Review: T. Rowe Price Roth IRA Account - Poor Customer Service, Impossible to Navigate Website

I opened a Roth IRA with T. Rowe Price about four years ago when I decided to increase my retirement savings. At the time, I was planning on opening a Roth IRA account with Vanguard, an investment management firm with a good reputation. I changed to T. Rowe Price, however, when I heard several recommendations on TV from well-respected and well-known financial analysts and the subsequent research I did made the company look promising. Now, after four years investing with T. Rowe Price, I closed my account last month and opened my initially-planned account with Vanguard. Poor customer service, a low return on my investment, and a website that's difficult to navigate were the main reasons I dropped T. Rowe Price, and would not recommend them as an investment management company to invest through.

T. Rowe Price Website is Terrible - Nowadays, with most of us doing so many things online, we're used to navigating websites that are set up for ease and convenience. Ease and convenience are the last words you would ever use to describe T. Rowe Price's website - a site that is literally one of the most confusing and difficult financial-type sites I've ever used.

Simple tasks like withdrawing money, canceling transactions, or changing standing bank withdrawals so you can invest more money in your Roth IRA are a nightmare to deal with. Nothing on the website is easy to find, and every transaction becomes an exercise in futility, as you desperately search the website for the simple page you need.

The absolute worst transaction to schedule though is closing your T. Rowe Price account. A task that shouldn't require much more than a simple request and a direct deposit of remaining funds to your bank account, took me two phone calls, two e-mails and over an hour searching their website to find the 'close account' page. It doesn't exist.

Of course, T. Rowe Price makes it easy to open an account. But close an account? Nope, sorry can't do that. Not unless you're willing to go through various gyrations. Plus, a $20 closing fee.

Poor Customer Service - Although T. Rowe Price customer service reps are perfectly friendly and nice, they're not the best to deal with when you try to get something done.

I initially called them several months ago, in an attempt to cancel a standing order that was applied to my bank account every month. After waiting 20 minutes on hold, I was finally connected to a lovely customer service rep who told me the bank standing order had been cancelled, so no more money would be withdrawn from my bank account. Imagine my surprise, therefore, a month later when, not only had the standing order not been cancelled, T. Rowe Price used it to withdraw money from my account. A withdrawal I had not technically authorized.

But, this time, when I tried to access my T. Rowe Price account online to cancel the standing order again, I found myself locked out of my account after only two attempts to remember my password. (T. Rowe Price's website has so many ridiculous verification procedures you have to go through to actually get to your account, you'd have to have a brain like Einstein to remember them all correctly).

Yet again, I had to call a T. Rowe Price customer service rep and sit through a 15 minute conversation while I tried to get online access to my account unfrozen. Inconvenient and annoying.

Poor Performance and Low Return on Investment - Compared to a similar account at Vanguard, the T. Rowe Price Roth IRA investment account I had performed poorly for the last three out of four years, either losing money or barely making a profit. This year, so far, it's around -1.05% so, in actual fact, I'm still losing money by keeping the account open.

At Vanguard, while obviously not booming as the US economy is so bad, at least my investment has more chance of making a modest profit if Vanguard's performance over the last three years is anything to go by.

Forced Enrollment of Iverify - T. Rowe Price has also insituted a forced enrollment of a silly program on their website called 'Iverify'. In order to access your accounts online now, enrolling with Iverify is mandatory as, supposedly, it adds an additional step of 'security'. As I already have to enter an email address, a password, verify a picture they made me choose previously is the correct one, then key in yet another password, I sure as heck don't need the added 'security' and hassle of remembering the answers to six security questions I chose months ago.

Overall, while I wouldn't say investing through T. Rowe Price is the worst experience I've ever had in the world of retirement investing, it's far from being the best. An easily navigable website would improve the experience markedly, as would customer service reps that actually do what they say they've done and the cancellation of their idiotic Iverify program.

Meanwhile, I'm all set up at Vanguard and, so far, it's been a breeze.