Funny about Money

Life in the punch-a-button lane

Nobody at Fidelity seems to want to accept something over $100,000 of my money.

Earlier this week, TIAA-CREF sent a notice saying it is upping its 403b management fees significantly. My 403b contains two funds: TIAA-CREF and Fidelity. During the last recession, after TIAA-CREF lost more than my combined employee-employer contributions for several quarters running, I took the opportunity to open a Vanguard fund and had the university start contributing to that instead of to TIAA-CREF. Not wanting to sell at the bottom of the market, I left my existing investments in TIAA-CREF. Over time, the value rose handsomely, so I stayed put.

A year later, the Great Desert University dropped Vanguard and added Fidelity. Following my financial adviser’s guidance, I moved from Vanguard to Fidelity and invested in a broadly diverse set of offerings.

Having been clued, by Dylan Ross’s guest post at Get Rich Slowly, to the effect of fees on retirement savings, I called my financial advisor to let him know about TIAA-CREF’s increase in management fees. He recommended that we move my 403b holdings into Fidelity.

Easier said than done.

Fidelity makes it virtually impossible for you to reach a human being. When you call the number given on the statement, you get a robot voice demanding that you set up a PIN number. It demands that you reel off six to twelve numbers to do so. Then it demands that you repeat yourself. When you do so, it invariably tells you that your second set of numbers (which in my case was 1-2-3-4-5-6, hard to get wrong!) does not match your first effort. It does this every single time you try to get through. So, you can’t get through.

I called HR to ask for a number that will reach a human being. GDU also has contrived to make its HR customer service representatives unreachable. Between the two punch-a-button mazes, it took me FORTY-FIVE MINUTES to get the name of one Damon Peterson, at another 800 number!

Make that “45 wasted minutes.” I called Peterson and reached his robot voicemail. Left word. He has never returned my call.

Ditto one Leslie Jackson at TIAA-CREF, whose number I extracted from HR while I had the rep on the line. She also never bothered to call back.

Tomorrow I will try again. And I also will call the numbers listed at Get Human, which lists numbers and instructions for how to get to a person at a vast number of faceless corporations. The site grades each entity’s customer service: Fidelity gets a D and TIAA-CREF gets an F.

When last heard from (which ain’t often, since statements come about twice a year), TIAA-CREF was holding a bit over $122,000 of my money. Before I wised up about annuities, I invested some in their annuity program, which of course I can’t get back. But that still leaves $115,000 to $120,000 that could be invested in Fidelity.

Presumably, though, these potatoes are too small for such a grand corporation.