TreasuryDirect

I got on this site to buy some i-bonds in late April. I misunderstood that in order to get the high rate i had to "buy now", in a big rush. I instead got the old rate and won't be seeing the 9 point whatever percent rate. You can also buy T-bills here also. The site has a security feature where they ask you questions to verify its you. I answered most of the questions when i was required to only answer 3 of the questions and remember which 3 questions i answered. I locked myself out of the site which necessitated a call to customer service. I was on hold 45 minutes but most redemptively the CSR was an American who spoke English YaY!
This site appears to be somewhat old school but there is a lot of financial education to be picked up there.

DO NOT BUY I-BONDS unless you want misery and frustration. Our $10K disappeared from our bank account but there's no proof of our purchase on the awful Treasury Direct web site. Have been trying to reach customer service for weeks, but can't wait two hours on hold. Just awful. Typical federal bureaucracy failure.

For over 20 years the site remains the same. Account access stinks, weird accounting proceedures, always formating errors on the Dashboard & PDF file printing,,, plus Bureau of the Fiscal Service hoops to navigate thru. Good News is this is a excellent safe place to save money for your Senior retirement years & I have never lost a dime. I-Bond & T-Bill one-stop shopping on a goofy platform developed last century.

My parents bought 30 year bonds that I had to cash out in 2022. I had to be on hold for 4 hours just to log in. Now I can't get my 1099 because while I got into my account with a password as well as an independent verification from them to my email I still needed to answer who was my favorite teacher. I put in my favorite teacher but it did not accept it and locked me out. I am now on hold for over 30 minutes and it started ringing thinking yay someone will answer. No one did an now silence. NEVER DO BUSINESS WITH THESE PEOPLE. I don't care if they offer 30 percent interest it is not worth the hassle. My God they won't even mail the 1099 to me. What kind of crap is that.

Treasury Direct is the absolute pinnacle of user unfriendliness. Everything about the website and the processes around it is painful.
* Setting up an account requires a special medallion signature from a bank
* The website looks like from the late 1990 and any navigation mistake logs you out
* Entered a security question wrong thrice? Your account is now locked, you will have to call someone, and any transactions incouding reinvestments are cancelled till you can jump through all their phone hoops
* You can't sell securities, you have to transfer them to your broker to sell them
* Transferring securities to your broker is a majore pain
* Ever need an asset overview statement? Doesn't exist, just print out the snapshot of the 1990 website and hope whoever wants it accepts that
* Those 1099, omg. You'd think the government would get at least their own tax forms right.

So, my wife sent me a link about treasurydirect.gov because of the attractive 9.62% i-bonds that one can purchase as investment. I took a look at the site and the first thing that came out to me is that it looks like a scam site but indepedent articles online such as money.com has articles talking about the bonds with links to the $#*!ty site.

I checked to see if we can buy the bonds at a bank but apparently one cannot do so and must buy direct. My wife wanted to put in the max per SSN and I was very hesitant especially with all the one stars. I carefully added my info and lo and behold, on the last screen of creating my account, after hitting that submit button, "Site cannot be reached"! What kind of $#*!ty server is hosting the supposedly government website?

It's already been over 20 mins and I still can barely get the site to respond on its main page. Each time I try to login, it would state: "Site cannot be reached"... WTF!

It better not have my personal info saved!

My account is locked. I called Treasury Direct only to hear their voice message first saying my wait woukd be 2 hours. After 30 minutes the message said 90 minutes. After another 30 minutes the message was 2 hours, then 45 minutes then 30 minutes, then they answered and hung up on me. I sent an email to which they responded they would not read my email unless I was logged in but I am locked out.

I call their customer service because I can't log in (not because I entered my password/security questions wrong -- no their $#*! just doesn't work period). I listen to a condescending answering machine and hold for 30 minutes while at work, only for an impatient representative hang up on me after 5 minutes. Like $#*! me right, it's okay that I waited 30 minutes for their $#*! system while at work but if I can't produce the required info in 10 seconds I get hung up on.

Also in their infinite wisdom they're only available 8AM-5PM Eastern time on workdays, cause $#*! the rest of the country right? People in the west coast clearly don't have jobs / don't pay taxes so they don't deserve customer service and must be ready to call at 5AM-2PM.

Total disgrace of an institution funded by taxpayer dollars.

Extremely poor understanding by the writers and programmers of this site. Poor understanding of the needs of a novice user. It is the exact opposite of user friendly. Apparently made by a group of overly confident idiots that didn't even seek real user advice before creating the web site. -totally not understandable and therefore unusable.
Geez people, get some help!

Willing to help simplify the site.

If you get locked out of your account and have to verify your account that takes 6 months. I wouldn't invest anything in this. Its a terrible way to invest your money because you cant get it if you need it. I couldn't image how hard it is for the elderly that don't have any help. Shame on the government for this..

I open an account about 2 months ago and I have not been able to get back into my account since. At one point after waiting for hours (which is what you have to do when you call the number that they have to call_ and I mean literally > waiting for hours!) for an answer; as soon as I got into the account and the Representative hung up the phone I was locked out Againnn. I've tried since then repeatedly to get back into my account and each time, have been locked out before accessing the information I am trying to complete. I sent an email to Treasury Direct and received a response twice th as t the site has been updated and improved for easier access_Not so!

I was locked out of my account and cannot get back in (my fault). No one answers phone, long, long, long, long wait to speak to someone and, in my case, never. Went to my Congressman's office (DeSalnier) and NO HELP! They have our money and won't help us. It was so simple when we had the Series E cerificates and could just go to the bank and cash them!

I tried to open an account and the site kept crashing everytime I went to step 3. Whenever I got to step 3, they never emailed me the code to buy bonds. When I tried to login the website doesn't load. I tried to start over the account application and they said I already have an account assigned to my ID but I have now way of logging and you can't get any help. Lhone calls are perpetual hold and emIl doesn't work. Who do hou contact... unknown... there is no help... the website sucks wind! I can't even upload my images to proov I applied for an account.
Scott W Swanson *******211

Tried to sign up tp buy high interest I bonds. Filled in all the info correctly only to be told they needed additional verification. I filled in the form provided, mailed it to the right address and waited weeks without a response. I tried to open a ticket, got the response they only accept certain cases via an email and I needed to call. I tried to call and experienced a 4 hour wait. I then got an email from them telling me it can take up to 16 weeks to resolve issues. Shocked, I continued to wait, mailed in the form a second time (still no verification they actually received the first one) and sent return receipt, Today (24 June) I received notification my account had been taken off of hold. I logged in, found it very confusing to navigate and then tried to add a second bank account. Told I needed to fill in and get verified again (same info as first time) to add a second account. This is ancient verification process and extremely poor customer focus. My opinion at this point is they are not worthy of any business, their site design is terrible and their security is failing to provide any value. POS experience not recommended to anyone, leave this place to rot on the vine.

Honestly the TreasuryDirect website has always been clunky. If you forget and use the back and forward buttons it will crash, but also If you take too long asking a question in their email form, they kick you out of the system. I was fine with dealing with all of that annoyance, but they out did themselves with Requiring you to submit a form to them via mail if you would like to change or add a bank to your Treasury account. NOT ONLY that but also have a bank official verify your identity and have them stamp their medallion signature. All this to 'protect from fraud'. That is of course total BS. You have to mail a form with all your bank acct information and your SSN and pray the post office doesnt loose that. There you have it, TreasuryDirect protecting you from fraud by exposing you to identity theft.

Site is about a 7 on a scale 0 through 10. Good luck if you need customer service, todays wait time was one and a half hours. Please hold, your call is not important to us.

It cant get any worse for a UI for a website. Freezes, crashes, typical. Gov type site. Good thing we are forced to pay taxes to have service like this.

Getting an account opened is hard. I had to open a new checking account with a new bank to get the Form 5444 Signature Guarantee signed since three of my existing banks refused to sign it.

The website is bizarre. Crazy colors, fonts, at least one bad link, and technical language throughout. The login process uses a on-screen virtual keyboard you click with a mouse. You can't store this password in your web browser or type in your password with your normal keyboard. You cannot even view the password before submitting it, so be super careful clicking the on-screen letters with your mouse. The site also uses a single contact method (email) for two factor authentication even when you know your password, so never lose access to the email you used for setting up your account.

The site will ask you repeatedly for your identity challenge questions even if you enter the right password. It is very important that you record the answers you gave to your challenge questions. If you get this wrong, they will lock your account and you have no way to get to your investments besides calling them. Current wait times are over 2 hours for phone assistance.

After calling the customer service number 6 times and putting on hold for over an hour but never getting to speak to anyone, I still do not have access to my account after they withdrew 10K 4 months later - DO NOT give them your money

Unbelievably horrible site and even worse support. Because there is none.

It it going on 6 weeks and I cannot get thru. I opened an account and used my legal address. But it didn't happen to be the one at the time I files my income tax. So I was locked out of going further.

After 4 times of 2+ hours on hold (yes... 2 and more hours) where one has to listen to the constant sound of the phone ringing (yes really... and the voice saying ever 30 or 45 seconds how important my call is to them) I had to hang up. I did get thru once (after 55 mins and what was the 3rd of actually 5 calls) only to be told TD is not the one who can verify my address, change my address, or even delete the not-yet-activated site. So I am stuck.

So per TD, I land-mailed the information some other (non-. Gov) service requires to approve me (or not!) yet still get a "you are not approved... send in the following information" if I try to log in. If I try to open a new online account... I get a message that the account exists. Well, I DID send the info but there is no way to contact the service which does the verifying to know where it stands. I just tried TD again. The message says wait time is 2 hours and 45 minutes. The hours for the TD.gov site are very short, only work days, and only during work hours; which makes calling in even more difficult.

Unfortunately one can ONLY get I-bonds thru TD. Not the bank(s) or any where else. Horrid, horrid, horrid. Even for the government.

If you make a mistake on your bank account number, You AreDone! Can't correct on line or over the phone. Can't get through over the even if you could change over the phone. You have to send in paperwork which they tell you can take up to 16 weeks to process and change!
ABSOLUTELY RIDICULOUS!

When my Credit Union stopped cashing paper bonds I created an account on Treasury Direct and following their instructions I created two manifests totaling 52 bonds. I sent them to them through USPS signature required. Two days later at 7:35 AM verified by their tracking number the packet was put into Treasury Direct's PO Box. After twelve weeks of not hearing anything and seeing nothing happening on my account and having several unanswered emails I called them. After an hour wait I finally got to talk to someone. I explained my situation and he asked for my social security number and quickly told me that there was no trace of my paper bond conversion and suggested that I submit the lost bonds form 1048 and 3500 and report them lost. I did that several weeks ago and again no response from them. Bonds that I bought 30 years ago when a 401K was not available to me are now maturing. So now I have bonds that will be maturing monthly though April of 1995 and are now lost somewhere at Treasury Direct. Lessons learned I tried what would be the easy way and did not want to open another bank account. Hopefully someone reading this review will proceed with extreme caution.

Thankfully my password manager can bypass the horrendous virtual-password prompt. Using the back-button on the site while logged in will INSTANTLY log you out. Be warned