What does an advisor do?

Some idiot financial advisor came to my workplace circa 2006 advising everyone to take zero-downpayment, interest-only mortgages, which were widely available at the time and were what fueled the housing bubble.

Then use the proceeds to buy life insurance as an investment.

I recall asking him, what happens when the interest-only period expires and you're required to start paying principal? "Oh, don't worry, you can always refinance into another interest-only loan. "Obviously I did not follow his advice, and we all know how the real estate market ended up after the 2008 crash. (I ended up buying my house in 2012.)

My former adviser recommended that I, on the eve of retirement, take out a mortgage on my fully paid-for home to buy a variable annuity from her. I would have gone from having zero layers of humans between me and a valuable asset (100% equity in my home) to three layers of humans between me and my asset.

First layer was her (collecting the fat commission on that annuity). Second layer was the insurance company selling that notoriously questionable product, and lastly the fund managers of the mutual funds into which the insurance company would invest my annuity dollars. Everybody would be taking their cut, and I would be last in line for value. How did I fix the problem? You'll notice I began by describing that person as my former adviser.

My partner put 50k into investments via a well known financial services company during Covid and saw a decent profit (unexpectedly quick, but that’s Covid I guess). We have only seen shrinkage since then.

I put about 100k down about 2 years ago, it has only dropped since. My FA has never spoken to me, in fact he moved off my account without telling me, and the new advisor didn’t even intro themselves. When me and my partner tried to get time to speak to the new person it took weeks.

When we eventually got them on a call they were fine but didn’t give us much concrete, there were follow ups to be done, the FA has not followed up in 3 weeks. I emailed a week ago asking for a date for these, no response. Is this normal for FAs? In my industry I would be fired immediately by my clients for this level of service (specifically talking about the service not the profit on the investments as I’m aware that’s a long game).

Are all FAs generally incredibly slow and hard to reach? I ask as this person belongs to a large reputable firm. This far they have taken my money and charged me fees despite my investment never generating profit and never speaking to me either. While my wife has had slightly (she has spoken to the advisor once before I invested) better service, and had profit a while ago, the service is so poor.