M1Reviews of m1.com

I moved to M1 when Sharebuilder folded. I appreciated the fact it allowed for fractional share purchases, and customer support was super-helpful with the transfer process, but that ended quickly. Positions that M1 didn't support were kept in limbo for months and then cashed out without notice and for less than their value. It took weeks of arguing with customer service to apply a credit to compensate. Then I realized that you can only buy shares at market open, which is ridiculous. To be able to trade a 2nd time (at an hour before market close) you have to pay a $125 yearly fee for their M1 Plus service. I signed up for a year, and then M1 began to give the service away for free as an enticement for customers... did I get my money back? Nope, but once I complained, I did get a six-month extension (not an equal value in my book). Not to mention, trades are incredibly slow, since they use Apex Clearing as their broker (so M1 can take a cut of the trade). I placed trades at the beginning of the day today with both M1 and my brokerage account at Schwab -- Schwab executed my trades at 9:05am. M1 waited until 9:50am. Back to the yearly fee: it does earn you a 1% interest rate and 1% cashback (without it, you get zero) of course keep in mind, you have to spend/bank $12,500 before you recoup that fee. Their credit card is also a $95 yearly fee, unless you pay the $125. I have two savings accounts right now that give me 0.61%, no fees, no strings attached. They also charge international purchase fees unless you pay - but don't dare use your debit card with an overseas retailer, because that will lock your card 99% of the time - which brings us to... They only have customer support during trading hours. That's it. And you can't call and speak to a person, you can only get to them through e-mail. And if your card is locked after business hours, or on the weekend, and VISA's fraud protection service properly doesn't unlock your card after verifying any questionable transactions, then you are out of luck, VISA's automated system will hang up on you and there's no one to call at M1. Make sure to bring another card with you when travelling. The web interface is nice and clean, and placing trades (the one or two times you are allowed to a day) is nice and clean. It's 'pie-based' system (set up that way to facilitate easy fractional trades across all your holdings, much like Schwab's 'stock slices') takes a small learning curve but is easy to figure out. Their customer service began as friendly, in their early days, when they were wooing users, but now waivers between combative when you do reach them, slow to respond, or just non-existent. Remember, they only available during trading hours, so no weekends or holidays. The customer service number on their debit card rings to VISA, not M1. Also, no support for Quicken, they use Apex Clearing for their trades and Lincoln Savings for their debit card, but you can't use your M1 credentials to set up Quicken to pull transactions online using those institutions. They also used to fail to inform customers of upcoming mergers, acquisitions or if a ticker was no longer being supported, so they would liquidate positions without warning, although they have gotten slightly better in this regard. Still, keep an eye on any news for your holdings through your favorite 3rd party news service, just in case. M1 is for passive investors only and for customers with large holdings where the fees involved is a blip to them. Better services and competitive interest rates are out there if you do some research. Their credit card has a nice generous cashback program that rolls the proceeds back into stock in those companies (Target, Starbucks, Tesla) but retailers can drop in and out, and again, it carries a $95 fee if you don't use their other services. Their lending service was competitive, allowing you to borrow against your portfolio at only 1%, but that has been gone for some time, the rate is now 2.25%, and rockets up to 4.5% if don't (repeat it with me) pay the $125 M1 Plus fee. M1 is another example of another online-only bank that started strong and hungry, but now like Aspiration, Empower, etc, have trimmed their customer support to a bare minimum and needs to gouge their customers for fees for services other banks give for free or substantially less to survive.

There are a bunch of "normal" ETFs that they don't support at all even though you can easily buy them at other brokerages. Also the pie model won't let you put more than 100 stocks/ETFs in your pies (not just one pie) and you have to keep juggling you holdings to keep going. Also I thought their M1 Plus thing was a one-time payment, but turns out you get charged every year, and it's a lot of money for not much -- seems to counter their "free commission" claims.

I WOULD HAVE GIVEN 4 OR 5 STARS WERE IT NOT FOR THE FACT THAT YOU FAILED TO EVEN RESPOND TO MY WRITTEN CONCERNS REGARDING THE ANNOYING AND EXCESSIVE SECURITY EXERCISES YOU FORCE ACCOUNT HOLDERS TO TRAVERSE EACH TIME THEY TRY TO ACCESS THEIR ACCOUNTS.

I've always been a big M1 fan. The pie concept is truly cool and useful. However, I decided to for a few reasons: 1) I pay $125 and I don't really benefit from it. 2) Two trading sessions? Like... seriously? 3) Unable to restructure my pies without blowing up the stock history. For a prototype, OK. For M1, not OK. Why in the World can't I move stocks around pies without messing up the history? That makes no sense. 4) The UI feels "heavy", and with a lack of information at the user's fingertips. My biggest beef is 1) not being able to buy/sell when I want to 2) not being able to control and organize my portfolio at will.

The autopay function on the credit card has not worked for the last 2 months (April/May of 2022). Last month it took M1 multiple business days to process my manual payment after their autopay system failed which led to me not being able to use the card for approximately a week. I missed out on approximately $1000.00 of reward eligible purchases because of this. Not the end of the world, but that is the reason I use this card. There is an option to leave a voicemail in an inbox that is checked by decision makers at M1, I did that and suggested that they look at my purchase history and credit me rewards equal to an average week of purchases (which still would have been less than the week in question as I was traveling for business that week) but never heard back and never received a credit. I checked on 6/1 to see if my May balance had been auto paid, and it had not. I'm not impressed.

I think it’s funny that I hold an AMEX Gold Card, Apple Card and could get approved for any other card. Credit score is 780 and I still get denied for you “Owner Card”? Bunch of rubbish. Honestly I’m tempted to move my account to my primary at Schwab because I’m not seeing the value with M1 anymore. You guys were doing the fractional share thing but everyone does that now. The single trading window that buys at the peak every morning is whack. The whole stock market isn’t available on your platform and then M1 had the audacity to increase M1 plus to $125 while providing no additional value. Once again I even have the American Express Investor Card but get denied for M1s card. It’s comical.

Customer service follow up nonexistent was told I was going to be called no one called sent over 8 emails about my issue

I'm giving it a two star. The concept of the product is great but it is ridden with many bugs that is not acceptable for a financial product. I've reached out to customer service regarding mismatch of cost basis in January 2022 and I am still waiting on you to resolve this (it has been 6 months). The cost basis determines the amount of taxes I will need to pay when I sell the securities so you can understand why it is important to get these information correct. If M1 can improve on their quality control, I will be a long term customer and even transfer all my money over. However, due to many experiences with bugs, I am not confident with your product and is considering moving my money out of M1.