Edward Jones

Without permission or authorization Edward Jones released my personal information and the personal information of my account beneficiary to a scandalous data collector (Dynata) in Plano TX. Edward Jones failed to notify me that Dynata would be contacting me and more importantly failed to obtain authorization to release my account information to the scandalous, corrupt data collector, Dynata. Under no circumstancces, regardless of Edward Jones policy, should my entire account information have been released to an unknown, unauthorized third party. Especially a third party as unethical as Dynata. Dynata has 1,230 unresolved BBB complaints. One of two possibilities exist:

Edward Jones did not do their homework before hiring Dynata or birds of a feather flock together.

I am writing today to lodge a formal complaint and ask for an investigation to be placed into one of your financial advisors, Mrs. April Pruitt, on unethical behavior on part of a financial advisor. Her unethical behavior happened when dealing with the family and my mother-in-law's financial accounts. We were introduced to Mrs. Pruitt shortly after my late father-in-law's death by a bank branch manger she was friends with. We had no idea what we were to do, as my in-laws were very private people and did not deal with financial advisors. We as a family had never dealt with financial advisors either before, so we had no idea that what she was doing was unethical. I found out it was unethical after talking to some people I knew from college who work in the financial industry. I had called your client relations and they advised to transfer the financial asset(s) that Mrs. Pruitt was managing to another advisor and to submit a letter of complaint/investigation after hearing just enough of what was going on. We tried to transfer advisors but after the advisor spoke with Mrs. Pruitt, he declined us because of his conversation. We had let him know our unique situation and why we were wanting to switch. Mrs. Pruitt has been overstepping her role as a financial advisor and multiple ways and when I started to talk about the situation in a generic sense to those I knew from college, who worked in the financial world, I realized that she was acting not only unethically but also out of her role of what a financial advisor should do. From what I know of my late father-in-law and how he was, he would have fired her from her position and transferred to another advisor.

Mrs. Pruitt took an interest in our family from the beginning due to the financial amount. She had told us that she had told her clients that she was not going to do the baseball game that Edward Jones put on because it was her husband's birthday. She turned around and invited us to it with her husband only. When we moved on to working on getting renovations started, she pushed for us to use Code Blue to install an overpriced commercial type of security system that was more than what we needed. She kept pushing it, though I told my husband I wanted to look at other options, and he decided that it had to be done her way because he knew nothing of it. These were people who had done work for her. When I found ADT and we got it for another house that we live in, my husband decided that he wanted to go with ADT instead of Code Blue because it was what we needed and was over half of the cost of what Code Blue was charging and we did not need any special door frames for it. Mrs. Pruitt was not happy that my husband requested that the contract be cancelled. She was the contact person for everything with Code Blue, including setting up times for them to come out to the house for meetings.

Mrs. Pruitt continue to overstep her bounds. She told my husband and my mother-in-law that the Power of Attorney that was drawn up by my mother-in-law's lawyer was not good enough. However, my mother-in-law's original lawyer has been practicing law for a long time and has recognition for it. The lawyer knows what he is doing, and the Power of Attorney was written soundly. Mrs. Pruitt claimed that the attorney she had at one of her seminars and had done her and her husband's legal documents needed to redo the Power of Attorney for my mother-in-law because the four pages of the Power of Attorney that was done by my mother-in-law's original lawyer was not good enough and was weak because it was not 20 or more pages long. Mrs. Pruitt also said that we needed an estate lawyer to handle property and legal matters, as well as, that we needed a younger attorney because of the lawyer's age and not being sure how long he would be in practice. Mrs. Pruitt set-up all the meetings with the new lawyer and attended all the meetings, including the one to redraw up the Power of Attorney for my mother-in-law. The new lawyer redrew the Power of Attorney and had my mother-in-law come in and sign it without her knowing what it said nor was he present to explain it to her. Furthermore, she had the new lawyer go ahead and start redoing her will, creating a trust, and changing deeds for property. When my husband talked with his mother she stated that she did not ask for any of this to be done. Mr. Baxter said that Mrs. Pruitt needed to be present when he was drawing up a trust for my mother-in-law, changing her will, and changing deeds being done. To my understanding and what Mrs. Pruitt had told myself, she had been talking with the new lawyer extensively about my mother-in-law and her accounts. Talking once again to those I knew who worked in the financial world about the gist of what was going on without giving personal details, I was told that it was unethical for a financial advisor to do this and it was outside of their role as a financial advisor.

Mrs. Pruitt decided to drop my Roth IRA because she said I was yelling at her. I remember telling her I did not trust her, and it sounded like I was yelling because my husband had his phone on speaker, and I was at the door trying to leave to go get my car worked on and she wanted to know why I said I did not trust her. My husband was over 50 feet away from me when this was going on. I have tried to switch advisors and she has worked on trying to block that. I had told her that I was going to switch my IRA to the bank, however, I found out that my bank does not do Roth IRA's. Before I could communicate this to Mrs. Pruitt, she informed my husband that she was dropping me and could not longer communicate to me about my account.

I lost faith and trust in Mrs. April Pruitt when I realized that she was too personally involved in my mother-in-law's account and family financial affairs. After speaking with my husband concerning my feelings and beliefs, he too has lost trust in Mrs. April Pruitt to do her job as strictly a financial advisor and not overstepping her bounds. When I stepped back and looked at the situation from my late father-in-law's perspective, from what I knew about him, it became clear that what she was doing would not be approved of by my late father-in-law and that she was way too involved personally. I am not sure if it is because my mother-in-law is considered a high-profile client, and this was her big break or why she is involved like she is.

I am asking that you please do a full investigation into Mrs. April Pruitt. I am asking for help to transfer my accounts to another advisor, as Mrs. Pruitt has been making it difficult to do so. I am also asking that she face consequences for what she has done, up to and including, all accounts being transferred to another financial advisor and/or either her license being revoked or her ability to hold an independent Edward Jones firm.