TIAAReviews of tiaa.org

I've been an investor with TIAA CREF for over 35 years and up till this week, was satisfied. However, post covid, with office closings and the move to online and phone in contact, makes customers feel less valued. I prefer face to face customer service, because that's part of what I'm billed for. I've found a new company, who does business the old way and am going there

I am a long time customer of TIAA but am shocked at their poor customer service and lack of technology, especially compared to their competitors. I have IRA accounts an a number of brokerage firms and TIAA is by far the worse. Last week I wanted to change the beneficiary of my IRA accounts. At Vanguard and Fidelity this took 10 minutes on-line. Not at TIAA - they send you a form that you have to fill out and can fax it back to them. And even then, it is not clear how long you have to wait for confirmation. Huh? Why? Even the customer service agent admitted is was backwards and behind the times. I sometimes write checks out of my IRA as a withdrawal. No problem at Vanguard and Fidelity. Not a TIAA. It is forbidden. Why? The customer service agent had no idea. It is clear that TIAA is technologically backwards and not very customer oriented, Recent newspaper articles confirmed some of their misleading practices. I was going to transfer a large sum of money into their high yielding money marker accounts but have dropped that and have encouraged others not to use TIAA. They may be fooling their educator customers but I will keep working on my education colleagues to quit using this firm

When we were shoving money in our accounts for decades, they were very quick to respond. Now that we are living on our savings and investments, this TIAA crowd can't get straight answers to us. We've had 3, 4, 5 different "consutlants" assigned in the past 4-years. We can't even get statements as detailed and well formatted as you get with an order of lumber from Home Depot. I can go on and on. Maybe it is just us... but it is almost scary how poorly their client service is today. All while they have their hands on a small fortune saved over the past 30-years. Our small fortune. We just assumed they were "Pros". We were wrong. This is our personal experience. Yours may be different.

Terrible waste of time if you need to claim. They don't send the forms and make it really complicated to get your money.