Another Vanguard problem

easysurfer said:
"I'm funny how, I mean funny like I'm a clown?" - Goodfellas
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First time I saw that, Joe Pesci scared the pants off me. That little guy has "menacing" down to an art form.


Returning you now...
 
So, I called Vanguard today to change my delivery from US Mail to e-delivery. It took 1 minute with the robot to select (IIRC) option #2 - to make the change. I got a real person (nice lady) within 2 minutes. I told her I needed to change to e-delivery and she said she could fix me right up. She stressed that we would still receive tax documents in the mail. To change over DW's accounts, I had to hand her the phone and go through the (what was your first pet, etc. verification.) With all our accounts, it took may 8 minutes on the phone.

At the end, I told the nice lady how much I appreciated her assistance. I then told her I wanted to vent about Vanguard.

I told her that changing to their new brokerage platform meant I would have more accounts requiring the $25 fee.

I told her I resented the $25 fee, in general, because I sure have a lot of money with Vanguard.

I told her that I'm seeing on social media (like here and Bogleheads, etc.) lots of grousing about Vanguard and lots of people threatening to go to Schwab or Fido, etc. She promised to pass my complaints along. I'm sure she won't as I'm sure most people like me whine to her with every phone call. Vanguard must KNOW that people are really pi$$ed at them right now. They're just sucking it up, knowing that they'll be leaner and meaner which means they can keep their fees low. It was a calculated risk and they took it out on customers.


Well, I felt better after venting. YMMV
 
Too late now, but you can change to e-delivery online, with no telephone call required. That's what I did.
 
Koolau said:
I told her that I'm seeing on social media (like here and Bogleheads, etc.) lots of grousing about Vanguard and lots of people threatening to go to Schwab or Fido, etc. She promised to pass my complaints along. I'm sure she won't as I'm sure most people like me whine to her with every phone call. Vanguard must KNOW that people are really pi$$ed at them right now. They're just sucking it up, knowing that they'll be leaner and meaner which means they can keep their fees low. It was a calculated risk and they took it out on customers.


Well, I felt better after venting. YMMV
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I think Vanguard is getting the message. Not that they will change back. I mentioned this to my Schwab rep and she said that she is hearing the same complaints about Vanguard.
I have a feeling that most places will soon be going to electronic mail outs. Between my wife's and my accounts (about 6) at Vanguard I wonder if the paper (about a reem) and ink (a black cartridge) costs over a 12 month period might be close to half of the charges for sending paper for the same time period.

Cheers!
 
Gumby said:
Too late now, but you can change to e-delivery online, with no telephone call required. That's what I did.
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Thanks. I was aware of online ability to change.

I'm sure it's best for most folks here. Since I get in there so seldom, it's always a pain to do so. By the time I get in, it actually takes less time to call. AND I just feel better talking to someone and have them confirm (on the recorded line) that I'm all set. By the time I got off the phone, there was a confirmation by e-mail of my decisions.

One thing I also wanted to check: I've read horror story after robot-hell of folks reaching out to Vanguard. I just haven't experienced that and this phone call confirmed (to me) that V is reachable and competent (I hope!)


ETA: I'm still pi$$ed at them for the fees that I've now avoided.
 
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But online is VERY fast... it comes up before it lets you into your account and all you have to do is click one box and it is all done...


I do think they pass the comments on... I had one many years ago and was surprised to get a call from some higher up to talk to me about it...


However, with this I think that unless a lot of people talk with their feet they will just (as you say) suck it up and reap the rewards... and no, I do not get to see any of the benefit of lower costs in my account as 'an owner'...
 
Texas Proud said:
But online is VERY fast... it comes up before it lets you into your account and all you have to do is click one box and it is all done...


I do think they pass the comments on... I had one many years ago and was surprised to get a call from some higher up to talk to me about it...


However, with this I think that unless a lot of people talk with their feet they will just (as you say) suck it up and reap the rewards... and no, I do not get to see any of the benefit of lower costs in my account as 'an owner'...
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I was thinking that maybe this "savings" (on the backs of loyal customers) may well be just to hold the line on costs. (IOW - not to lower prices but to hold prices steady as their costs rise elsewhere.) Naturally, I could be wrong. Who knows. Maybe Vanguard will lower their prices in the future - but I doubt it.
 
Texas Proud said:
But online is VERY fast... it comes up before it lets you into your account and all you have to do is click one box and it is all done...


[ ]I do think they pass the comments on... I had one many years ago and was surprised to get a call from some higher up to talk to me about it...[/B]


However, with this I think that unless a lot of people talk with their feet they will just (as you say) suck it up and reap the rewards... and no, I do not get to see any of the benefit of lower costs in my account as 'an owner'...
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Yeah, that was the industry practice for many years. If you want to guarantee someone higher up sees it, put it in writing. I think they still do pass those along.

I'd love to see the line item that aggregates all of Vanguard's statement production costs.
 
MRG said:
Yeah, that was the industry practice for many years. If you want to guarantee someone higher up sees it, put it in writing. I think they still do pass those along.

I'd love to see the line item that aggregates all of Vanguard's statement production costs.
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You know, even if I believed it cost them $25/year for the mailings, that seems like chump change compared to the value of the accounts being reported on. Now, maybe they could have at least started with a requirement of certain level of funds under management at V. Or, I think they could have condensed their mailings based on SSN. I think - since I had to switch to brokerage accounts - I get 8 statement which includes DW's. They could condense that to two reports with one set of boiler plate.
 
ejman said:
I changed my IRA and taxable accounts to brokerage about 1 month ago. It took me maybe 5 minutes (the screens were very easy to complete) and I really haven't noticed any issues to report. Maybe I'm missing something but so far it seems about as painless as it gets for this sort of thing.
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Me too. In fact, once I did it, I wondered why I'd resisted changing over for so long.
 
Major Tom said:
Me too. In fact, once I did it, I wondered why I'd resisted changing over for so long.
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What is missing is that some people hate change and even like to complain, especially about the very large companies that make the news often(Walmart, Vanguard, Fidelity, Chick-fil-A, etc. Some companies deserve the complaints and some are just targets for being big/different. I am glad it went well for you and maybe more peeps will try it to find out it isn't really that hard or bad.

VW
 
Hmm, I continue to read the 13 pages of this thread. I think VG is great, no issues. I guess I could complain it takes 10 seconds to sign in, then another 10 minutes to check my accounts, personal performance (IRR to date), look at treasuries and CDs, check my confirmations, take a quick look at my monthly statement, maybe buy a CD or two then sign out.
 
LOL. I did this conversion the day after they first asked, seven years ago.

The only thing I didn't like was getting two 1099s that year.
 
Koolau said:
Maybe Vanguard will lower their prices in the future - but I doubt it.
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They were the low cost leader for decades. (Yes, others have mostly caught up now.)

At least for my family, they have reduced expenses regularly over a long period of time. As one simple example, when we started investing in VFINX, I think the ER was about a dozen or 15 basis points. Now I have VFIAX which is 3 or 4 basis points. That's a 75% reduction in costs over several decades where inflation otherwise has easily gone up by 300 or 400%. So in real terms, Vanguard is about 16 times cheaper than when we started. And that ignores the better user experience and efficiency gains over that time - used to have to wait for paper statements in the mail and mail checks in for deposit - now a website and ACH or wires are much easier to do and faster and cheaper for both sides.

And those cost reductions over time ignore the fact that they were perhaps a quarter to a fifth of the cost of comparable firms back in the 90s.

And yes, again, others have caught up, and might have somewhat of a customer service edge over Vanguard. But they caught up in part due to the downward pressure on costs by Vanguard doing a better job for less cost for a very long time. So all the people using Fidelity and Schwab and other discount brokers and getting lots of good stuff for nearly free still probably have Vanguard to thank.
 
SecondCor521 said:
They were the low cost leader for decades. (Yes, others have mostly caught up now.)

At least for my family, they have reduced expenses regularly over a long period of time. As one simple example, when we started investing in VFINX, I think the ER was about a dozen or 15 basis points. Now I have VFIAX which is 3 or 4 basis points. That's a 75% reduction in costs over several decades where inflation otherwise has easily gone up by 300 or 400%. So in real terms, Vanguard is about 16 times cheaper than when we started. And that ignores the better user experience and efficiency gains over that time - used to have to wait for paper statements in the mail and mail checks in for deposit - now a website and ACH or wires are much easier to do and faster and cheaper for both sides.

And those cost reductions over time ignore the fact that they were perhaps a quarter to a fifth of the cost of comparable firms back in the 90s.

And yes, again, others have caught up, and might have somewhat of a customer service edge over Vanguard. But they caught up in part due to the downward pressure on costs by Vanguard doing a better job for less cost for a very long time. So all the people using Fidelity and Schwab and other discount brokers and getting lots of good stuff for nearly free still probably have Vanguard to thank.
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VFINX expense ratio today is 14 basis points per Vanguard
https://institutional.vanguard.com/investments/product-details/fund/0040
 
tulak said:
VFINX is closed. Vanguard closed their investor funds and moved everyone to their admiral funds.

VFIAX is Vanguard’s S&P500 fund which has an ER of 4 basis points.
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Then how can there be a YTD return of 18.01% as of 8/14/23? It is closed to new investors, but what about some old 401k plans or possible a Vanguard fund of funds that still uses VFINX?
 
Koolau said:
You know, even if I believed it cost them $25/year for the mailings, that seems like chump change compared to the value of the accounts being reported on. Now, maybe they could have at least started with a requirement of certain level of funds under management at V. Or, I think they could have condensed their mailings based on SSN. I think - since I had to switch to brokerage accounts - I get 8 statement which includes DW's. They could condense that to two reports with one set of boiler plate.
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You can get this done... mine are consolidated... just looked and finally found them online... total of 16 pages with only one set of boilerplate stuff... called 'household statement'...
 
oldtimer said:
Then how can there be a YTD return of 18.01% as of 8/14/23? It is closed to new investors, but what about some old 401k plans or possible a Vanguard fund of funds that still uses VFINX?
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Yeah, looks like VFINX has some legacy investors?

VFINX has 3.2B in assets vs 439.2B for VFIAX, 340.7B for VOO, and 138.1B for VFFSX. Total assets of 921.4B for all share classes.

So not much left in VFINX.
 
Oh wow... another reason to move...


So, in late Oct got a notice that they took out $25 from my DW's IRA account as it had not been converted to brokerage... I called and said I have converted all accounts a long time ago... well, not this one..


Was told that if we converted it over we would get the fee back... tried to do online through my account as I have 'full access' to her account... well, 'full access' means something different to them than me... I could not do it...


So, called and was told I did NOT have any access to it... got her out of her sick bed and she finally gave the info they wanted (it was a struggle as she was not feeling good and did not want to be there)... and then the guy says 'Oh, I see you have full access'... well, duh..


SOOO, finally get the account transferred and waited a month to get the $25 back... well, NOOO... I missed the deadline... wait, WHAT:confused:... They said they gave 'lots of notice' etc. and they would not refund the $25 fee for 'paper statements'... WHAT? I am talking about the fee for not converting to a brokerage account... 'OH' is the response... well, you missed that deadline also...


OK, then set the account up for edelivery... NOPE, your full access is not really full access... we need your wife... well, she is out shopping... so NOT GO on getting back the fees...


I will be moving her account out soon... I just move out a small IRA as I could not invest in a leveraged fund for whatever reason they have...


All accounts sometime next year when I can get a good cash incentive...
 
Someone should start a protest movement. Leave the account open but withdraw all but some random amount like $12.34 coordinated with all the members of the protest.
 
Texas Proud said:
....
Was told that if we converted it over we would get the fee back... tried to do online through my account as I have 'full access' to her account... well, 'full access' means something different to them than me... I could not do it...
...
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You appear to have your mind made up, but this may be helpful to others:

I have "access" to my young wife's accounts and I do all of the portfolio transactions for the two of us. However, if it involves a transaction for her accounts, I always sign in to Vanguard with her login credentials, just to avoid this situation. I also know from the very rare times I have dealt with Vanguard on the phone that, if it involves her accounts, they want her to be on the call. I think the limits on what I can do as someone with "access" to her accounts and the requirement that she be on calls are prudent measures to protect her interests.
 
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Gumby said:
You appear to have your mind made up, but this may be helpful to others:

I have "access' to my young wife's accounts and I do all of the portfolio transactions for the two of us. However, if it involves a transaction for her accounts, I always sign in to Vanguard with her login credentials, just to avoid this situation. I also know from the very rare times I have dealt with Vanguard on the phone that, if it involves her accounts, they want her to be on the call. I think the limits on what I can do as someone with "access" to her accounts and the requirement that she be on calls are prudent measures to protect her interests.
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I have done the same and it worked great. You just have to take the time to jump through the correct hoops, but that is the way of many things in life.
 
Gumby said:
You appear to have your mind made up, but this may be helpful to others:

I have "access" to my young wife's accounts and I do all of the portfolio transactions for the two of us. However, if it involves a transaction for her accounts, I always sign in to Vanguard with her login credentials, just to avoid this situation. I also know from the very rare times I have dealt with Vanguard on the phone that, if it involves her accounts, they want her to be on the call. I think the limits on what I can do as someone with "access" to her accounts and the requirement that she be on calls are prudent measures to protect her interests.
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I normally do have her there... but she was out shopping and I thought it would be really easy to talk about the $25 fee they charged... but found out they want to charge another $25 fee since she was not converted to e-delivery... and I cannot change that without her...


I have had too many problems with Vanguard the last few years... my 35 years with them are coming to an end sometime next year ...
 
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