Merrill Lynch Investments changed to EWC, failure updating from direct connect.

On 07/18 I received a notice to "Reauthorize" my Bank of America Accounts. I have 20 Accounts (both checking & investment accounts). When I finally was able to get to the process to Add or Link Accounts, I obviously wanted to LINK all accounts to my existing accounts. Unfortunately, the Link Accounts that were provided in the dropdown box was never the right accounts. It seemed to always be only (2 or 3) different accounts but NEVER the account, I needed. I even saw accounts that had been closed being shown. Therefore, I selected the option to IGNORE ALL ACCOUNTS which basically aborted this reauthorization process.

Forced to change the connection method for my five Merrill Lynch accounts, I did the login via browser window successfully, but back in Quicken, the "Link to existing account" option was never presented from the various dropdowns for any of these accounts. How do the Quicken people plan to fix that?

For now, I'm not changing anything.

And on a side note, I have five Merrill accounts. Quicken has downloaded everything from these accounts since the day each was opened. Not one of them is correct in Quicken; some are wildly inaccurate. Some want placeholders, others are looking for share prices. I have never edited anything in these accounts. Why they are off by so much baffles me. And, of course, I have no idea what to do about it.

Like 'weikosteve' above, I was able to reauthorize my ML account about three minutes after his post… but not without some confusion/error.

The reauthorization process worked as it should have. Quicken then showed that transactions for the past 1905 days were downloaded. So far so good. I was next shown a window in Quicken titled 'Securities Comparison Mismatch'. Further detail showed 'ML DIRECT DEPOSIT PROGRM' Shares Reported : 110 Shares in Quicken: 0. ( I never did figure out what this meant.)

I clicked on 'Done' and was taken into the regular Quicken screens. All looked good, but upon comparing the ML account balance with what ML showed (when I logged in), the balances did not match. After studying the ML account's transactions in Quicken, I saw that one of my dividends from July 7th, which had already been downloaded several days ago, was showing up again, this time as a Deposit… causing my actual ML account and Quicken's records to disagree by the amount of that doubled up Div/Deposit

My solution was to simply delete the duplicate/erroneous Deposit entry.

All is good now.

Not downloading the fractional shares would be really, really troubling. After converting to EWC+ this morning, I haven't had any transactions yet to see how fractional shares are downloaded.

I've been a Merrill client for over 20 years and this rings a bell that this had happened in the distant past after Merrill made a change to their systems. The fractional shares were stored in the memo field which didn't do anybody any good. At the time, I sent my account team a sharply-worded email that my relationship with them was at risk if they didn't work internal contacts to get it fixed. I had to manually edit the transactions until it got fixed. Let's hope that's not going to happen again.

I tried to add two new Merrill Accounts that were opening the end of June. The accounts were downloaded but none of the transactions from the start date were included. I got a list of the securities with no cost basis and asking me to do placeholders on each security. I want to be able to download all the transactions from the start date.

My wife and I have individual accounts at both BA and ML. Our BA accounts used EWC+ and our ML accounts used DC. I reset the connection on my wife's ML account and saw the BA accounts listed as available to link. I did not, at first, so as to not screw them up. The ML account linked okay with the exception of a dividend reinvestment transaction, the subject of the message above.

I reset that ML connection and enabled her BA accounts after authorization. I was able to link all of her BA/ML accounts on a single ML connection. That seems to work.

I then deactivated the DC connection to my ML IRA and attempted to reset the EWC+ connection of one of my BA credit cards, without deactivating it. After authorization I was offered to connect only my current BA accounts. I canceled, deleted that bank in account details, and tried again using "Bank of America - Quicken". The result was the same.

My next step was to set up online banking on the ML IRA using "Merrill Lynch" which, now, supports only EWC+. While all BA accounts were offered for connection after authorization, I did not select them. I want to keep the ML EWC+ connection separate from the BA EWC+ connection for comparison of my bank accounts to my wife's. I suspect that I will be able to consolidate all connections on the new ML EWC+, reducing the total number of BA/ML connections by half, but I want to test, first.

After multiple failures w/ this…reverted to backup file and using webconnect for 3 merrill accounts and 2 Bank of America accounts until this is fixed

@jtemplin

I have five ML accounts: IRA, SEP, and three 529 funds. All of these accounts are wildly inaccurate in Quicken. Some want info for placeholder transactions conjured up by Quicken, others say there's a mismatch between what ML says I have and what Quicken believes I have. I have never, ever made a manual entry for any of these accounts, because I wouldn't have a clue what to enter to make then agree with ML's numbers. It's ridiculous

While BofA one-step-updates have consistently worked, ML stopped working ages ago, so instead I download the transactions from ML into quicken format for the range needed and when I click the downloaded file they magically make it into the corresponding ML account in Quicken. Found it a lot less time-consuming than dealing with both ML and Quicken for too long without resolution. Was told the issue might be because they are Merrill Edge accounts versus another type. Haven't yet been asked to authorize for the new connection type but perhaps it will help.