Vanguard - last straw?

[rayvt]

Quote:

Originally Posted by RetiredHappy The loan officer worked for the bank and .

There's your problem right there. Banks aren't really in the business of making home mortgages. You need a place where making mortgages is their entire business.

Like aimloan or amerisave.

[LimaPop]

I sent Vanguard my pension lump sum check for a rollover. I had it certified mail and return receipt, and they lost it after signing for it. Simply lost it. I had to get the former employer to stop the check and issue a new one, and lost 2 months of market gains. So frustrating trying to get a real person to try and hunt the check down. This was a big check one would think gets kid gloves. I’m sure it’s sitting in someone’s file there….

[whatnot]

LimaPop - 2 months is totally unacceptable!
You are a patient person.
We have my DH IRA, and both our HSA’s at Fidelity.
My IRA is with Vanguard. In part, to diversify risk of hackers, unanticipated down time etc.

But we have really not needed to contact Vanguard since I moved my IRA there 3 years ago.
We use Fidelity to draw our annual living expenses, use the Cash Management account, HSA’s, etc. I plan on using them to start 457 plans for Grands.

[cranberryjoe]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Midpack OK, I didn't catch that. Not sure how any letter could actually force you to withdraw from your assets if you decided not to, but I don't doubt your story. In our case they just wanted written proof we had the assets to pay for the house.

I've been retired for about 8 years, living off my taxable account.

I'm in the middle of getting a mortgage loan. My loan guy has supplied me with a letter for my financial advisor to fill-in-the-blanks, indicating I will start monthly distributions from my IRA of a specified amount beginning on a specified date. The loan guy told me the date should be a few days before closing, and after closing I can cancel the distributions without actually taking any, and go back to managing my money however I wish. The letter is just to satisfy the mortgage underwriter.

My assets are split between Vanguard and Fidelity. Although I manage all my investments myself, I do have an advisor at Fidelity who checks in with me once a year but knows to mostly leave me alone. I'm sure they will write that letter for me when we get close to closing. I'm lucky I have a large enough IRA at Fidelity. I shudder to think what would happen if I had to ask Vanguard to write a letter...

[Lstansbury]

Same issues here with Vanguard as I am retired this month and spent a couple of weeks trying to get a Roth IRA and a new Self-Directed IRA set up at Vanguard as they hold all a majority of my retirement assets.

After going through 20-30 minutes with one rep -- a phone would disconnect.
Happened three times.

Met with a personal advisor to see if I should pay the .03% to get them to help manage my funds -- and they filled out the forms wrong when they sent me their sample advice to sell me on the service. This "advisor" missed out on some of my assets that I entered into the "other assets" category of the account info he requested I enter into the Vanguard interface. So, the AA was totally off. Not much trust there!

Also was told that once my assets were 'under management' I wouldn't be allowed to touch them. () The advisor would take my requests under advisement, of course, but I wouldn't be allowed to make any changes on my own. (WTF?). That nixed all the plans.

Then, when I tried to start moving $100K out of there into a new Fidelity IRA instead of the Vanguard Self-Directed IRA, the rep stalled the transaction for over an hour on the phone. Kept saying he had to ask somebody else what to do. And then came back and told me my 403(b) company plan wouldn't allow me to take $100K out -- even though three other reps and I had worked on a plan to do partial distribution and the plan issue was never brought up. But if I rolled it over to a Vanguard IRA, that might be different.

I had him give me a copy of the company document that stated the partial distribution wasn't allowed -- and I read to him over the phone the section in the plan that clearly stated a partial distribution WAS allowed. And asked him why it would make a difference if I rolled over to Fidelity IRA or Vanguard IRA? At that moment, funny how the phone went dead again.

I called back, got a lady on the phone who finally said, "sure, no problem" and sent my $100K to Fidelity within 5 minutes. All done. Yeah, I kept her name somewhere...

Long story short, I'm getting my money out of Vanguard. Real shame, it was a great company for me in many other ways. But if you can't read the company plan document, well, I don't need you touching my money..

[2cheap2eat]

I just rolled over to fidelity from vanguard, IRAs took couple of weeks. My ESA took over a month!

[target2019]

These Vanguard customer service complaints are very interesting to read. What customers expect has evolved, and Vanguard lags Fidelity and Schwab.

[RunningBum]

Quote:

Originally Posted by target2019 These Vanguard customer service complaints are very interesting to read. What customers expect has evolved, and Vanguard lags Fidelity and Schwab.

Elaborate on what has evolved, please?

[MRG]

Quote:

Originally Posted by LimaPop I sent Vanguard my pension lump sum check for a rollover. I had it certified mail and return receipt, and they lost it after signing for it. Simply lost it. I had to get the former employer to stop the check and issue a new one, and lost 2 months of market gains. So frustrating trying to get a real person to try and hunt the check down. This was a big check one would think gets kid gloves. I’m sure it’s sitting in someone’s file there….

You should contact the SEC. Accounting for all the funds sent into a fund company is an issue they would take very seriously. This incident says the controls used by the organization potentially failed.
I remember this frequently happening before the industry adopted digital technology in the early 90s. Most fund companies audited their trash to ensure checks weren't discarded. I'm not sure how a check could actually be lost inside a locked check processing area but it's under 24x7 camera surveillance.

[Trailwalker]

I've been happy with Vanguard. My expectations are low: low fees and minimal service. I haven't needed to talk to a live person since transferring accounts from two different brokerages there and setting up a transfer from Vanguard to Fidelity Charitable.

[TheWizard]

I have a Roth IRA and a taxable account at Vanguard, linked to my checking account.
These accounts are in my name only, no trusts or other complications.

Everything works smoothly using the Vanguard app on my smartphone. I've mostly been buying ETFs lately using limit orders. I can even buy shares of QQQ with no fee.

I've also gifted contributions to my son's Roth IRA at Vanguard by mailing a paper form and a check to their El Paso location. Takes a few days but works every time.

I've no complaints with the company...

[meleana]

I have had T Rowe Price forever and they used to be fantastic. But these past years their customer service has gone downhill and their statement format, which they have changed 2 or 3 times, frankly suck. They are so confusing that even our Financial Advisor has a hard time with them.



Thankfully I do an excel spread sheet to keep things organized.

[Lienlord]

I have $$ with VG and Schwab. I do frequent wires in/out for real estate investments, and I like that Schwab lets you submit your wire request online. VG requires you call in and provide all the info to a representative to submit. I rarely get right through, but the hold times aren't terrible and the rep is always efficient. In spite of that, I like that VG only charges $10 and Schwab is $25. You'd think Schwab would be cheaper since the process is more automated?

[SecondAttempt]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ChicagoGal I'm so frustrated with Vanguard these days. Might be the end of the road for me.

I am actually a big fan of Vanguard funds and have much of my money invested in Vanguard funds through another brokerage. But I have had similar problems with gross incompetence in dealing with Vanguard customer service and administration.

Ten plus years ago we did some estate planning which involved setting up a living trust. Of the dozen or so companies that we had o retitle accounts with, which should be routine, Vanguard was the only one that screwed things up. And it was big time, to the point the lawyer had to get involved and we almost had to sue them.

In my case sorting everything out took over a year after their screw up after which we closed our accounts and moved to T. Rowe Price.

[OldShooter]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lienlord ... You'd think Schwab would be cheaper since the process is more automated?

As these companies struggle with the new world of no transaction costs, IMO for clients it will be necessary to evaluate the total cost of doing your kind of business with each and to have some patience. Some fees will be higher, some will be lower, some will be subtle like interest paid on sweep accounts and on margin loans. Service levels will wax and wane. This is complicated at Schwab with the cost of close to doubling their number of accounts with the TDAmeritrade merger. My guess is that there are a lot of people at TD, Schwab, Fido,and VG not having much fun as they struggle with this new business environment. I don't envy them.

[Markola]

I sort of hope all the posters complaining about Vanguard will move somewhere else, leaving more customer service bandwidth there for me.

[RunningBum]

...unless they reduce staff because of a smaller customer base.

[steelyman]

I think Vanguard is best suited for the target base that John Bogle intended to address: the buy and hold, dollar cost average index investors. Not the Robinhood/market-timing crowd.

[Another Reader]

Quote:

Originally Posted by meleana I have had T Rowe Price forever and they used to be fantastic. But these past years their customer service has gone downhill and their statement format, which they have changed 2 or 3 times, frankly suck. They are so confusing that even our Financial Advisor has a hard time with them. Thankfully I do an excel spread sheet to keep things organized.

I have a long history with them, but not much interaction recently. I logged in recently to look at the overall picture and possibly add to some funds. After poking around for an hour, I came to the conclusion the site is unusable and it might be time to move everything to Fidelity, where I can find the same TRP funds with NTF.

[RunningBum]

Quote:

Originally Posted by steelyman I think Vanguard is best suited for the target base that John Bogle intended to address: the buy and hold, dollar cost average index investors. Not the Robinhood/market-timing crowd.

Yeah, but they're struggling with that too. Even buy and hold people might need to transfer money in, or get some documentation for a loan.

I've either been lucky or there's still some benefit to Flagship status, in that I can usually get a human right away. But I've still had a few unsettling issues.

A few years ago my yearly statement came in the mail to me, and in the middle of the paperwork was my name and account on a page but an address in a different state. Scared me that I got hacked and someone was able to change the address and perhaps was going to get a check mailed to them. The VG rep assured me that there was no address change. I asked him to find out how that happened and he said he would, but I never heard back. Someone here said it might have been due to some of their testing that was never supposed to touch the live database, but somehow did. Probably right, but not very comforting.

Then last year I got my yearly statement and my 6-figure Roth account had a balance of $1.18. That caught my attention quickly, but then I saw another Roth account that looked correct, and that matched the account number online. But what's this other $1.18 account, which I did not see online? So I contacted VG to ask. They reported back that I only had the one Roth account. The other account was an old number that I transferred to the new account in 2018. Not long after, I noticed a transfer in to my Roth account in the amount of $1.18, from this account that supposedly didn't exist. Obviously it's not the money at stake here, but account integrity, and my trust in Vanguard. It didn't happen to be a good time to go through an account transfer so I held off.

I'm still considering a transfer, maybe of my IRAs to start with. Both Schwab and TDAmer have offices in a nearby town, but I'm waiting to see how the merger shakes out and settles down. I actually have dormant accounts with both. I wonder if that would preclude me from any transfer bonus. Fidelity's office is 2 hours from me, but I might consider it as well. I have my HSA and DAF there.