<p>We've gotten pretty tired of Dean Witter, which became Morgan Stanley and now Smith Barney and are thinking of moving our "home" to Charles Schwab in the very near future. Their fees erode the value of our accounts and have not been getting very good returns with them, even using their recommended DW mutual funds. :( Thoughts and experiences, folks?</p>
<p>So far, I have had two meetings with two of the CS employees and have been satisfied with what they've said to date. One has been employed by CS for about 10 years and not sure about the other. They have not charged for these visits and are helping me sort through our finances and will help us roll over our accounts to CS from their current "homes." We have a few accounts at Vanguard, our state deferred comp & with the federal government. I'm happy they have a "bricks & mortar" office in downtown Honolulu & even validate parking. </p>
<p>I have another meeting with a CS advisor in a week.</p>
<p>We've had one of their credit cards since April & have been happy getting our 2% of our purchases charged there.</p>
<p>We’ve had C S for a long time. We also have SmithBarney (from work account) and Vanguard (401K) my favorite is Schwab. I had a lot of trouble with SB and downloading account information. Schwab doesn’t bother us with investment advice, but are there to help. I like their web pages and on line access. Everything is easy to use for a do it yourselfer. I think their advice columns are great, too.</p>
<p>I’ve been trying to get my mom to move her account from Edward Jones… Talk about FEES! wow, what they are taking from her should be illegal! But there is no CS office in her town for her to go and talk to someone. She does better face to face than on the phone or web.</p>
<p>And yeah, the 2% card can’t be beat, but they stopped allowing new accounts.</p>
<p>Yea, we don’t do high volume and I like face-to-face & am glad CS is pretty convenient. I’m happy we’re moving from SB, because the fees just keep rising astronomically and our returns are really not justifying the fees (in fact, we have a lot of LTCL in our accounts since 1987). We will try to be more active in managing our accounts, especially after H retires.</p>
<p>My S & BIL have switched from SB to EJ and like them better than SB. Will see if I am happy enough to urge them to consider CS after we’ve been with them a while. We did try TD Waterhouse, but didn’t like them much. Their folks don’t seem to be trained for much & we heard horror stories about a client (& I personally witnessed a client) who couldn’t get funds from them, despite all the correct legal documents. It was very upsetting & we closed all our accounts promptly thereafter.</p>
<p>I have had great experiences with Charles Schwab. Excellent help on the phone every time without delay, as well as face time if needed. Very consistent quality of help. Not sure of fee schedule, but have used them to help family members with both large and smaller “nest eggs” and service excellent in all cases.</p>
<p>Very friendly customer service with my brokerage account. My dad agrees, but says, “Wait until something actually needs to be fixed…” LOL. He had a lot of trouble getting them to accept that he was the victim of ID fraud but eventually they came correct</p>
<p>Thanks–that is consistent with our experiences. We have had pleasant interactions in person so far & all my toll-free calls have been promptly answered and helpful. I just started using them last year when I signed up for their credit card & debit card because we had planned to travel to Europe.</p>
<p>So far, haven’t read or heard much “bad” about them, so will probably try switching to them. Seems considerably cheaper and more personal than our current situation which snows us with unhelpful paperwork.</p>
<p>I’ve been using CS since 1998 when my father passed away, and the money he left me was in a CS account. They were very helpful and it was time for me to consolidate everything in one place anyway, so I did that at CS and I’ve never looked back.</p>
<p>I use both Fidelity and Schwab, and am happy with both. I don’t use them for investment advice, though. I don’t think I pay account fees at either. Their commissions are comparable, and I don’t trade that much anyway.</p>
<p>Fidelity has a cool feature called FullView, which pulls in information from all your different accounts at different firms onto one page. Don’t know if CS has that, I never checked.</p>
<p>Actually, when I spoke with the CS agent, she recommended we has NOT pushed any of her products & tho she is a licensed insurance agent, argued against us buying any more insurance. I agree that shopping is a good idea. So far, CS has NOT been pushy at all.</p>
<p>We have used schwab since mid '90s. No complaints. I’ve never wanted a broker though. Just finished reading The Big Short and remain convinced that I care more about my money than anyone else. I keep our stock fund in index funds.</p>
