Vanguard Reviews

I waited 6 business days, NO call; so it's a go. NOPE, incorrect. I called yesterday and they said still missing info and that my request was REJECTED. WTH. You NEVER get to talk to the incompetent person actually working the request. I am not working with a supervisor (supposedly) who can see the missing info needed as well. I was like "thank you, but let me guess, you will NOT give me your phone number as well." He said "NO, just call back and ask for me." OH and the best part is... You are on hold for a minimum of 45+ minutes each time you call. WORST CUSTOMER SERVICE EVER!!! So I will like most people on this blog LOSE my home purchase due to THEIR error. Oh and they can't seem to tell me what pages or what is missing exactly for me to resend to them. PRICELESS.

By last Friday the money still hadn't shown up in our account. My husband called to find out why and was told they still hadn't received his check. So I contacted UPS who sent the signature document to me via email. He once again called Vanguard and said the check had actually arrived last Wednesday and was signed for by an employee, to which they replied, "Well then we've lost your check and will have to open up an investigation that will take two days." We called that evening to find out the status, and the man who answered the phone was rude and acted annoyed that we were calling, as if we were wrong for being frustrated that they lost his entire retirement. Why two days I have no idea, when they could have simply asked the person who signed for it where the check went and then could deposit it the same day.

As of this morning the check was still missing until my husband finally talked to a lady who actually went and looked and found the check. He was told that they could backdate the check to the previous Wednesday (when it was suppose to be deposited) and that the funds would be available immediately to withdrawal. She stated that her boss would have to contact him today to do it, as she didn't have the authority to do this. Of course there was no phone call, so my husband called again to be told the earliest he would hear back would be tomorrow. The money still has not been deposited into our account! Thanks Vanguard!

We informed them via email that we had to have a response today in order to secure the property we were trying to buy. So as of this evening we lost the purchase of the home and my disabled father and mom will be homeless living in a camper this Friday. Do yourself a favor and find someone else to entrust your money to! The only reason they're getting one star is because I can't choose anything less.

Does anyone know who actually monitors the actions of these companies? Is there an official governmental agency or non-affiliated group that will investigate my issue? I don't understand how they stay in business. I have seen many negative posts about them. Beware! All that glitters is not gold. In fact your gold may never be seen again. I don't know how the people that work for them sleep at night. I wouldn't be able to knowing that the company I work for is not customer service oriented and lacks integrity. I really feel sorry for anyone who has to deal with them, and they give them the runaround as they are doing to me. In this economy it's difficult enough to save anything and then you have these people who work against your own personal financial goals. It's horrible and I want out!

After talking to a couple of know-nothings I was finally transferred to someone who could allegedly fix the mistake; however, I would have to cash the first paper check from the 29th and send it to the IRS myself necessitating some annoying trips to my bank and the post office. As for the funds that were superfluously withdrawn from my account on the 31st, the 10% that was sent to the IRS could not be withdrawn supposedly because of IRS regulations, so my accountant will have to do two tax filings which will offset one another. Since the work he does is not free, having him do two tax filings will cost me something.

Since Vanguard made the error, the 90% overpayment of my RMD will be returned to my account, but alas not to the funds it was taken out of because of the restricted trading rule that says you cannot repurchase a fund you have sold for at least 90 days. When I asked how this egregious error could have happened, I was told that at the end of the year Vanguard hires a lot of temporary employees to handle the volume of calls they receive and the one that helped me on the 29th didn't turn off the automatic RMD distribution when he took my call. I've certainly lost my faith in Vanguard and will be exploring moving my funds to another company in the near future.

An hour and a half later he called and apologized for missing the call. He said he was having a very hectic day. He offered to have the call then. I asked if the advisor would be joining us and was told that no advisor was available for two weeks. The point of the initial scheduled call was to talk to an advisor, so I was obviously confused about what the rep was offering to talk about now. I won't base my complete evaluation of a company on the experience with one rep, but it does make me wonder if there is an endemic problem here. I depend upon my retirement investments for a steady income. I would certainly expect and need a timely response to any issue that might arise. I will have to think a bit before deciding to give Vanguard another shot at getting my business.

It took forever but I did receive a voicemail stating on the amount. I called back, got his voicemail, told him I would be staying with Pacific Life who the company I worked for to handle it and also asked how I would proceed in receiving the monies. I received no return call from him but after calling the service center a month later I received a call from him in April stating that he gave Pacific Life my number and they should have called me. Since they haven't called he would call them again and ask for them to call. Here it is in the middle of April no return call from Vanguard or Pacific Life. I am so frustrated with them I am ready to get a lawyer.

8 phone calls later, we still do not have the money. The loan estimate says all cost including closing are $25,874.00, yet over the phone the rep says they will only allow $20, 874.00. When we asked them to explain the rep said in order to receive more money "we should have bought a more expensive home". This was echoed by the Supervisor we requested to be escalated to! The home we are buying is $400,000.00 and all we could afford. The Supervisor kept talking about earnest money they were factoring in, although the number does not show up anywhere on any of the documents.

I went back and re-read his plan documents and it says hardships will cover cost related to purchase of your primary residence, excluding mortgage payments. So, even by their logic, earnest money would/should be part of the cost. The whole thing makes no sense. My husband has had his money managed and been paying a fee to Vanguard and it feels like this is why they don't want to release any of his cash. At this point, I would like him to stop paying the management fee and move his money because I fear something is wrong with this company. Anyway, we had put in our notice to our apartment and soon will be homeless.

I went at great lengths to file a complaint with Vanguard on this and either the supervisors or management did not get back to me right away. In the end, it was not handled properly, they were in denial that I was hung up on and it took them about 3 weeks to respond. In my opinion, it was very careless and cold response, especially when one had such a horrible experience. Also on two occasions I was promised a call back from a supervisor/manager and that never happened. Here is my conclusion and my personal opinion, this company is in disarray, the morale does not seem good and everyone seems to be very stretched. Also in my opinion, this is not a company you should do business with if you are looking to get an acceptable level of service. I conclude that my experience with so substandard and so bad, if there is a description I can give that is below poor service, it would be a few notches below that.

I asked if there was someone else I could speak to who could help me to understand what else was needed since I had already submitted the requested information and was at a loss to what else I could submit. He stated that he could "get someone else on the phone to read me the same statement". I am stuck with Vanguard since that is who my company has their 401K program with but if you have a choice, do not use Vanguard. In the event that you need a withdrawal, your money will be inaccessible to you even with IRS guidelines that allow withdrawals. Vanguard's snarky customer service will not help you.

After 10 days the hold on my account was not released. I called the Customer Service again to find the status. I was told they received my papers and it will take another 15 business days because they have more such paper to be processed. Would you imagine we are living in such a high tech world and takes 1 month to update the address in the system? It's ridiculous. This shows how much Vanguard care for their customers. I am not able to do any activity in my account for 30 days.

So basically we made a deal on a home but cannot find out how Vanguard determines the amount of money you can take out of your own account. Not to mention this account has NOT made one red cent in two years! Poor investing by a lousy company that only wants to keep your money so it can collect their fees. This is a piss-poor company that steals your money and doesn't want to give it back even for the right reasons. I will stop putting into this fund and I will roll my money over to an IRA somewhere else. Vanguard sucks!

Assumably I should have that in my hand, but anyway, when I called them back in 10 minutes after I got that information, they told me because of a "flash" on my account there is a technical error so they can't process it this time. They would call me back in several business days to resolve it. What's the worst is the customer representatives all sounded so impatient and condescending, and there is no official customer satisfaction survey in the end for you to make a complaint. It was just awful and frustrating. If were not for the employee retirement plan, I would never choose Vanguard at the first place.

Original Review: Jan. 22, 2016

Somehow, the rollover check made out to Vanguard was cashed but never showed up in my retirement account, which is the only 401k I've had that is chronically losing money. Try getting a hold of someone on the phone to resolve a problem or even get a question answered. They are too big to provide good customer service. Looks like I'll be rolling over to a better plan/company as soon as they find my missing funds -- and now that I'm out thousands.

Then they tell me that I have two different profiles and they need to combine them so I need to fax them something else. I do not doubt that someone made another mistake over there again because this is the only time I've ever tried to create an account there. How could there be another profile? Another frustration is that I told them this over the phone, the rep told me it's because one profile is under my name and the other is under our joint names and he'll correct and merge them. Then a week later they send me an email telling me to call them to give additional information. Turns out what the previous rep said were not true. So, now how can I trust such a company to handle my money? They may change my $10,000 to $100. Incompetent and not worth my time. I am going somewhere else.

Once I did that, they told me I needed to have the attorney who prepared her new legal docs also prepare a letter stating she was competent to make such a change. I advised them that would be redundant because he wouldn't have prepared the new legal docs if he didn't feel she was competent to make those decisions. That rep agreed with me and advised he would pass that along. Another Vanguard rep called me back and advised me that a letter from the attorney was not sufficient and that I would have to get a court order for anyone (me OR her) to have access to her funds. In other words, they would not allow us to change the entire life savings of an 80-year-old woman (with the monthly expenses of an assisted living facility) to be more diversely invested.

Mom has had this account with Vanguard for 25+ years and it has all been invested in one Vanguard fund with no diversification. Now that she needs the money to pay the monthly assisted living facility costs, she wanted my help to restructure her account to provide more of a monthly income for her rather than concentrating on capital growth. After being given different instructions and new "hoops to jump through" every day by several Vanguard employees, they decided they needed to "protect her interests" and not allow her or myself to have access to her account. If they were interested in protecting her interests, they should have advised her several years ago that she needed to have her funds more diversely invested at her age.

I filed a complaint with the SEC, to which Vanguard was required to respond. Their response again states that I must provide them with a court order and now they say that when they receive a judge's order, they will "consider" re-evaluating the situation. In other words, even a judge's order won't ensure that Vanguard will release mom's funds to her since none of the other items they requested and I submitted were good enough. Mom's attorney requested from them the name of a contact person in their "legal dept", who they always referred to when refusing to honor the documents I submitted. Mom's attorney wanted to call their legal rep. to find out what the premise was to deny Mom's wishes. The Vanguard reps quickly indicated they don't have a legal dept who is available to speak to their customers. Vanguard must keep their "legal dept" locked in a dungeon somewhere and they're not allowed to fraternize with the customers!

From the time all of this started in August 2015 until now, mom has lost $30,000+ of her investment because we were not allowed to diversify her account as requested. Her account is still frozen, and they won't even allow mom or myself to check her balance. The only way I am aware of the losses she has suffered is because I know the name of the one Vanguard fund where her entire IRA is invested, and I know how many shares she had before they froze her account. I can look up the price of that fund each day on the internet, so we are watching her funds dwindle while Vanguard waits for me to get a court order so they can "consider" their next move. My advice... If you have ANY money invested with Vanguard, move it to a more reputable investment house (like Fidelity or American Century) before you need to have someone act as your Power of Attorney to take care of you for whatever reason.

How horrible that the stress of trying to help a loved one is compounded by a greedy company like Vanguard creating additional problems by withholding funds needed to provide care, not to mention the expense of obtaining a court order which is eating up her other minimal assets. Mom saved her entire life to make sure there was enough money to pay for her care when she needed it. Unfortunately, she chose Vanguard to handle her investments. Since she does have the Vanguard asset, even though she's not being allowed by Vanguard to access it, she is not eligible for assistance through Medicaid, which is how most people pay for nursing home care.

Just do a Google search for "Vanguard Reviews" and you'll see a ton of these same type of complaints against them. And those are only the ones people took time out to write. Just imagine how many more there are where people didn't bother to post anything online. Get your investment accounts away from Vanguard while you can and save your family the horror of dealing with Vanguard while trying to help you when you need it.

Original Review: June 16, 2015

Vanguard exchanged my largest retirement investment fund from Investor shares to its higher cost Admiral shares without my approval. When I questioned it I was told that it was done for my benefit because it has lower ER and that when an investor's amount reaches a certain level an automatic exchange takes place. The most ridiculous thing is that I had long owned Investor shares totaling an amount above the amount needed for Admiral shares and the value of my fund went down before and at the time of the "automatic exchange."

The prospectus of the fund has a different ER than what the online overview site states it is. On top of that Vanguard listed the dollar amount per share that the Admiral shares were purchased at but the corporation's info representing the average cost per share is higher. Vanguard had been making "buys" on days other than I approved and at higher costs than on the days requested. It's become a total scam and its employees have obviously been told to provide customers with answers that are not true, instead of keeping me even though I'm a long-term customer. I've decided that their manipulative actions aren't worth the agitation.

I then spoke to AJ ** in the retirement section on Feb 5, 2015, who said he would try to expedite the process but said that they were behind in processing checks and opening accounts, and since I requested a brokerage account in association with the 401K, it may take longer. The account itself was opened a day or so later, and since I had extra money (750.00) that my third party needed to put into my account, they wired it in and I could clearly see that money. However, the 17,000.00 check was still not deposited. I called several other times, each resulting in a wait of 20-30 minutes on the phone to get a human and no process was made.

I finally spoke to a supervisor in the retirement division, Gladimire **, on Feb 17th who said he would look into it, but still no progress. I called AJ ** back on Feb 18th and found out the check had still not been processed, and that they have a back log of over 4100 new applications for accounts that need to be approved and only two people are working on them.

Customer service has been terrible and if you look at the following site, this has been an ongoing problem, **. But what concerns me most is first, they didn't even realize that I had a check with my paper work, didn't process it within 24 hours of receiving as per their rules and even with multiple calls, the check has yet to process after two weeks. Also, if they are so overwhelmed that they are unable to open new accounts, they should temporarily stop accepting new account until they catch up. I also am uncertain when someone already has a brokerage account at Vanguard but desires to have one associated with another account, it should take as long as someone who has never had an account at Vanguard.

There is something wrong with how Vanguard is doing business and this is not just because of all the requests at the first of the year. I wired 100,000 in July to Vanguard and even spoke to people prior to doing so and yet when the transaction occurred, Vanguard couldn't initially find my money and where it went. Please investigate what is going on with this firm. I should have been told when I inquired about opening the 401K that it would take at least several weeks to process and there should have been some means to track the process.

The following representatives Celeste **, Mark **, rudely and unprofessionally placed me on hold for hours and kept referring to me as sir even though I am a female. I was told that someone would call me back yet Le Shaun ** left messages and No extension. When I called back three different Vanguard associates claimed they have No such person, spent three hours trying to find her, and claimed she never called and they can't find her in their employee profile. When I played the voice mails they changed their tune and became rude and put a hold on my account.

Here's the Google Voice transcript of the vm: Voicemail from: (704) 306-9691 at 10:14 AM. "Hello, Ms. **, this is. Leshanda ** here from think our we just spoken earlier if you could please give me a call back. At (800) 662-2739 hours are from 8 AM to 10 PM Eastern Time. Thank you."

I was told my account was being held for fraud hold and someone would call me immediately in a few minutes. No one called for several hours. I received a message from a guy named Celeste ** who had a bad attitude and kept asking was I calling for Emmie ** and was I calling to assist Emmie **. He asked security questions and got angry when I answered them all as I informed him I am the only one calling my account. He had no evidence of anyone accessing my account and hung up in my face. I called back and the associate told my number, I was on hold for close to an hour and was disconnected by Vanguard. He threatened me along with other associates when I requested a supervisor as there was no reason to put a hold on the account.

24 hours has passed. No one has called me from vanguard. I am requesting that Consumer Affairs help me deal with this horrible company. I want my funds released for not only the sell transaction but I want to close my account altogether. The company is Vanguard located in Valley Forge, PA.

Voicemail from: (610) 669-7023 at 8:22 AM: "Hi, My name is Celeste **. I'm calling from Vanguard I'm trying to reach Ms. Emmi **. If you would return the phone call. The number is (800) 662-0106. And when you call that Vanguard phone number, please enter my extension. ** again. This message is for Emmi **. This is Celeste ** from Vanguard, please return my call. Thank you."

When I tried to complete the transfer of funds from Vanguard European Index Fund to Vanguard Healthcare Fund I got kicked out from their website. I tried to relogin into their website to confirm if the transaction was completed. To my surprise, all my funds were transferred from Vanguard Healthcare Fund to Vanguard European Index Fund (opposite transaction). I called Vanguard next morning and told them what happened but the customer support person took my complaint and after 3 weeks today I was told their research showed I had transferred funds from Vanguard Healthcare Fund to Vanguard European Index Fund.

A malfunction of their website has resulted in financial loss for me which is not acceptable. I was prompted when transferring funds that Vanguard Healthcare Fund was closed to new investors which proves my point, what I am saying is true. Vanguard research can only trace the final key strokes, not the initial keystrokes of this transactions. I wonder why? I have lost faith in the consumers' rights to online transactions. It is the vendor's word against the consumer's word. Do we have any consumer protection laws for online transactions?