Charles Schwab customers swamped social media Tuesday with reports of login problems, with some clients fuming they were unable to access their accounts hours after the brokerage indicated it had fixed the issues.
The trouble appeared to start around 8:30 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time, according to a graphic at outage monitoring site Downdetector, which had received about 5,800 problem reports for Schwab by 9:45 a.m., with 93% citing login trouble.
At 1:36 p.m. the reports had subsided to 878, and some customers continued to report problems on X, formerly Twitter, at 2 p.m.
Shortly after 11 a.m., Schwab told ThinkAdvisor the glitches had been resolved, but an hour and a half later the company posted on X that some clients "may be experiencing face ID or finger print login issues on mobile devices."
Schwab instructed those customers to disable biometrics and login using their user names and passwords, and noted that those with a saved username may need to erase that text and re-type their Login ID and password.
"I've been locked out of my account for FIVE hours now," one X user responded later, at 1:30 p.m.
"None of this works you liars," another replied.
Downdetector also showed 1,550 problem reports for Schwab-owned TD Ameritrade around 9:45 a.m. — apparently stemming from login troubles with the thinkorswim trading app. The reports had dropped to 143 by 1:38 p.m.
"We are aware that some clients may be experiencing issues logging in to some of our platforms. Schwab Advisor Center (SAC) is not impacted. Our teams are actively working to resolve the issue. We apologize for the inconvenience," a Schwab spokesman told ThinkAdvisor by email at 9:40 a.m.
At 10:16 a.m., Schwab posted a message on X, formerly Twitter, apologizing for the login problems and noting that brokers were available to review specific trades.
