employer.

  Business response

  08/11/2023

  August 10, 2023

  Dear Dispute Resolution Team:
  

  This letter is in response to your letter dated January 5, 2023, regarding a complaint filed with the Better Business Bureau of Metropolitan Washington, DC, and Eastern Pennsylvania (“the BBB”).

  According to your letter, the BBB received a complaint from an individual stating they have not been able to roll over their *** account contributions into a new account after their employment ended.

  Upon research into this matter, please be advised the issue has been resolved and all funds were rolled out of the individual’s *** account as requested.
  

  If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me at the contact information provided below.
  

  Sincerely,
   
  Managing Vice President
  Client Experience Operations

• Initial Complaint

  01/04/2023

  Complaint Type:

  Service or Repair Issues

  Status:

  Answered

  More info

  This company is purposely delaying retirement payment (457) benefits for reasons unknown. Within the last several months, their ratings have never been above 1 star. Their customer service is sub-standard, call backs that are promised are never made and withdrawal requests are lost! There are many government employees that have funds in this retirement account company. It must be looked into ASAP!

  Business response

  08/11/2023

  August 10, 2023

  Dear Dispute Resolution Team:
  

  This letter is in response to your letter dated January 4, 2023, regarding a complaint filed with the Better Business Bureau of Metropolitan Washington, DC, and Eastern Pennsylvania (“the BBB”).
  

  According to your letter, the BBB received a complaint from an individual stating they have not been able to close their 457 account and withdraw funds.
  

  Upon research into this matter, please be advised the issue has been resolved and all funds were rolled out of the individual’s account as requested.
  

  If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me at the contact information provided below.
  

  Sincerely,
   
  Managing Vice President
  Client Experience Operations

• Initial Complaint

  12/22/2022

  Complaint Type:

  Service or Repair Issues

  Status:

  Resolved

  More info

  I transferred money from a ******** retirement account to a Mission Square account. USPS tracking shows that the check was delivered to Mission Square, along with the required paperwork, however, the money was never deposited to my account. I have called three times with no resolution. Where is my $2,000.

• Initial Complaint

  12/16/2022

  Complaint Type:

  Service or Repair Issues

  Status:

  Resolved

  More info

  My name is ******************************* and I have a **** retirement plan through the ******************* with your privately owned company. I recently turned 72 and on 9/21/22, I put in a request via my financial advisor to request two actions which were to obtain a partial (RMD) distribution of my funds and also to transfer/rollover of some funds to an IRA  Subsequently, on October 5th Mission Square staff told me that there was a block on my account which I put on it years earlier to prevent fraudulent access to my funds. In that same conversation ************************ said she would submit a case to have the block removed and that it could take 710 days. On October 13 I called and spoke to ****** who told me the block was removed. However, that proved to be incorrect because the account is still blocked. I have placed NUMEROUS calls to Mission Square since then with no success in reaching anyone. My call is put in a cue of 11 to 15 calls which never countdown to me. When I leave a call back number, I am not getting a call back. I have not been able to get this simple transaction completed. The most frustrating thing is that I have not been able to reach anyone at Mission Square. My initial service from ************************************* was very good but I have not gotten good service since.Update: I got a call back at 4:50pm Nov. 9th from Mission Sq. ********************************* who now tells me that they cannot locate any of my documents that I sent to request the distribution/rollover. However, I told her that I have an email from Mission Sq dated 9/28/22 stating they received the documents. This is more than frustratingPlease HELP.

• Initial Complaint

  12/09/2022

  Complaint Type:

  Customer Service Issues

  Status:

  Resolved

  More info

  Five days ago (12/5/2022) I attempted to access my ICMA *** and IRA retirement accounts, which had been set up for me as a retiree from the **** of ********, Arizona. My purpose was to view my required minimum distribution amount, and take a distribution. When I tried to log in, I discovered that ICMA had moved to a new system and required the setting up of new login credentials. When I attempted to do this following their procedure, every new password I created and tried was rejected until the system locked me out of access. I then called the ICMA Customer Service Line at ************** to get a login reset but was placed in a queue for 1 hour 47 minutes until my call was abruptly cut off by their system. Repeated attempts, involving (so far) five hours of waiting in the phone queue, has been unsuccessful. The system invites you to leave a call-back number if you do not want to wait in the queue longer, and I have tried this twice so far. The promise is that the call-back will happen within 24 hours. This has not happened. Federal tax law requires that I take a distribution from my ICMA retirement accounts. I need access to the accounts so I can do that. Five days of attempts to get help with a login reset have been unsuccessful.

  Customer response

  12/23/2022

  ---------- Forwarded message ---------
  From: *********************** <*******************>
  Date: Thu, Dec 22, 2022 at 1:42 PM
  Subject: Complaint ID ********; ICMA Retirement Corporation
  To: <[email protected]>

  
  Thanks for your response. I appreciate it.
  
  This is just to let you know that my issue getting my Required Minimum Distributions on retirement accounts with ICMA Retirement Corporation (now renamed ************* Retirement), has been resolved.
  
  However, it took two weeks and 30 hours (including 14 hours spent waiting in customer service phone queues) to get what I needed. On my other retirement accounts, this process took perhaps 10 minutes.
  
  I remain deeply angry with ICMA/************* for so cavalierly disregarding my need and for its willingness to waste huge amounts of my time. Please feel free to post this response, as I would want any city or county government that is contemplating using ICMA/************* as its retirement-plan administrator, to know just how poor their customer service is.
  
  Unhappily,
  
  ********************************
  ******************************************.
  Phoenix, AZ  *****
  

• Initial Complaint

  12/07/2022

  Complaint Type:

  Service or Repair Issues

  Status:

  Resolved

  More info

  Just before the end of October 2022 I separated from an employer on the east coast of Florida to accept a job on the west coast. Two days later hurricane Ian hit the general location and caused my new start date to be pushed out. Knowing this would create a gap in income I requested emergency withdraw or disaster related withdrawal from an account. I was informed I did not qualify at that time. Shortly thereafter, and packing up to move from the east coast, a second hurricane hit me and further delayed my move and created additional expenses. I followed up with Mission Square again and was assured they needed 3 days to process an online request but they just had to fix something in the system. After 3 days I called back again and they told me to mail the forms to them - so I did. I called back again after a few days and they told me to fax forms to them - so I did. Fast forward 2 more weeks, ~14 secured messages, and over 12 hours (TWELVE HOURS) on the phone and it they still haven’t begun processing my request or fixed the online withdraw request. Considering the unique and unfortunate circumstances I would have expected what would generally take 3 business days to be expedited. It has been over a month now and they will not even provide me with an answer as to why my request has not been processed. Rather, the service department informed me they didn’t even know the contact information to the processing department until that week and there was nothing they could do. The irresponsible mishandling of this has cost me close to 2k in additional fees during a very vulnerable time; juggling 2 hurricanes, moving, and starting a new job. I still have not received any clarification as to why my request has taken over a month. As an individual who serves the public I would not even want to be associated with a company which operates in this manner. I hope this statement helps others or (desperately) leads to a resolution on my own behalf.

*Some consumers may elect to not publish the details of their complaints, some complaints may not meet BBB's standards for publication, or BBB may display a portion of complaints when a high volume is received for a particular business. ↩