The Joys and Frustrations of TD Ameritrade

As I wrote some time back, I have transferred my SEP IRA from TD Ameritrade to Vanguard because of TD Ameritrade's lack of customer service. The transfer itself has had some positive and negative impacts on my experiences with TD Ameritrade, so I thought I'd detail those for you all to see:

1. I'm actually pleasantly surprised with their site and how easy it is to navigate. I haven't been there a lot in the past, but they have a great site with tons of useful information. And best of all -- you can find what you're looking for. Not all online brokers make it easy to accomplish whatever you're trying to accomplish.

2. Their web customer service is actually GOOD (versus the phone experience I had that was bad.) When I email them, they respond within a day. Pretty good.

3. The transfer didn't go smoothly. During the process, I earn 37 cents in interest that didn't get transferred. Isn't there a way TD Ameritrade could have pro-rated this early and sent it along with the entire transfer? So I had to contact them and ask that they send the ENTIRE amount to Vanguard. Their response:

"When assets are transferred out, there is often the need for a residual sweep to bring any lingering amounts.  Your new firm will need to request this sweep."

Ugh. So I just contacted Vanguard and asked them to sweep the account. What a pain to have to do this twice!

4. I have a transfer request in to TD Ameritrade to give some stocks to a charity as part of my plan to avoid capital gains taxes while rebalancing my portfolio. I'll let you know how they do on this. I've done it twice with Vanguard and it's been very smooth.

Comments

[kim]

That's not TD Ameritrade though, that's at least pretty much everywhere. I've transfered a 401k once when changing jobs and close a brokerage account once due to a job transfer and both times had the same issue. In neither case were Vanguard or TD Ameritrade involved.

[Dave]

I wonder how much Vanguard costs? Are there maintenance fees?

ZECCO is good IMO