Fisher Investments contracts specify an early termination fee of $1,000. This can serve as a deterrent to leaving Fisher Investments. These contracts also have a clause: Any and all Advisory Fees paid to FISHER will be returned to the Client if this agreement is terminated during the first (30) days.
On July 19th, Pamela Nevil, a sales person at the Denver office after verifying with Fisher Investments headquarters, told me that Fisher Investments does not levy this fee and it is only written into the contract to deter people from abusing Fisher Investments. I wrote her statement down and included it in an email with a follow up question. Pamela emailed back the following day that she would call back soon. When she did, she confirmed that the early termination fee is considered to be an advisory fee for the purposes of the above clause.
On December 11th, I opened two discretionary accounts with Fisher Investments. These two accounts were to be managed as one. On January 7th unsatisfied with the Fisher Investments wholesale approach to money management, I canceled my agreement with them and wrote a blog on the newspapers website detailing f Fisher Investments shortcomings.
Soon afterwards Fisher Investments attempted to collect $1,000 from each of my two accounts. They were unable to collect the money directly from the custodian, because I moved my accounts to another custodian immediately after canceling with Fisher Investments. They persisted by sending me two bills, which I promptly sent back to them with short notes.
On Friday evening, February 15th Fisher Investments legal counsel Fred Harring posted a threat to take legal action against me if I did not remove the blog and issue a retraction. It is still posted here: http://www.odessapage.com/new/ru/fisher-investments#comment-315
Several hours later I temporarily removed the original blog, while we review our options. The original blog is also being reworked into a newspaper article slated for publication in the March issue of the newspaper.
On February 22nd in an apparent attempt to intimidate me, an outside counsel for Fisher Investments filed a bogus arbitration case with JAMS claiming "breech of contract" for not paying the termination fees. Other ridiculous and baseless accusations were additionally levied in this document, including Tortuous Interference with Prospective Business Relations, Defamation, Trademark Infringement, Trademark Dilution, Injury to Business Reputation, Unfair Competition and Unjust Enrichment - none of these have any basis in fact.
I have already found others who have been harassed in a similar way by Fisher Investments for saying what they think about the company. This "money manager" seems to stop at nothing in their attempts to shut up anyone who doesn't like them.
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