Warning: Avoid Schwab as your broker (for RSU/ESPP) if you have a choice

TL;DR: If you have an Ameritrade account and you need to create a new Charles Schwab account, it is going to be painful. So best to avoid if possible. Hello Peeps Just a heads up to save fellow Blinders some hassle and avoid being stuck in limbo like me. For background: I choose Schwab at Cisco as the brokerage for the ESPP and RSU programs last year. Apparently Schwab bought Ameritrade a couple of years back and are trying to port the accounts over (with partial success) and create a unified portal. Schwab cannot create a new account for me cause I have an existing Ameritrade account which they failed to port over. I have Cisco stock in ESPP and RSU but I can't transact on them cause I can't register with a Schwab account. I spent around a couple of hours on the phone with Schwab customer service before they told me to send in a paper application. They didn't give me a straight answer when I asked why that would be different from an online application apart from the fact that my account needs manual intervention. The rep did say that this account porting of Ameritrade accounts is a multi year process. Didn't tell me how many days it would take as well. I am not able to complete the registration process online though and the ajax request fails with a CustomerVerification error (see below). Now I have to call their Customer Verification department and figure out where we go from here as it looks like manual intervention is necessary. { "error_code": 0, "error_message": "", "data": { "assertion_error_code": 18, "data": { "errors": [ { "code": "404", "source": "CustomerVerification", "meta": { "correlationId": "1111113-ABCD-45f7-ba49-65e9cf25b3bc" }, "intervention": null, "detail": "NotFound", "ccsReturnCode": null } ] }, "assertion_error_message": "Step failed, user may try to correct", "state": "pending", "assertions_complete": false }, "headers": [] } #cisco #schwab #rsu #espp #ameritrade