Charles Schwab & Co.

This company offers Stock Slices which is fractional shares in stocks. Many of these stocks are far too expensive for me to purchase on my own. However with Stock Slices I can enjoy being a stock owner while investing very little money.

Minimal fees; brokers walk me through the process how to buy and sell shares. They make recommendations. If I want additional assistance, they will do so for a charge. There is a system whereby I can have a computer generated system work for me. Many choices and easy to use online.

Charles Schwab is such an excellent company. They are innovative, their website is cutting edge, their customer support is superb. I never wait more than a minute for someone to actually pick up the phone and talk to even during the pandemic. They're very receptive to feedback in case there is a glitch and have never failed to solve any problem that I had or gotten back to me when they said they would.

I love this company. They have taken such good care of what little money I have. They are wonderful and I am Thankful to them and for them. Always helpful when I call and "bug" them. They do not mind at all. I certainly would recommend them to everyone.

I think most know that you can invest through Schwab - but I don't know that many realize you can have a checking account with Schwab - and it EARNS INTEREST rather than charging you fees! All ATM fees are reimbursed as well - no matter what ATM you use. The only drawback for some is that they don't have a lot of brick and mortar locations - so it's difficult to deposit cash - but I do all my banking online these days anyways.

I have been a customer for 8 years. Their customer service has become terrible, almost non existent. It is impossible to talk to anyone helpful or to do online chat due to long waiting times. If you do connect, they seem to be totally clueless. If you send an online message, you will never get a response. I inquired about bringing in new money to my account. Got no response at all 20 days later. You would have thought they would jump at the opportunity of a large new investment. I opened up a new Roth IRA account. 6 business days later it is still not active with no indication of why. I contacted the local CS office, & they could not help at all. Got through on chat, with the same result. "Sorry can't do anything. Just have to wait for Operations to look at it".

I opened both a Schwab checking and brokerage account in 2013. I never used the checking account feature regularly until 2019. I regret closing my Wells Fargo account and switching to this terrible company. I have had nothing but endless problems from day one, but in 2020 and now 2021, it has become inexcusably awful.

This is the worst brokerage I have ever used, and I've used most of them. There is literally no way to email them. You have to "chat" except the chat never connects. Phone calls take hours on hold and then hours more after they transfer you. Avoid this brokerage like the plague. Fidelity - great service - answers calls immediately. Etrade - can send messages so you don't waste time. Schwab - never lets you talk to a human. Seriously this company is the worst.

Any wait time to inquire about your brokerage account, and simple questions on fees and transfers takes longer than 2 hours. Not a one-off occurence either. Entire week of waits. Tread at your own risk.

For three months I have tried to reach a person to speak to regarding investment management for Expats. I have called many times, (on hold for 20-30 minutes, usually disconnected) I have messaged them on their webpage, I even called a branch office who transferred my call to the same 'on hold' experience. Why would you trust a company you can't reach with your life's savings and investments?

I have been a customer for 30+ years and for decades Schwab & Co has been the go-to place for small investors. The last 6-8 months has witnessed a steady record of poor experiences with this company. The trading platforms (Edge) works fine in a Goldilocks environment and most likely on a windows machine. If your computer is a MAC be prepared for a whole host of problems most of which are slowness and crashes if you go too fast.

Charles Schwab is a very good company if you intend to trade a few time a day or less. You can reach knowledgeable people via the phone if there are issues or you have questions! However, day traders should stay away -- latency issues, servers going down, sometimes you cannot get out of trades (two times already this week). Unfortunately, it appears their systems weren't designed for scale. The growth in traders and trading volume has created an enormous problem for their IT and call centers.

As a Schwab client for decades, it's apparent that going from a discount broker to leading wirehouse today has eroded service. Outages-telephone, online failures e.g., are becoming more frequent. If this keeps up, core clients with high balances will look elsewhere.

Things have worked a certain way in our world for a number of years now because innovators had great ideas and the public found great use and value in implementing those innovations into their daily lives. Over the years, those ideas have been refined, improved, added onto and so forth. At this point, these innovations are so standard and commonplace, that it is virtually unheard of, even unthinkable, that any company or individual in a semi-modern country has not, to a minimum degree, incorporated these advancements into their everyday activities and processes for the sheer efficiency and cost- and time-saving effects that it yields. They are simply a forgone conclusion, almost as much as the television and telephone. For a reason that I will probably never learn or understand, Schwab is just such a company.