FU, AB Funds!

The BBQ Pit
1

First it was the phone calls… “AB Funds” always from a different number. Then it was the emails from “AllianceBernstein”. Now I’m getting snail mail from them. I googled them and AllianceBernstein supposedly is legitimate but they have a section on their website about scams impersonating them. I DO NOT HAVE AN ACCOUNT WITH THEM!

Supposedly they want me to vote as a shareholder. WHAT??? Anywhere else I’ve invested, they ask me once, I throw away the mail, and they don’t bother me again.

STOP IT ALREADY!!! I never picked up the phone. I never responded to the email. I threw away the snail mail. I never had an account with whoever they are.

STOP IT!!!

2

Good luck. My guess is that a spammer got hold of your name and number and will try to sell you something if you ever pick up. Never answer those calls! Then they’ll know they’ve got a live one.

Is it always a different phone number, and sometimes even a different area or country code? They have thousands of numbers so blocking them won’t help. I had a similar problem and would get 2-3 such calls per day for a couple of months. It eventually stopped, Be patient. This too shall pass.

3

It’s been going on for well over a month, maybe two. I haven’t been tracking the dates because I figured they’d fade away. BUT NO!!!

4

Symbol AWF. It’s a high yield bond fund. Pays a 7.74% dividend annually. The dividend is payed monthly. The yield is high through leverage. You may have owned it in a brokerage account at one time or another mutual fund you had owned it. Not a scam. Not the worst if you invest in monthly paying stocks/funds to level out your income.

5

Odd sort of scam where the surface motivation is to get you to vote as a shareholder, but I suppose it could be part of an attempt to harvest identity info.

A place I invest has on occasion nagged me repeatedly to vote on a shareholder issue, both through regular mail and text messages, at least once asking me to call them on a supposedly urgent matter that turned out to be the dire necessity to obtain my vote.

6

I was contacted by AB Funds through phone calls and emails, as I had some of their funds in my portfolio. It was relatively easy to get them to stop.

7

I was harassed once to vote on some investment because there was apparently a quorum requirement on the number of shares being voted. I vaguely remember that it was converting the fund structure and apparently there was a pretty high bar such that the institutional investors alone wouldn’t hit it.