Reviews

Doing business with this investment advisor was not a good experience for my wife and I and wound up costing us significant amounts of time and money in trying to undo their practices. After an extensive internet search and in person interviews with several other firms in Omaha, my wife and I selected America First Investment Advisors to manage our retirement assets. After only a few months with them, I learned several important facts about their business that were not as advertised. The most important of which is that while they claim to be a fiduciary they are not. When I pointed out to them that their actions were not in my best interest they agreed with me. However, the following day I received a phone call from the Chief Executive Officer and and Chief Compliance Officer, Eric Ball informing me that they do not like 'unhappy' clients and were dismissing my wife and I as clients and were refunding their fees. The following is a list of observations of their business practices after we became clients: They have approximately 250 clients that regardless of age, employment or magnitude of 'wealth', are all invested in the same assets, in approximately the same ratios. My wife and I had five accounts with them; two IRAs, two Roth IRAs and a Brokerage account. All five accounts had the same investments in approximately the same ratio. Further, when the deducted their fee for services, they deducted a portion of their fee from each of our five accounts despite the fact that our joint brokerage account was more than amply funded to pay their fee. Taking their fee from our IRAs forced us to pay an additional tax on their deduction that we would not have otherwise been required to pay, since our RMD had already been taken. Further, it prevents those investments from further tax free growth. This practice, they agreed, is not in my best interest and is in violation of their claim to be a fiduciary. This practice they tell me is applied to all of their clients.

On August 14, 2023 Mr. X contracted me via email expressing a desire to get together. I phoned him and his wife immediately that same afternoon. Mr. X had a concern about how our quarterly fees were debited to each of his and his wife’s accounts. He agreed that he had signed an agreement for us to do this, that we had sent him a bill a few weeks before we debited these, and that we noted in the bill that his accounts would be debited. His thinking was that it would have been better for him tax-wise to pay our fee from a different account. Given his continuation of this criticism during our call, it didn’t appear to me that it would be wise to continue an advisory relationship together—for him or for our company. These relationships almost certainly need to be based on trust. I politely said that it would be best for us not to work with him and offered to pay back all of their fees—fees on the four accounts he was frustrated about for the first quarter, fees on the other account were he had no issue for the first quarter, and fees on all the accounts for the second quarter (even though he had no issues with these). These cover all the fees charged him for our services, not just the fees he was concerned about. The next day, 8/15, we sent to Mr. and Mrs. X a check in the amount of all the fees we had received from them and a letter detailing what we agreed to on the phone call. They cashed the check and then Mr. X wrote us a little over month later wanting even more. We wrote Mr. X back and reminded him that he received our letter summarizing what he and I had agreed upon, that he cashed our check that covered all our fees, and that we had gone above what could be reasonably expected concerning his complaint.