To provide some hope, I went back to see and son did get online access before the end of 2023 tax year. So, it didn't take as long as feared.Who knew I needed to plan on it being a year-long process to transfer access from my son's minor account to a new "adult" account? If I'd known, I would have certainly redeemed all of them before he turned 18!
I wanted to share our current experience with TD as another data point for people to consider.
We are trying to establish a new account for son to transfer his I bond holdings held in his minor account. He recently turned 18. We carefully created a new account, but Treasury Direct promptly locked the account right after it was created as they did not recognize his identity (no credit history, I presume) and had to fill out form, get notarized and mail it to them. We promptly mailed the form in and 12 days later got the above email today.
Prior to this process, we have not had any issues with TD, but have read about the many issues others have had during COVID, 'peak' demand for i bond period, 'normal' times etc...
Our intent was to create a regular TD account, sell his I bonds (while in 0% tax bracket) and either gets some new I bonds with better fixed rate or invest his savings differently. Guess that may not happen this tax year.
Meanwhile, at the same time as the TD process, we created a new account with Fidelity, linked a savings account and transferred money from it etc...all in one day.
This has been a time consuming, illustrative process for my son (and us) so far and certainly dissuaded us from doing further savings/investing with TD.
I am concerned because he mailed the notarized form to them over a month ago and he has NOT received any email like the one above saying that they received materials. Given the craziness going on with the mail, I have no idea if the form has arrived or not!
He will need the money in August, so now the question is how long do I wait before trying to find out if they received anything?
We can afford to fund his junior year, so this is only an inconvenience. I find it horrifying that this could be happening to someone dealing with the death of a spouse or a young adult with a locked account who NEEDS the money quickly.
Will be contacting my congresswoman in the morning to complain about the general situation, and will try calling to see if they can tell me if they received the form.
This is what he received when they locked his account (no mention of an email when they receive the form):
...You will not be able to access your account online until we approve your mailed account authorization form. We are unable to answer questions about your account or the status of your submitted account authorization form over the phone or by email until your account authorization form is processed.
After we receive and approve your account authorization form, the hold on your account will be removed. The average approval takes up to 13 weeks from when we receive the form but may be longer based on the volume of forms we receive. You will be notified by email when your account is authorized and ready to access. When you log into your account, check the Investor Inbox section of your TreasuryDirect account for an important message.
To ensure continued delivery of TreasuryDirect related information to your e-mail inbox, please add the ""From"" address Treasury.Direct@fiscal.treasury.gov to your address book.
Thank you for using TreasuryDirect.
Nonetheless, I am still wary of doing business with Treasury Direct.
Statistics: Posted by LFT_PFT — Sat Feb 15, 2025 10:48 pm