Vanguard Services still not getting reinvested dividends correct

Just spoke with VBS - they know about the issue, and have programmers working on it. For those of us that download Quicken stock dividend reinvestment transactions, PLEASE call their tech support and complain!

Personally, I'm amazed no one else posted a 'me too' to my original. Maybe I didn't title it correctly, maybe no one cares, maybe no one reads anything from 'Andrew'..... :-(

Oilcan wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@t11g2000prh.googlegroups.com:

Me too. I use the website's statement data to copy manually. Tax data are done manually from the 1099s. I wish all these things could be reliably downloaded, but that seems wishful thinking, although 1099s may be close.

Wow! OK - thanks for your two posts anyway. Even if one has to manually edit the transactions (I admit I do a lot of that as well), at LEAST having the numbers correct for fractional shares is a head start of cutting and pasting from the website; at least for me.

But I do hear both of you. Again, thanks for listening!

"Andrew" wrote in news:4a815d23$0$31285$ snipped-for-privacy@cv.net:

Andrew, I thought you shoudl have heard the solution to the frational shares problems. NEVER, ever enter the price per share into Quicken. It logically follows from the total price paid (commissions and fees excluded) and the total number of shares in the transaction. This assumes (yes I know) that the total number of shares is displyed/downloaded correctly.

Sure, I know this. In the old (ie: Pershing days), a correct purchase transaction was indeed downloaded to Quicken correctly with the fractional shares included in the transaction. That's the part that doesn't exist anymore! Now I have to do that manually.

(Actually Han, I can't understand why you thought I didn't know that from my post? No where did I say I was entering the price per share....)

"Andrew" wrote in news:4a81e889$0$10323$ snipped-for-privacy@cv.net:

You confused me . I sure thought that you knew this, but still mentioned something about "having the numbers correct for fractional shares". I then thought it might be best (at least for others) to reiterate the never enter price per share statement.

Gotcha. When I said 'fractional shares', I really meant the number of shares (not the PPP) down to the 5 decimal point accuracy (or is it 4?) that I used to get automagically. Now cut and paste as we discussed is the way to go until VBS gets it's act together.

Now they say they'll fix this problem by end of the year. We'll see. I was told "in a month' 3 months ago. (To refresh, the dividend reinvestment transactions come into Quicken as a MISC EXP to get the cash out of your account and NOT picking up the extra shares that are really purchased as a result.)

I have multiple issues with Vanguard Brokerage and quicken downloads. My advantage account (checking) leaves out most relevant information. I have to go online and look at each check image to get the information before I confirm the downloads. As others have noted, the reinvested dividends in the brokerage account don't download correctly either. I have talked to Vanguard about both issues, but don't have confidence that they will move quickly.

When I last spoke to Vanguard on 23 November, "Lexi" they told me that the downloaded reinvestment dividends problem will be fixed by year end. That gives them 2 more days.

I am assuming that any dividend transactions after 1/1/2010 will have both the dividend received and the subsequent buy operation in the download, rather than a MISC EXPENSE to get rid of the dividend payment without any purchases (and an offer by Quicken to accept placeholders).

We'll see.

Well, they didn't fix it with some dividends that were posted to my Vanguard account as of 4 Jan 2010. Now have many placeholders pending manual adjustments. Time to call Vanguard again later this morning.

About a year ago, they took over their own clearing functions (I think after Bernie Madoff, I'm not so thrilled with that since now it's the same company, but that's another story) from Pershing. Pershing used to have it correct in that any downloads and subsequent (and immediate) dividend reinvestments were handled quickly by Q. But that's been 'broken' now since at least August when I made my first of about four calls to them to find out when this is going to be fixed.

I didn't get a chance to call them on Tuesday, will try today (Wed).

FWIW, I did speak with Vanguard yesterday, and now they tell me that they do not have an estimated time for the fix (this problem ticket is now 5 months old). Time to start writing letters and escalating within Vanguard.

Letter in the mail to Vanguard asking for a fix explaining I can't trust their data of my monies if they can't get their own downloads straight to me. We'll see if that gets any attention.

On 1/22, I did receive a personal US snail-mail note back from Vanguard (A Mr. Damian Pizzo, Mgr. of Vanguard Web Technical Services) explaining they're aware of the "outstanding issue" and that "numerous resources are concentrated on resolving this matter". But he could not tell me when it will be resolved. He referred me to a technical leader that is aware of this matter, and I will be contacting that gentlemen (Andrew Vaskas) shortly.

--------------------------------------------------------- Regards -

- Andrew