Vanguard service has been wretched, I'm out.
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..