Vanguard Customer Service Mega-thread

[beyou]

Results from 2 hours and 15 minutes from when I made my phone call to when it ended.

Spoke to 5 people.

1. Got verification that once you get your business / organization account all is the same as having a personal account. You go to the same login page and enter user name / password the same way we all do.

2. Once you are logged in ... it'd identical to what we experience as personal account holders.

3. Told that there'd be a 7-day calendar hold on money coming into the account (even if via ACH).

4. As detailed above encountered some ridiculousness in what the a few of the customer representatives wanted us to do.

5. Created another topic here asking for experience / knowledge from those who have or had business / organization accounts with either Vanguard or Fidelity. I have a much higher trust level here for what certain people say than what a customer representative might say. Especially when they cannot provide it to me in writing.

6. Preference for the many reasons stated is to stay with all the knowns involved with Vanguard as opposed to ALL the unknowns regarding Fidelity.

Don't get stuck on having to use Vanguard nor stuck on VUSXX

Here are instructions online to open a business account at Vanguard.

https://investor.vanguard.com/accounts- ... %20require:

Etrade allows free trades to buy/sell VUSXX and they also allow business accounts
https://us.etrade.com/forms-applications

Finally ANY broker that has good service for business accounts would offer the many excellent ETF alternatives to VUSXX.
I stopped using VUSXX due to the ability to hold at a broker of my choice, and now use funds like SGOV, XHLF, or CLIP to own tbills at same or lower ER than VUSXX.

This is a really easy problem to solve and sounds like you have spent many hours on it already.
Don't call Vanguard, either follow their online instructions or try another broker.

For the record, I contacted Vanguard this week on another topic, and they got back to me fairly quickly with the correct answer to my question, on a somewhat less common request that is not serviced online. I am happy with their service, but I also used to use Etrade and was happy with them too.

[nassau34]

Can't they invest in VUSXX at another brokerage?
There might be a small transaction fee, but especially if it's not being used as a checking account (lots of transactions) and it's a "significant" amount, a small fee almost disappears.

The brokerages that offer trading in non-in-house money market funds is limited. E*Trade might be one that offers some from Vanguard. Fidelity does not, nor do I believe does Schwab. I don't think Merrill Edge does, either.

I purchased VUSXX through E*Trade. When I transferred my E*Trade account to Fidelity they accepted the holding but won't let me add to it.

[jebmke]

Here is some outstanding Vanguard customer service.

I have received my consolidated 1099 from Vanguard. Fidelity and UBS list Feb 8 for 1099 consolidated availability. I transferred our Vanguard accounts to Fidelity last year, so Vanguard and Fidelity are generating 1099s for the same fund types and same funds.

if the funds held at Vanguard are VG funds this should not be a surprise. The other brokers depend on receiving the info from VG before they can prepare the statements.

[mhc]

Here is some outstanding Vanguard customer service.

I have received my consolidated 1099 from Vanguard. Fidelity and UBS list Feb 8 for 1099 consolidated availability. I transferred our Vanguard accounts to Fidelity last year, so Vanguard and Fidelity are generating 1099s for the same fund types and same funds.

if the funds held at Vanguard are VG funds this should not be a surprise. The other brokers depend on receiving the info from VG before they can prepare the statements.

Makes sense. We only have VTI and VXUS in our Fidelity taxable brokerage. Vanguard still beat UBS. UBS is where my employer related NQSO and RSU are. I have no stocks there. I sell immediately upon RSU vest.

[Eagle33]

Is the process you are trying to do match Vanguard's
Open an organization account in just 4 steps ?
Which specific step/substep does it get stuck on?

[GoldStar]

if the funds held at Vanguard are VG funds this should not be a surprise. The other brokers depend on receiving the info from VG before they can prepare the statements.

Makes sense. We only have VTI and VXUS in our Fidelity taxable brokerage. Vanguard still beat UBS. UBS is where my employer related NQSO and RSU are. I have no stocks there. I sell immediately upon RSU vest.

NQSO and RSU reporting are also more complex than VTI. Timing of these 1099s has mostly to do with the holdings you have in each and nearly nothing to do with "Outstanding Customer Service". If you held the Vanguard REIT fund at Vanguard you would likely not get your 1099 for a couple of weeks from Vanguard and then in March you would likely get a 1099c correcting the 1099 you recieved.

[mhc]

Makes sense. We only have VTI and VXUS in our Fidelity taxable brokerage. Vanguard still beat UBS. UBS is where my employer related NQSO and RSU are. I have no stocks there. I sell immediately upon RSU vest.

NQSO and RSU reporting are also more complex than VTI. Timing of these 1099s has mostly to do with the holdings you have in each and nearly nothing to do with "Outstanding Customer Service". If you held the Vanguard REIT fund at Vanguard you would likely not get your 1099 for a couple of weeks from Vanguard and then in March you would likely get a 1099c correcting the 1099 you recieved.

Why is NQSO and RSU reporting more complex? It is a 1099-B for stocks I sold in Jan 2024.

[yankees60]

Is the process you are trying to do match Vanguard's
Open an organization account in just 4 steps ?
Which specific step/substep does it get stuck on?

The ones where Vanguard fails to open the account and then does not inform you what they need from you. Or, they do not follow through.

[yankees60]

Results from 2 hours and 15 minutes from when I made my phone call to when it ended.

Spoke to 5 people.

1. Got verification that once you get your business / organization account all is the same as having a personal account. You go to the same login page and enter user name / password the same way we all do.

2. Once you are logged in ... it'd identical to what we experience as personal account holders.

3. Told that there'd be a 7-day calendar hold on money coming into the account (even if via ACH).

4. As detailed above encountered some ridiculousness in what the a few of the customer representatives wanted us to do.

5. Created another topic here asking for experience / knowledge from those who have or had business / organization accounts with either Vanguard or Fidelity. I have a much higher trust level here for what certain people say than what a customer representative might say. Especially when they cannot provide it to me in writing.

6. Preference for the many reasons stated is to stay with all the knowns involved with Vanguard as opposed to ALL the unknowns regarding Fidelity.

Don't get stuck on having to use Vanguard nor stuck on VUSXX

Here are instructions online to open a business account at Vanguard.

https://investor.vanguard.com/accounts- ... %20require:

Etrade allows free trades to buy/sell VUSXX and they also allow business accounts
https://us.etrade.com/forms-applications

Finally ANY broker that has good service for business accounts would offer the many excellent ETF alternatives to VUSXX.
I stopped using VUSXX due to the ability to hold at a broker of my choice, and now use funds like SGOV, XHLF, or CLIP to own tbills at same or lower ER than VUSXX.

This is a really easy problem to solve and sounds like you have spent many hours on it already.
Don't call Vanguard, either follow their online instructions or try another broker.

For the record, I contacted Vanguard this week on another topic, and they got back to me fairly quickly with the correct answer to my question, on a somewhat less common request that is not serviced online. I am happy with their service, but I also used to use Etrade and was happy with them too.

We followed all the instructions to open the business account. It was Vanguard's failure to not contact us when they needed something else or did not follow through on what they promised to do.

The focus with opening the account with Vanguard is that myself, the owner, the bookkeeper, all have accounts with Vanguard and own VUSXX thus once we get the business access we will all know how to do things without having to learn anything else.

Last piece of news was this week Vanguard requesting a letter which was sent yesterday. We shall see if that was finally the last step.

Getting involved with another brokerage would require doing the application after gathering all the information that brokerage required, hoping that they set up an account, learning how to do things at that brokerage.

I'd be hesitant to use any of SGOV, XHLF, or CLIP, given that none has been around prior to 2020. I assume VUSXX drawfs each of them in terms of assets size?

[Hot Sauce]

Revisiting this thread after many months. Seems nothing has changed at vanguard customer service with the new ceo Salami (sp?) at the helm. Bummer.

[beyou]

Don't get stuck on having to use Vanguard nor stuck on VUSXX

Here are instructions online to open a business account at Vanguard.

https://investor.vanguard.com/accounts- ... %20require:

Etrade allows free trades to buy/sell VUSXX and they also allow business accounts
https://us.etrade.com/forms-applications

Finally ANY broker that has good service for business accounts would offer the many excellent ETF alternatives to VUSXX.
I stopped using VUSXX due to the ability to hold at a broker of my choice, and now use funds like SGOV, XHLF, or CLIP to own tbills at same or lower ER than VUSXX.

This is a really easy problem to solve and sounds like you have spent many hours on it already.
Don't call Vanguard, either follow their online instructions or try another broker.

For the record, I contacted Vanguard this week on another topic, and they got back to me fairly quickly with the correct answer to my question, on a somewhat less common request that is not serviced online. I am happy with their service, but I also used to use Etrade and was happy with them too.

We followed all the instructions to open the business account. It was Vanguard's failure to not contact us when they needed something else or did not follow through on what they promised to do.

The focus with opening the account with Vanguard is that myself, the owner, the bookkeeper, all have accounts with Vanguard and own VUSXX thus once we get the business access we will all know how to do things without having to learn anything else.

Last piece of news was this week Vanguard requesting a letter which was sent yesterday. We shall see if that was finally the last step.

Getting involved with another brokerage would require doing the application after gathering all the information that brokerage required, hoping that they set up an account, learning how to do things at that brokerage.

I'd be hesitant to use any of SGOV, XHLF, or CLIP, given that none has been around prior to 2020. I assume VUSXX drawfs each of them in terms of assets size?

SGOV is catching up to VUSXX in size, the others are indeed much smaller, but even lower ER than VUSXX/SGOV (which are same).
Many people use SGOV as an alternative to VUSXX these days, nearly identical except for the need to execute trades as an ETF.
Yield of SGOV and VUSXX are usually about the same, and then you are not stuck with having to live with any particular broker.
You can pick the one with the best service for business accounts.

Not that hard to use Etrade, their site is fairly simple and if all you would do is buy/sell shares of a single fund and transfer to a checking account, there is not that much to learn. If you really insist on VUSXX, either be patient with Vanguard or try Etrade. I see you created a separate post to get help for business accounts, and read the advice from a former Vanguard employee warning you to NOT use them for a business account. Your best alternatives are Etrade for VUSXX or Schwab/Fidelity to hold SGOV. I have only used Vanguard and Etrade for personal accounts, without issue. I did open trust accounts at Vanguard and that was easy to do as well. Sorry you are having issues, but not every broker handles everything well. Believe it or not, there are some things I found Vanguard does better than other brokers, and prevented me from considering a move to another broker (for IRAs and trusts). Business accounts may not be the same decision.

[yankees60]

We followed all the instructions to open the business account. It was Vanguard's failure to not contact us when they needed something else or did not follow through on what they promised to do.

The focus with opening the account with Vanguard is that myself, the owner, the bookkeeper, all have accounts with Vanguard and own VUSXX thus once we get the business access we will all know how to do things without having to learn anything else.

Last piece of news was this week Vanguard requesting a letter which was sent yesterday. We shall see if that was finally the last step.

Getting involved with another brokerage would require doing the application after gathering all the information that brokerage required, hoping that they set up an account, learning how to do things at that brokerage.

I'd be hesitant to use any of SGOV, XHLF, or CLIP, given that none has been around prior to 2020. I assume VUSXX drawfs each of them in terms of assets size?

SGOV is catching up to VUSXX in size, the others are indeed much smaller, but even lower ER than VUSXX/SGOV (which are same).
Many people use SGOV as an alternative to VUSXX these days, nearly identical except for the need to execute trades as an ETF.
Yield of SGOV and VUSXX are usually about the same, and then you are not stuck with having to live with any particular broker.
You can pick the one with the best service for business accounts.

Not that hard to use Etrade, their site is fairly simple and if all you would do is buy/sell shares of a single fund and transfer to a checking account, there is not that much to learn. If you really insist on VUSXX, either be patient with Vanguard or try Etrade. I see you created a separate post to get help for business accounts, and read the advice from a former Vanguard employee warning you to NOT use them for a business account. Your best alternatives are Etrade for VUSXX or Schwab/Fidelity to hold SGOV. I have only used Vanguard and Etrade for personal accounts, without issue. I did open trust accounts at Vanguard and that was easy to do as well. Sorry you are having issues, but not every broker handles everything well. Believe it or not, there are some things I found Vanguard does better than other brokers, and prevented me from considering a move to another broker (for IRAs and trusts). Business accounts may not be the same decision.

Thanks for all of that. The other issue here is that I'm somewhat a bystander in all of this.

It's the (extremely busy) business owner who has been attempted to open the business Vanguard account. Since I am not the business owner I cannot directly interact with Vanguard over this. So until my phone call to Vanguard the other night I'd done nothing regarding this over the last year. All the business owner's time.

I have no experience with any brokerage aside from Vanguard so it'd be difficult for me to assist the business owner with how do to anything with any other brokerage.

I know that all business owners are busy but I have to emphasize that this is an extremely busy one. I try to do as much background work as possible so that the business owner just has to make decisions and not have to do the actual work. But in this case it's only the business owner who can establish the account and provide all the information that Vanguard (and any other brokerage would request). Again, for me to assist it was / is going to be easiest to establish the account at Vanguard.

[yankees60]

Reporting back that yesterday the business owner received an email from Vanguard informing that the account had been established.

I responded back with: "In 2025 miracles are STILL occurring!!!!!!!!!"