Great-West Life Retirement Services

Even though this company seems to provide 401K accounts for Intuit, it doesn’t fully support automatic downloads of account information into Quicken:

Empower is absolutely dreadful to deal with. Move your money elsewhere if you can.

Too bad «no stars» is not an option because that’s my impression of their customer service. I’m involved with a 401(k) with G-​W, now Empower Retirement, and there were problems that no one brought to my attention until I asked about the status of a 2015 RMD despite early correspondence to both G-​W and Empower about the account. To make bad matters worse, I waited at over 10 minutes to speak with a manager about this who then hung up on me when I mentioned I had just talked to my attorney about the situation. Not good.

There’s a reason everyone has a bad review of their customer service. They don’t have friendly or helpful customer service reps. I was driven into using their services because the old company I worked with transferred me into their accounts. I didn’t have access to my account and there are annual maintenance fees associated with their accounts. I would recommend everyone avoids working with these guys. Charles Schwab is my preferred broker and I’ve used them for years. Hopefully other people don’t have to deal with these 401(k) customer service reps. they will only tell you to will out more applications.
I am closing my account as soon as I can!

If you are a company looking for retirement to offer your employees, go somewhere else. This company is terrible. Awful doesn’t even begin to describe their customer service. They will do whatever they can, even refusing legally-​binding electronic signatures, to hold on to participants money. They make it nearly impossible to withdrawal your vested money, and refuse to communicate with participants when a request is made. I personally am filing a complaint with the Attorney General’s office, but in the meantime, I suggest looking elsewhere for retirement services.

I started working in January. It took me 6 months of emailing, phone calls and letter writing, as well as numerous meetings with HR to even gain access to my 401(k) account. As an example of this futility, I requested my initial PIN required to log in. I received a letter over a week later that provided me with the valuable and insightful information that I had requested my PIN. I was told on the phone that I needed to wait for this letter to provide this information, and another phone call told me that they couldn’t release that information over the phone, only through the letter. Imagine my frustration then when I waited for a letter that simply told me what I already knew, that I had requested a PIN. Was I ever provided the PIN? No. So I need to continue logging in with my full account information and social security number every time I want to access my retirement funds. Of course, if I enter an extra space or flip a number, I am conveniently locked out after one incorrect entry. ONE ENTRY. I feel so comfortable knowing that my money is locked away deep within the bureaucratic mess and nightmare that is Great West — if I can’t even access my own account, how could anyone hoping to steal money?
What a nightmare firm to deal with.

If I could give 0 stars I would. From what I understand, this company is now known as Empower Retirement. That’s who I’m complaining about.
My fiancé’s mother passed away in February. She had a plan through Gillette, which was purchased by Procter & Gamble. My fiancé submitted the required forms along with a completed W9 — over a month later it is still excuse after excuse as to why they will not send him his portion of the inheritance from her plan.
Every time he calls for an update there’s a new excuse why they can’t send the check out until «next week». Initially he asked if he could leave some money in to continue investing but they said he couldn’t. Then he asked if he could take it little by little and they said yes. A week later they said he couldn’t do that. So he agreed to accept a lump sum payment. Then they said he didn’t submit his w9. But he did. We even had the fax receipt to prove it. But they were adamant they did not have it on file. So he sent it again. Turns out they had it on file. Now it will take another week to process because there are two w9 forms in the system causing «confusion».
Then they had an issue with the paperwork he sent in and he had to have it notarized THREE times before they’d accept it! The notary was dumbfounded. Then they demanded ANOTHER w9. Then they complained that they now had 3 w9’s in the system even though he kept telling them he already sent it in and they confirmed they had it — not once, but twice. But they refused to process his application until they got another one. OMG! It feels like a bad joke — I’ve never dealt with such lunacy.
My fiancé finally demanded they start recording all his phone calls because he was getting sick and tired of the lies and bogus excuses. I told him they wouldn’t record the calls — no way — they know what they’re doing and they certainly don’t want a record to prove it. Self-​described supervisor after supervisor assured my fiancé all his paperwork was in order and everything on his end was completed. Yesterday they assured him his check would be processed and mailed either today or Monday. I made him call in today because I just knew they were lying. He didn’t want to believe they were lying and told me he’d call Monday, but I told him «Look if you wait until Monday and they pull the same crap again you’re going to lose your ever-​loving mind!» He knew I was right so he called. Sure enough, the girl claims they don’t have all the paperwork. She says she has a supervisor on the other line and is only telling us what the supervisor is telling her.
So once again, no check and no accountability. How do they get away with this??? It’s like a legitimized form of theft! I called my investment agent and asked if he could just submit paperwork so we can roll the money away from this God awful company and move on with our lives, but he said sadly that would just give them an excuse to hold up the process even longer. And it seems there is literally nowhere for you to turn to hold them accountable — no consumer protection agency or anything — if I’m wrong about this please let me know because I am ITCHING to help him file a complaint at this point. This is ridiculous! It is bad enough that he is grieving the untimely loss of his mother, but to have them play games with money she set aside for him is just vile!

Do not put your money here. Awful customer service. It pretty much takes an attorney or professional financial advisor to get anything done with this company.

This is a warning for Los Angeles County employees.
I am having the same issues as all of these people. We are attempting to roll over a self directed Schwab IRA held in the 401K County Retirement Plan. My wife was a Los Angeles County Employee who retired. They send you forms, find issues, and then send them again and again. Finally, they acknowledge that all is now in order, but they claim they sent the wrong forms and demand that you start all over. They say that the process changed 6 months ago, though they continue to send out the incorrect forms. There is in fact no indication that the process has changed in any of their published materials, and we used these very same forms to transfer three of four accounts at the same time. Including another Self-​Directed Schwab Account for the 457 Plan. They will not release the remaining Schwab account to a Personal IRA account also held coincidentally at Schwab. This will mean hundreds of dollars in commissions, and weeks, if not months of delay in addition to the two months to this point. They are demanding that I sell all the assets in the self directed 401K Schwab account for which they are the trustee, transfer the proceeds to their proprietary saving fund so they can then issue a check to who knows who. Then we will have to reconstruct our Schwab portfolio, if even possible due to the delays in processing. Their personnel do not even know to whom the funds will eventually be directed. Schwab says all they really need from Great West is a notification of release, just as they received for the other account, after which it would take just two days to do the transfers with no cost. Great West claims that there was ‘error’ that they did not catch on their end, and that the process for the 4^th account has to start all over again.
Other issues: terrible voice tree and verification process; the people who eventually answer readily admit that everyone complains about it; but no one will do anything about it. The forms themselves are needlessly complex with poorly written with ambiguous instructions. They refuse to help fill them out with preprinted fields and other help. The people who do eventually answer are useless in resolving issues such as this, and the on site ‘supervisors’ appear to have their hands tied as well. I do not believe they are acting in good faith with our accounts. I do not know this for a fact but I suspect that with these processes, they are running up fees, or otherwise profiting from the float. They are not acting like a fiduciary and in our interests when they demand that we expend funds needlessly. Obviously they will never handle another dime of any of our funds. I will let my LA County Supervisor know of the poor service. The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors are ultimately responsible. I will recommend that they consider alternative vendors such as Vanguard or Fidelity. These folks appear beyond repair.

Super tired of dealing with Great-​West Retirement Services. I have not been able to resolve a simple IRA rollover/​transfer to Schwab and they have been making me jump through hoops ever since I signed up with them. I would NEVER recommend them to anyone and would have rather kept my money buried in a mayonnaise jar in the back yard.

Horrible… very close to being an outright fraud. If I had less on my plate, I’d file a class action lawsuit. If someone else wants to file, I’ll join.
I lost 7% of my account in the 2 years they held my IRA, not through market undulations, but through Great-West’s fees. Their customer service told me the fees were irreversible and then forced me to sign their contract to transfer my funds. Their contract was completely one-​sided and they told me they would keep withdrawing $ 50 a year from my account until I signed their contract without making any alterations.
Be careful! They just changed their name to Empower Retirement, but I have not seen any changes in business practices.

Absolutely horrible customer service. All the posts here appear to be accurate.

Avoid at all cost. Horrible server, no understand of the history of your accounts and management isn’t able to escalate requests. You are better off keeping your money in your mattress.
They encountered a book keeping error over a year ago and didn’t bring to my attention till now. They want to charge me a $ 140 processing fee to correct their mistake. I was passed around the organization to 5 different people Travis (Sr Management), Chris and Kevin (Managers), without any resolution.
Again, avoid working with this company.

I would NEVER recommend this company.
A small non-​profit I worked for 20 years ago had contracted Great-​West to manage their savings plan (401k?).
Between myself and my employer, about $ 5500 had been deposited in that account.
Fast forward literally 20 years and the account is worth a whopping … $ 6420. (Really, Great-​West?)
I wanted to transfer that money into my E*Trade IRA account.
Delay #1: Unfortunately, they had made a mistake in the spelling of my name and I had to jump thru hoops to get it corrected before I could claim the account.
Delay #2: Instead of just taking verbal instructions or e-​mailing me the forms, I had to request the forms be snail-​mailed to me and complete them and mail them back.
In addition, they would charge me $ 50 for cashing out my account.
Delay #3: While filling out their confusing forms, I read very carefully and chose what they believed were 2 conflicting withdrawal options. To avoid any confusion, I used white-​space on the form to make a clear, concise note explaining my intentions — a child could have understood this correctly.
Nevertheless, this triggered a protracted approval process on their part.
UPDATE: After waiting literally MONTHS for them to decide how to interpret the form I had submitted, I called to find out what was taking so long.
They explained some irrelevant crap and after a heated exchange, the guy agreed to simply mail me new forms to start over.
START OVER … after months of waiting.
This begs the question, WHY COULDN“T THEY MAIL ME THE FORM BY TELEPHONE REQUEST THE FIRST TIME???
%#6@&#%$$
I DISLIKE them SO MUCH!