A $25 Vanguard Fee Glitch Is Now Fixed
Vanguard says it has refunded customers who were mistakenly charged a new service fee.
Some Vanguard Group customers were mistakenly charged a new $25 annual service fee even though they qualified for a waiver, according to The Independent Vanguard Adviser.
Vanguard said Thursday it has corrected the problem and that it affected a small number of customers.
Vanguard announced a year ago it would start charging $25 per brokerage account to customers with under $5 million in qualifying assets, IVA editor Jeff DeMaso noted in a report this week.
The easiest way to avoid the annual fee is to accept electronic delivery of statements, confirmations, reports and other materials, he noted.
A Vanguard website page showing brokerage fees in effect as of July 1 also indicates that customers in an advisory program serviced by a Vanguard affiliate can avoid the fee, as can certain other clients.
“I’ve heard from several readers that Vanguard recently collected this fee — no surprise there. I was surprised to hear from one IVA reader who was hit with this $25 despite switching to e-delivery last year!” DeMaso wrote.
“This apparently was not a complete one-off, either. The IVA reader was told that a glitch had caused a number of accounts to be charged the fee in error. … Vanguard has a lot of work to do to fulfill CEO Salim Ramji’s promise to have the ‘most modern technology infrastructure in the industry,’” he wrote.
A Vanguard spokesperson told ThinkAdvisor by email Thursday: “A small population of clients were incorrectly assessed an annual fee. The situation has been resolved and Vanguard has fully reimbursed these clients.”
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