Mutual Fund Order Rejected (again)

My friends at TD Mutual Funds ended 2015 with a bang, by cancelling a Mutual Fund order that I had put in for my son’s RESP Account. You remember the last time I tried to do this, I ran into issues that my Trading Profile was not up to date, and thus my order was cancelled, well, it happened again, thanks to my Trading Profile (or Risk Profile).

I was following my own end of year advice, trying to put money into my son’s RESP account, and decided it would be prudent to do this on-line, and attempted to by some TD E-series Funds for the account. I put in my orders and in less than an hour an e-mail arrived outlining why my order was refused, my Trading Profile (or Risk Profile was not up to date. The cry of anguish from me could be heard in Orleans.

One of my new goals for this year, is to fight through the red tape, that is set up to stop me from getting what I want, so I dutifully called the number supplied (in the rejection e-mail), and after a bunch of “security questions”, the young man on the phone told me he could help me “update my investing profile”, which allegedly had not been updated since 2007. I could have asked what I was doing last year when “updated my profile” for another account, but I did not.

I then spent 10 minutes answering questions about my investing beliefs and ideas, of which, two of the questions were specific to this investment account (an RESP). Those  two questions were only specific in that it was, “When do you need this money” question, but I suppose they are savings vehicle specific (in an obtuse way).

Was that all that needed to be done? No! My wife also had to go through the exact same interrogation, as the account is jointly held by her and I (for my son). She then had to answer 10 minutes of the exact same questions. After about 1/2 an hour, I was informed that I was allowed to resubmit my mutual fund purchase (yes, I had to resubmit the purchase, they could not simply reuse the rejected request).

What have I learned from this:

1. I should follow my own advice, and move this account somewhere else, as I refuse to go through this inquisition again.
2. TD needs to revamp their Mutual Fund Investing profiles to cover all Mutual Fund accounts held by someone instead of forcing folks to keep more than 5 investing profiles up to date (yes, evidently I have 5 investing profiles). Given the questionnaire has 12 questions and only 2 have to do with the specific investment that is the least that can be expected here.
3. I should re-read my old posts and remind myself how painful these process can be.

A wonderful way to end 2015. For those of you hoping I write less whining and ranting articles this year, sorry, doesn’t look like that will happen.