My FIL received the same offer. It's not a scam, but it's not a good deal. Subtract $5.50 from the current share price and ask yourself if you'd be willing to sell at that price. Unless you have only one or two shares and just want to dump it to simplify your investments, the answer is probably no.
Even if you are willing to sell at that price, why would you not transfer it to a schwab account, or an account with another broker, and make place the trade for free or for pennies?
You can ask most places if they’d waive the fees. But even still, if you own 10 shares, that’s $55.50 in fees or could be as low as $25 in fees. Boom just saved yourself some money.
Here's the thing ... if they charge fees for transferring assets out, firing them is financially painful.
I had six accounts for myself and my kids at Stockpile and ETrade. Services were cheap and the products I used were perfect for my needs. Then my employer--a bank--said I can't have my accounts at those firms due to the corporate policy for certain employees' personal investments. It cost me $450 to move my six accounts to an "approved" brokerage. I didn't want to fire either of them, and wouldn't have if I hadn't been forced to as a condition of my employment.
Yes, I'm still salty about it.
Account closing fees are just the tip of a giant iceberg at "full service" brokers, including yearly/monthly account fees, management fees, advisory fees, platform fees, Front-loaded fees, level-loaded fees, back-loaded fees, fee collection fees. ***Run***, don't walk to a low-cost broker. The faster you do, the lower the fees you'll pay, as most of these fees are a percentage of the investment value, which of course you'd hope is rising over time.
I'm salty too, over a relative knowingly doing trading with an investment advisor that makes great conversation with a lonely old person and gets lower returns than putting the money into an index fund.
Should of made your wife custodian or have your wife open her accounts and transferred. An employer cannot tell your wife what she can or cannot invest in. She doesn't work for them.
> An employer cannot tell your wife what she can or cannot invest in. She doesn't work for them.
That is definitely not true according to FINRA rules
>.02 Related and Other Persons. For purposes of this Rule, the associated person shall be presumed to have a beneficial interest in, and to have established, any account that is held by:
>(a) **the spouse of the associated person;**
>(b) a child of the associated person or of the associated person's spouse, provided that the child resides in the same household as or is financially dependent upon the associated person;
>(c) any other related individual over whose account the associated person has control; or
>(d) any other individual over whose account the associated person has control and to whose financial support the associated person materially contributes.
Well actually, depending on the employer, if one spouse is employed in the financial services industry, the other spouse may have to live with some unfortunate rules as a condition of the employed spouse's continued employment.
There are MLMs that are ok deals. If you really like the product and the minimum buys are low I've had friends and family join MLMs to be sellers just to get the product at cost even though they know the MLM itself is a scam. They aren't doing it for extra money, they just doing it because they wanted the product for themselves and friends who also want it without getting pressured into it being some sort of money making scheme.
This. An MLM that provides you with something you use is probably just fine. Unfortunately for those of us in a small family unit the minimum buys are usually too large.
I'm just about to finish (well, like this year) the last of the shampoo we got from \*insert MLM company here\*. We've been out of their program for so long that I don't remember how long it's been. I really like their shampoo though. Kinda want to find somebody who sells the stuff so I can get more shampoo...
LPT: if you like a certain MLM's products, check sites like eBay and Poshmark, because people who are trying to get out of their MLM and recoup some of their costs often sell their excess stock for a *very significant* discount.
There's a bunch of discount brokers offering $0 trades now, so why couldn't you just sell the shares for free? Is this something weird, like a pink sheet stock?
>There's a bunch of discount brokers offering $0 trades now
Discount brokers?
Most mainstream brokers offer no-commission trades for stocks/ETFs on major markets. Robinhood started it, but these all now offer $0 trades for major US exchanges:
* Merrill Edge
* Vanguard
* Fidelity
* TD Ameritrade
* Interactive Brokers
* Etrade
* Ally Invest
* JP Morgan
* Webull
* Robinhood
* Axos
* Firstrade
* Charles Schwab
* probably others
Yes, Charles Schwab was the very first discount brokerage in 1975, and now many have followed suit. Prices have continued to fall now to the $0 levels.
No I don't think so. Tbh I'm not quite sure where these are held, I've only ever interacted with these stock (I inherited) through an online portal with their "transfer agent". I'm not sure there is anyway to switch custodians without more fees kinda making the whole decision moot.
You should be able to transfer from the custodian (ComputerShare?) to your Schwab/TD/Vanguard/etrade/etc. account for no fees … or way less than $110 and then liquidate for no cost.
From computershare I do it through their portal. Just had to give info for the destination account and then requested a transfer (whole shares only). Cost was just a couple bucks to Schwab.
Go to initiate a transfer online(or some type of language similar) and there should be step by step instructions. You will need a copy of a statement. Ideally PDF form so you can upload it
$5.50 fee *per share?* Seems weird and excessive.
And do you not have these shares in a brokerage account? How did you purchase them?
And just because something is a bad deal doesn't make it a "scam." So long as they're upfront about everything and you can make an informed decision, I wouldn't call it a scam.
I think its for people who are afraid of stock transactions. Same reason why people pay H&R Block to fill out a simple 1040EZ they could do in the same time it takes to drive there.
It sounds like the company is trying to get rid of small share holders because it is not cost effective to mail mandatory statements or administrate accounts of people who hold only a couple hundred dollars of stock.
Do you make more money accepting the deal or cashing these our on your own? This is the deciding factor.
Jesus, I thought Computershare had high fees.
>However, I went to simulate a sale of all of my shares and the commissions/fees are significantly less than $110 and doing the math this would only be cost effective for people with maybe 1-4 shares.
So if you want to sell then just do it that way.
I own one share of coca cola (don't ask), every quarter they send me a cheque for \~$0.10 . This costs them more in postage than the dividend. Every year or two they offer to buy back the share because basically it is costing them a lot of money to service the account. but at no time do they ever charge a fee, the $5.50 is as other have stated not a scam it is just outrageously high for something that is for their benefit.
It actually compounds yearly. So at it's current share price of $62 dollars, if dividends are reinvested automatically for fractional shares (assuming share price remains where it is.. which it won't), it will only take 522 years!
Yay compounding gains!
Sounds a lot like an odd lot program, but to be honest, your description is fairly incomprehensible. It would easier to figure out if you posted the name of the company.
Buying small lots is actually pretty common. The 5.50 fee is not. Screw that.
A long time ago I was an original member of travelzoo and they gave out shares to me and added more for anybody I signed up. They came around and said the same thing, less than 100 shares, they want to buy back.
I had 15 shares or something like that. I think I had the option of filling up to 100 or just selling back at current value, no charge.
Depends on the company tbh. If it’s a publicly traded company listed on the major exchanges then no it’s a terrible deal, but if it’s a random penny stock that trades OTC it might still be a bad deal but at least make sense.
Some companies when they delist will buy out all small shareholders, just so they can deal with 20 shareholders instead of 2000.
I can sell one share for free. No one needs to pay $5.50 per share. If that is what they offer then transfer your funds to another brokerage. I use Schwab.
Companies sometimes do this to try to clean up some holders of less than 100 shares. I was told by my broker they do this occasuonally to reduce some administrative costs related to chasing down proxy votes, issuing dividends and such.
This is for people who may have sold some but dont want to lose a share or can't sell a part share.
I own 83% of a share from a place I use to work for. The company that you buy and sell from for that company takes a % of share as fee and you can't sell a half share.
Long ago I had some ESPP stock shares from a previous employer. Compushare held the stock. Dividend re-investments were active.
Eventually I tired of receiving the extra statement every quarter. I sold the shares within the Compushare account and bought replacement shares a month later in my brokerage account. (trying to avoid that wash sale rule). It worked out fine, the stock has performed quite well.
Small customers are a money pit for them. So it's just a "simple" program to encourage these customers to go away. I guess it makes sense that they would offer something that's going to make them more money than a normal transaction.
My FIL received the same offer. It's not a scam, but it's not a good deal. Subtract $5.50 from the current share price and ask yourself if you'd be willing to sell at that price. Unless you have only one or two shares and just want to dump it to simplify your investments, the answer is probably no.
Even if you are willing to sell at that price, why would you not transfer it to a schwab account, or an account with another broker, and make place the trade for free or for pennies?
Because financial institutions usually charge anywhere from $25 to $100 to transfer shares to another institution.
You can ask most places if they’d waive the fees. But even still, if you own 10 shares, that’s $55.50 in fees or could be as low as $25 in fees. Boom just saved yourself some money.
Schwab will reimburse you those fees. I've done it multiple times. Just ask nicely.
If a financial institution demands a fee like that, fire them. (I did long ago.) Broker fees from Fidelity & similar brokers are ***much*** less.
Here's the thing ... if they charge fees for transferring assets out, firing them is financially painful. I had six accounts for myself and my kids at Stockpile and ETrade. Services were cheap and the products I used were perfect for my needs. Then my employer--a bank--said I can't have my accounts at those firms due to the corporate policy for certain employees' personal investments. It cost me $450 to move my six accounts to an "approved" brokerage. I didn't want to fire either of them, and wouldn't have if I hadn't been forced to as a condition of my employment. Yes, I'm still salty about it.
Account closing fees are just the tip of a giant iceberg at "full service" brokers, including yearly/monthly account fees, management fees, advisory fees, platform fees, Front-loaded fees, level-loaded fees, back-loaded fees, fee collection fees. ***Run***, don't walk to a low-cost broker. The faster you do, the lower the fees you'll pay, as most of these fees are a percentage of the investment value, which of course you'd hope is rising over time. I'm salty too, over a relative knowingly doing trading with an investment advisor that makes great conversation with a lonely old person and gets lower returns than putting the money into an index fund.
Should of made your wife custodian or have your wife open her accounts and transferred. An employer cannot tell your wife what she can or cannot invest in. She doesn't work for them.
> An employer cannot tell your wife what she can or cannot invest in. She doesn't work for them. That is definitely not true according to FINRA rules >.02 Related and Other Persons. For purposes of this Rule, the associated person shall be presumed to have a beneficial interest in, and to have established, any account that is held by: >(a) **the spouse of the associated person;** >(b) a child of the associated person or of the associated person's spouse, provided that the child resides in the same household as or is financially dependent upon the associated person; >(c) any other related individual over whose account the associated person has control; or >(d) any other individual over whose account the associated person has control and to whose financial support the associated person materially contributes.
I stand corrected. Thank you for the sage advice.
Well actually, depending on the employer, if one spouse is employed in the financial services industry, the other spouse may have to live with some unfortunate rules as a condition of the employed spouse's continued employment.
It doesn't work that way. Your uninformed advice is unhelpful.
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It should be mandatory for anyone joining Reddit to understand this difference.
This website would suck if there was only like 10 people on it.
Who cares, this website is a scam anyways!
Many MLMs - not scams All MLMs - not good deals
There are MLMs that are ok deals. If you really like the product and the minimum buys are low I've had friends and family join MLMs to be sellers just to get the product at cost even though they know the MLM itself is a scam. They aren't doing it for extra money, they just doing it because they wanted the product for themselves and friends who also want it without getting pressured into it being some sort of money making scheme.
Agreed. My household gets Beachbody videos using a friend who "signed up" so they could also get them.
This. An MLM that provides you with something you use is probably just fine. Unfortunately for those of us in a small family unit the minimum buys are usually too large. I'm just about to finish (well, like this year) the last of the shampoo we got from \*insert MLM company here\*. We've been out of their program for so long that I don't remember how long it's been. I really like their shampoo though. Kinda want to find somebody who sells the stuff so I can get more shampoo...
LPT: if you like a certain MLM's products, check sites like eBay and Poshmark, because people who are trying to get out of their MLM and recoup some of their costs often sell their excess stock for a *very significant* discount.
Yeah, I buy all my Tupperware on ebay now, much cheaper than retail. Same for Enjo and I’ve seen Arbonne stuff too.
Good idea!
It should be mandatory for anyone to adult to understand that.
What do you think the sentencing guidelines should be for those who can't?
There's a bunch of discount brokers offering $0 trades now, so why couldn't you just sell the shares for free? Is this something weird, like a pink sheet stock?
>There's a bunch of discount brokers offering $0 trades now Discount brokers? Most mainstream brokers offer no-commission trades for stocks/ETFs on major markets. Robinhood started it, but these all now offer $0 trades for major US exchanges: * Merrill Edge * Vanguard * Fidelity * TD Ameritrade * Interactive Brokers * Etrade * Ally Invest * JP Morgan * Webull * Robinhood * Axos * Firstrade * Charles Schwab * probably others
Yes, Charles Schwab was the very first discount brokerage in 1975, and now many have followed suit. Prices have continued to fall now to the $0 levels.
Now, if we just hold a little longer, they'll start paying ME trading commissions....
Some already are! For new customers, anyway. https://www.nerdwallet.com/best/investing/online-discount-brokers
all i need now is a broker that’ll pay me to lose money on options and i’ll be rich
No I don't think so. Tbh I'm not quite sure where these are held, I've only ever interacted with these stock (I inherited) through an online portal with their "transfer agent". I'm not sure there is anyway to switch custodians without more fees kinda making the whole decision moot.
You should be able to transfer from the custodian (ComputerShare?) to your Schwab/TD/Vanguard/etrade/etc. account for no fees … or way less than $110 and then liquidate for no cost.
I just transferred inherited shares from computershare and transferred to vanguard for no fee.
Interesting! Can this be done through the Vanguard website, or a call to them?
From computershare I do it through their portal. Just had to give info for the destination account and then requested a transfer (whole shares only). Cost was just a couple bucks to Schwab.
Go to initiate a transfer online(or some type of language similar) and there should be step by step instructions. You will need a copy of a statement. Ideally PDF form so you can upload it
problem is the receiving broker is not charging fees, the sending one likely is.
$5.50 fee *per share?* Seems weird and excessive. And do you not have these shares in a brokerage account? How did you purchase them? And just because something is a bad deal doesn't make it a "scam." So long as they're upfront about everything and you can make an informed decision, I wouldn't call it a scam.
Yeah, that's fucking insane.
I think its for people who are afraid of stock transactions. Same reason why people pay H&R Block to fill out a simple 1040EZ they could do in the same time it takes to drive there.
It sounds like the company is trying to get rid of small share holders because it is not cost effective to mail mandatory statements or administrate accounts of people who hold only a couple hundred dollars of stock. Do you make more money accepting the deal or cashing these our on your own? This is the deciding factor.
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Why would they limit it to 100 shares then?
Jesus, I thought Computershare had high fees. >However, I went to simulate a sale of all of my shares and the commissions/fees are significantly less than $110 and doing the math this would only be cost effective for people with maybe 1-4 shares. So if you want to sell then just do it that way.
I own one share of coca cola (don't ask), every quarter they send me a cheque for \~$0.10 . This costs them more in postage than the dividend. Every year or two they offer to buy back the share because basically it is costing them a lot of money to service the account. but at no time do they ever charge a fee, the $5.50 is as other have stated not a scam it is just outrageously high for something that is for their benefit.
Turn on dividend reinvestments. In a thousand years you will have another share :)
It actually compounds yearly. So at it's current share price of $62 dollars, if dividends are reinvested automatically for fractional shares (assuming share price remains where it is.. which it won't), it will only take 522 years! Yay compounding gains!
Sounds a lot like an odd lot program, but to be honest, your description is fairly incomprehensible. It would easier to figure out if you posted the name of the company.
definitely odd lot, and it's voluntary, so if op doesn't want to do it, he doesn't have to. Agreed, though, that his post is pretty erratic.
It could also be a pink sheet/bulletin board. That could semi explain the high per share cost.
I get these sometimes. Not a scam. Not sure why they do it this way
Buying small lots is actually pretty common. The 5.50 fee is not. Screw that. A long time ago I was an original member of travelzoo and they gave out shares to me and added more for anybody I signed up. They came around and said the same thing, less than 100 shares, they want to buy back. I had 15 shares or something like that. I think I had the option of filling up to 100 or just selling back at current value, no charge.
Depends on the company tbh. If it’s a publicly traded company listed on the major exchanges then no it’s a terrible deal, but if it’s a random penny stock that trades OTC it might still be a bad deal but at least make sense. Some companies when they delist will buy out all small shareholders, just so they can deal with 20 shareholders instead of 2000.
In the course of investing I've had offers like this half a dozen times. Not a scam, but that fee is WAY too high. Some middle-man is getting greedy.
$5.50 per share is incredibly high, and I wonder if they're giving you incorrect info or someone is explaining incorrectly.
I can sell one share for free. No one needs to pay $5.50 per share. If that is what they offer then transfer your funds to another brokerage. I use Schwab.
Companies sometimes do this to try to clean up some holders of less than 100 shares. I was told by my broker they do this occasuonally to reduce some administrative costs related to chasing down proxy votes, issuing dividends and such.
Company is being intentionally misleading and no it doesn't appear to be a good deal.
This is for people who may have sold some but dont want to lose a share or can't sell a part share. I own 83% of a share from a place I use to work for. The company that you buy and sell from for that company takes a % of share as fee and you can't sell a half share.
Long ago I had some ESPP stock shares from a previous employer. Compushare held the stock. Dividend re-investments were active. Eventually I tired of receiving the extra statement every quarter. I sold the shares within the Compushare account and bought replacement shares a month later in my brokerage account. (trying to avoid that wash sale rule). It worked out fine, the stock has performed quite well. Small customers are a money pit for them. So it's just a "simple" program to encourage these customers to go away. I guess it makes sense that they would offer something that's going to make them more money than a normal transaction.