Yeah, this happened to me on an ACH transfer. I pulled money from another (major) bank on 9/13/24 and my account says the funds won't be available to withdraw until 10/8/24. But this is an account I've pulled money from every month (in the same amount) and not had this happen. The funds were previously available within a week, at the longest, sometimes just a couple days. So I don't get why Fidelity would flag this as weird.TL;DR
- Avoid depositing checks from your other accounts into your Fidelity account, as it may result in an extended hold on the funds (up to 16 business days).
- The same applies to ACH transfers – avoid pulling money from external accounts into Fidelity. Instead, initiate the transfer from your external account to push funds into Fidelity.
Details
One of my accounts was impacted by recent turmoil at Fidelity. Check deposited on 09/11/2024 shows availability on 10/03/2024, it is 16 business days hold. Unfortunately the check in question may look like a check fraud, it is a check to myself from a recently opened account.
Why did I write a check to myself?
In September I opened a new checking account at a nearby credit union (it has a branch a block from my place). I wanted to establish a link to my Fidelity CMA account but instead of doing proper micro deposits I decided to create a BillPay payee that corresponds to my CMA account with payment via ACH. I immediately sent a test payment of $10 but for some reason, BillPay changed type from ACH to a check.
It seems Fidelity was not happy to receive a physical check from my newly created account and increased the hold time from usual 2 business days to 16 days. They didn’t notify me about the increase of hold time. Last week, I had a meeting with my Fidelity advisor and asked him to sort out a prolonged hold on the $10 check but didn’t hear from him yet.
Fortunately, this check didn’t affect the functionality of my CMA account. Today I did a sizable ACH transfer from the CMA to another new account without any problem.
I called customer service and they said due to fraud issues at Chase, Fidelity was putting longer holds on all of their clients, and that they were getting tons of complaints (the customer service agent said it's practically every call he gets). I really don't understand what check deposit fraud in ATM's at Chase have to do with ACH transfers from another bank that one has alreading done many transfers from.
Anyway, is everyone really experiencing these kinds of holds now? Are people having issues at other regular banks or with the Vanguard Cash Plus account? Or is this just a Fidelity thing? Are funds pushed from external accounts having the same issue (the customer service agent told me he couldn't promise they wouldn't get held for a long time either).
I opened my CMA account in May, so it hasn't been that long. But holds have been reasonable, a week at most. But holding a deposit for almost a month is unworkable. Especially if Fidelity is going to be erratic about it, okay one month, nuts the next.
Statistics: Posted by cb474 — Thu Sep 19, 2024 8:13 pm — Replies 7227 — Views 1394207