I've been a customer for 40 years for both companies, and have also had accounts with Fidelity and Ameritrade.
... I've taken advantage of various special promotion offers over the years e.g $500 for $50,000 deposit, 100 Free trades that other financial services have offered, but eventually all my money goes back to Schwab.
You've been a customer longer than I have, but I think we have a commin experience of "Vanguard has a website?".
Years ago "free trades" meant free stock or ETF purchases, back when Vanguard had tiered pricing for that. These days, it's a benefit for trading options. Someone buying 100 contracts would normally pay $100 for the trade at Vanguard - but instead Vanguard uses up a single free trade. The free options trades can be worth hundreds or thousands of dollars, and they refresh every year. So when I say I'm moving to Schwab, what I mean is that if Vanguard paid me a thousand dollars a year, I'd probably keep moving towards Schwab.
But I didn't emphasize that, because I figure most people don't buy or sell call options with Vanguard. But if anyone does - Vanguard's website easily takes last place. I find some websites annoying, but I hate placing trades at Vanguard. When I try to enter trades quickly using tabs and arrows to select menu items... when I reach the bottom of the page, Vanguard's website clears my order type. It goes from "market" to "[select one]"... about 1 in every 3 attempts. I have to slow down and use the mouse, where that happens less often. I have never "fought" my broker's website to trade, except on Vanguard. Hate it!
So maybe I should counter balance that with some positives.. but they all date back to when John "Jack" Bogle ran Vanguard. He championed index funds, and lower costs, and forced other brokerages to react. Heck, I championed those same things, and felt like Vanguard... was at the Vanguard of that charge.
Maybe my frustrations can be avoided by someone who just buys ETFs and mutual funds. But I can keep listing examples of other companies taking low cost leadership away from Vanguard, and it's sad Vanguard has allowed that to happen. I suspect Vanguard's lack of low cost leadership, combined with it's lack of advertising, will hurt the company over the coming decades.
Low costs help save our money as investors. But if you look at Fidelity, they invented zero cost mutual funds: expense ratio of 0.0%. I've even seen a 0.0% expense ratio ETF! But it wasn't by Vanguard, who is now more focused on growing their "wealth advisor" to charge a percentage of your assets - and no, they don't have the lowest costs for that, either.
I have personally used Fidelity and Vanguard. I am considering setting up a Schwab account going forward, but I believe that Vanguard is considered superior for what might be called "trade execution quality":
https://www.investopedia.com/charles-schwab-vs-vanguard-4587941
In my view "price improvement" is a joke, because it's never measured in terms of the percentage improvement within the bid ask spread. For example if you buy shares with a bid-ask spread of $10.00 to $10.10, you can wind up paying $10.0999 and that's "price improvement" of $0.0001 per share. Why aren't you impressed? Me, neither. I've hit this many times, so it's not a fluke.
If "price improvement" were measured better, instead of calling $0.0001 a win, I would be more interested in it.
