Cannot update beneficiaries at Vanguard + horrible customer service
For some reason, I'm unable to edit my beneficiaries in the Vanguard app. I get a message saying that I need to call in to change beneficiaries. My wife's account does not have these restrictions, I was able to update her account from the app, so this is something specific to my account. The beneficiary information on my account is outdated, so I called the customer service and turns out that they could not change the information either. Further, they have no idea why neither they nor I can change this information. I was told that I have to send in a paper form to update beneficiaries. The rep also filed a ticket to see why the app wasn't working
This was concerning enough, but since then, I've had to call in twice more and each experience is worse than the last
Today, I called in and the agent I spoke with kept muttering under her breath, clearly annoyed at having to do her job. I could hear what she was saying throughout. The call was also entirely unhelpful, because the rep told me that she cannot respond to the ticket mentioned above, since a different rep had filed it. I'm now waiting for that other rep to give me a call so she can respond to the ticket
I've been a long-time Vanguard customer and have a large portion of my assets at Vanguard. In the past, I'd been happy with their online experience as well as their over-the-phone customer service, but my view of both of these has completely changed this week.
I'm considering moving my money out of Vanguard but in the meantime, would appreciate info in case anyone has faced a similar issue with updating beneficiaries
Posted Oct 22, 2025, 5:04 PM UTC