Forge Trust
Reviews and Complaints

It is EXTREMELY difficult to get customer service on the telephone. Response to emails is either very slow or non-existent. I asked for a confirmation of a withdrawal request and it took 2 calls and several emails to finally learn that they planned to get to it two weeks after the request was received. All of this for outlandish fees!

Note the Company Response Below: IRA Services Trust Company fee for this Investors account is currently $168 per year. This is charged at $42 per quarter (Account fee of $30 and asset fee of $12). At no time has Investor being charged fees of $500 per year. Below is the link to our current fee schedule This is technically true: my Custodial Fees are $475 for the year.

I have been a client for years - since they were IRA Services. Now they are IMPOSSIBLE to reach. Hold times are over an hour - if you can even get a representative. Help is non-existent. Online information is not comprehensive enough to avoid having to call customer service to get the most basic information. I feel as if my money is trapped there and it is hampering my ability to invest it as I want.

I manage a hedge fund and have used IRA Services Trust Company, which was recently acquired by Forge Trust, for 5 years as a custodian for investors in my fund who invest via an IRA. My experience has been outstanding. Setting up any self-directed IRA for non-traditional investments requires a significant amount of paperwork. IRA Services Trust Company has always been helpful whenever I have had a question and processed transactions as timely as I would imagine possible.

This is a hugely disappointing level of customer service. 1. I have had a request open from the 20th of December and its been 3 months with no progress. Its a pretty simple process of transferring shares from one modality to another. 2. The request number is 860707. 3. I have tried calling multiple times - the IVR system doesn't let me get in. 4. The one time I got through - the rep promised it will get done in a few days. This was on the 4th of February 5. Email, call, IVR - nothing seems to work

I have emailed and called Customer Support for help to fix my account since May . The Note on the account Note has been paid off and yet, I am still getting a 'QAF Paid Note Fee - $12' and a Qtrly fee of $50. Early in the year, I asked to switch to an annual fee withdrawal since the options were costing less to do business with IRA Services. My account balance is incorrect and outstanding Note payments are still incorrect and I have asked for help so many times. Can someone call me back or respond to my emails?

A few weeks ago I received an email stating I owe them $810 in fees and that I was in jeopardy of having my account liquidated. Keep in mind in two years I never received a statement or *** from the company. I paid the $810 immediately and two weeks later received another *** for $530 via email. Since I have left several messages without a call back. I would like to get an explanation of these fees, however I'm not optimistic I will get a return call. I'm very concerned about the customer service of this company."

I have had the worst experience with this company. Very difficult trying to get InTouch with any customer support and when you finally do hear back from someone, they are rude and dismissive of your issue. They admitted to mishandling my transactions and documents. It took them 2 months to straighten the issue out, only because I called their attention to it, and now are charging me a $150 to move my money somewhere else! No accountability, no apologies! I am looking for an agency that they should be reported to as soon as possible!

I wish I could give negative stars. I called what I thought was customer service and was presented with ads for everything from insurance to shopping for products. What in the world is this company doing? When they were IRA Services Trust, it was a completely different experience. Now, it is simply deplorable. I am big on customer service. The fact that I was not able to speak to someone let alone even a decision tree has prompted me to explore other companies immediately. I will not do business with a company that is so unprofessional.

I have been trying to reach Forge Trust for over a week now. I have tried calling, holding for over an hour only to have the call ended. I have called and put my number in the queue to be called back, only to have a return call put me into someone's voicemail who doesn't call back (has happened twice). I have submitted my questions via their website and received no response. It is literally impossible to reach anyone. I will have to figure out how to get my account out of Forge and into somewhere else as there is absolutely no customer service anymore.

This company is terrible, avoid at all cost! If ZERO stars were available, it would be too generous of an evaluation. As another reviewer suggested, try calling customer support to see what kind of support you can expect in regards to your investment. 'Due to high call volume' which is what you will hear each and every time you call, you are guaranteed to be on hold for well over an hour. Should you be fortunate enough to get through to a live 'support' representative, you will soon discover that answers to your queries vary depending on the representative you speak with. This company is NOT transparent, NOT concerned about customers, and NOT reliable.

I had to pay over $700 as late payment of property taxes that IRA services trust failed to mail the payment on time and while mailing it on the last day (April 10) they did not obtain a mail stamp from the post office. When I brought up this issue to their management's attention, they simply responded: We are not responsible for this! This request was sent to them on early April and they were aware of the fact that the mail was supposed to have a postmark of April 10, to avoid late payment penalty! You judge it for yourself! I don't think people bring in their investments to loose $700 because your irresponsible act! and when it is brought up to your attention you shrug it off by "not our problem"!

Since Forge Trust took over IRA services the costs have increased and the service decreased. Over an hour wait to talk with someone is common. While waiting one gets to hear the same out of date message about every two minutes. The staff are great, always knowledgeable and helpful. Unfortunately, they are very understaffed. Since before Covid I've been told they are hiring more people but the wait times have not decreased. The account information online is so inadequate I have to call or email to find out what is happening. Even though the staff is great and wonderful to work with, when you reach them, I recommend finding another company that will not be so frustrating and time consuming on your part to work with.

Forge Trust took over IRA Services Trust company recently which was my original trust company. In the past I was always able to talk to someone live at IRA Services Trust. Not with Forge. I owe back fees and have been unable to get in touch with them by phone to settle up with them. I spent 1 hour:and 40 minutes on hold today and never got a live person to talk to. I doubt I will hear back from them. I did a Google Map search on their company headquarters at *** Not impressed. I have decided to move my account to another trust servicing company. When I called the new company yesterday (Mainstar Trust in Kansas), I got a live person to answer my call right off. Their fees are substantially less that Forge Trust. Finally, I just got a notice in the mail that Forge Trust is raising their fees effective April.1 st, 2021. Forge Trust appears to have closed their San Carlos, CA office.

in September I completed Forge Trust forms to transfer assets from another firm to my account in Forge. I was told the process would take two weeks. I paid an 'expedite fee' of $50 to quicken the transfer. A month later partial transfer was finally made. Forge recorded the cash transfer but not the interest in a multi-member LLC (with a valuation of $350k). Since then repeated calls to Forge have resulted in different answers...the most common has been 'it is in progress'. But then an email from an Angelita at Forge indicated that the transfer docs were not received, but that the other firm indicated that the docs were sent in October and would be sent again. They were sent again in November. The other firm tells me they are in possession of confirmation of receipt. They have made two calls to Forge attempting to help me but found hold times to be too long to wait. When I call Forge the message indicates an 'approximate hold time' that is never accurate. Hold times are often over an hour. And after an hour I get the same answer...an answer with the intent of simply getting rid of me. Recent emails go unanswered. Before doing business with Forge do your due diligence. Call their "customer service" number. See what your wait time will be when you become a client at their eight hundred number, 248-8447. Study their fees. Ask how often they send statements. They are not helpful. And I continue to try to find my $350,000 LLC.

Sadly, I have to agree with the poor reviews below. A private company I have an investment in suggested I set up a self-directed IRA at IRA Services, and now I have had this account for several years . They may be good at working with the private companies, but I have consistently felt they lacked in their customer service toward the individual investor. IRA Services has been nearly impossible to reach via phone. They are not good about follow up and communication even when errors have been made. When I really need to get their attention to get something done, I have to reach out to the company I am investing with to get any movement. This shouldn't be the case. Their online chat is pretty good, but that is only for minor questions about fees or documents, not specific questions about my account, and, honestly, sometimes I don't have time for all of that when a phone call should take care of things quickly. Further, when it comes to my money, I usually prefer to talk to a real person. I, too, think the fees are a bit on the high side, but I would understand that for the specialty services if they treated their clients like specialty clients. By comparison, I pay less in fees at Charles Schwab, have less money invested there, and get far superior customer service any and every time I call. With all of that said, the last straw for me has been that IRA Services sold themselves to another company and in doing so changed their name to Forge Trust without so much as a word of announcement to me about it. They simply sent my monthly statement in the new name without any mention of IRA Services anywhere in the email. It totally appeared to me like a fishing email in my inbox. Luckily I did a search to see who Forge Trust was before just erasing the email altogether. Huge miss! How could a company be so cavalier with someone else's money?