Charles Schwab and Co., Inc. (San Francisco) Review

I don't know what happened to this company.
I opened an account August 25th 2020.
I funded it to the very next day at 3:15 a.m. for $5,000.

Several phone calls later with three transfers each and I'm told that I've been denied due to a negative report on Equifax. Now I can buy and sell anybody who answered the phone but yet if this was a multimillion-dollar account it WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN DECLINED!!!
Now this is after they readily and wholeheartedly took my money. Capitalizing on the float.
I have been trading stock for over 30 years and this is the first that I've encountered anything like this.

It is now Monday August 31st 2020 and I'm still waiting for my money. I have recordings of all conversations. In another hour I will place a final phone call to them before contacting the AG in California and my DBA home state.
In the interim, I've opened up a Robinhood account of which I thought I would never do. But surprisingly they're not bad at all.

*UPDATE* Funds received September 1, 2020.

have never had any bank or finance company of any sort hang up on me since the 30+ years ago when I first opened a checking account, until today. After my experience attempting to open an IRA account here, if the choice were to either invest with Schwab or not at all, I would not invest at all. The impression I got was basically, we are BIG and you are small, f-u - NEXT! But if that's how you feel about the incremental client then why even bother selling "slices?" I would be scared if I had to put my money here. It was also a turn off being asked for external banking account login credentials (which were reluctantly provided and something I now regret having done). Their website was also less intuitive to use than I was expecting/hoping for from a company that has 3.25T under management.

Rash of mysterious terminations of High Net Worth customers, without appeal or recourse. Alarming. Read on.

If you're a HNW individual, think very, very carefully about Schwab. My experience has been shockingly bad. Recently Schwab has, for reasons I can only speculate, been banning HNW customers without explanation or recourse. My best guess is that they've been pressured by their banking partner (BNY Mellon) to persecute and evict customers who are associated with fintech operations or cryptocurrency. It happened to me, after being a customer for 30 years. (note: I'm a US national with zero criminal history)

At any rate, it's lovely when you get a letter saying, essentially, Schwab reserves the right to terminate you at any time for any reason, and you don't have any recourse, and that they don't owe -- and won't ever give -- an explanation. More than a little traumatizing, especially after thirty years.

The good news is that, at least for my style of family office and LLC operations, there are much better options out there. Interactive Brokers, for instance, has great execution, fantastic margin rates, top-tier forex and non-US exchange offerings, and they won't drag you out behind the barn in the dead of night and shoot you in the head. Metaphorically speaking, of course.

It's a shame what Schwab has become. If you're just a sleepy little IRA customer, you'll probably be fine. But if you have any kind of sophistication and are involved in any kind of enterprise they can't understand, brace for the worst. Because it's no fun, what happened to me.

Schwab reached out with a perfunctory note urging me to "resolve the issue" by calling the main 800 number? Um, really? Can I smirk just a little bit here? Because I spent four months on the phone, several times a week, with the "Client Advocacy Group" (Hey, Bob Tyre. How ya doing?) with zero success. Letters to the Chairman. Character references. Any number of special pleadings. A call to the main Schwab number is going to help me? Are you just trolling and gas-lighting me? This is just the kind of inept, disconnected, incompetent response you've conditioned me to expect -- the only consistent, reliable, predictable feature of this entire misadventure. (8/30/18 I did reach out; after being on hold for ten minutes, and 20 minutes of conversation, the rep told me that in fact there's nothing that Schwab can or will do. The rep said he'd amend the response to this review with a statement stating same. When pigs fly, I assert.)

PPS I'm hoping this is Schwab Corporate. With any luck, this report might find its way to somebody with a brain.

PPPS An interesting thing crossed my desk this morning: my attorney has another HNW client, also a Schwab customer, who seems to have had a SAR (suspicious activity report) filed against them, which also seems to have resulted in a ban. Said client's own due diligence points to international wire transfers as the cause of Schwab's ban. This overlaps in the cases I have seen first-hand. So, if you're doing any kind of business that involves wiring money outside the US, you may find yourself banned. At any rate, seems like Schwab has some kind of regulatory issue or liability that it is addressing by unjustly terminating customers. Great business model you got there, Chuck. You may think you can stonewall and gaslight your customers, but, newsflash: we all talk to each other. We can connect the dots. We know there's something going on. Fix it before your reputation is irreparably damaged.

PPPPS Chuck, if you're listening, consider that you're shafting a member of your immediate community. Remember that golf retreat you purchased on Padre Lane? You bought it from my my best friend's parents -- I grew up in that house. You probably knew that "Bertie" lived close by -- who was, and remains, a dear family friend. You listening, Chuck? Because (metaphorically) knifing people in your immediate community is not good business.

Schwab robbed me of $4000. I was accused by Schwab of placing charges on my debit card that I did not place. These were very large charges placed at WalMart and I was not in the habit of placing large charges on my card so these charges (one was for over $1000 and another over $1500) should have been flagged as suspicious right from the start. I go over my statement every month and when I saw the fraudulent charges I immediately called Schwab's fraud department. I went over every fraudulent charge and the investigator was rude and treated me like I was a crook. He called me three days later and told me in a very negative tone that it looked like I had placed the charges but that they would temporarily take the charges off my account. He was flat-out rude to me. I went to the local Police department and gave them a copy of my statement and they basically told me to "wait in line" as they have many cases like this to deal with every month. I called Schwab and gave them the police report number. About a month later Schwab charged my account the $4000 and basically accused me to attempting to defraud them!!!! Never invest or bank with Schwab! They are cheaters, stealers and liars and NOT TO BE TRUSTED!!! GO ELSEWHERE WITH YOUR MONEY! SCHWAB IS A BAD DEAL!!!

They sent my entire 401K to the wrong person during a transfer. They then dragged their feet for months getting my money back. It took over 5 months to complete a simple transfer, and my 401K was deposited into someone else's account for 1 of those months with Charles Schwab not able to guarantee that the balance was even still there.

They did not give me a single apology and were incredibly rude with me throughout the process.

Ever since you put your hands on TD, trading with TD has gone south.