I was rather impressed with Ameritrade today. What I wanted to do was to combine the two accounts I had with them. (Of course, how I ended up with more than one Ameritrade account in the first place is another story.) Combining the accounts would both simplify recordkeeping and halve the minimum asset requirement, and I'm sure there are other good reasons to do that too. Anyway, I was poking around the Ameritrade website this afternoon but didn't see an obvious way to do it. So I gave them a call. Phone pickup was within about a minute and the service rep started explaining where to find the forms on the website. I had the Ameritrade website up on my laptop so I was following along. About halfway through the explanation, he offered to connect me to a specialist who could do the account transfer over the phone. I agreed and so he did. The specialist got both account numbers and my instructions, and put in the order within about another minute. Wonderful! Of course, I'll check back in about two or three business days to see if everything is transferred okay.
What's impressive is that they could do the account transfer over the phone with a minimum of fuss on my part. I've had significant frustration with certain other financial institutions this year so I can appreciate when a brokerage handles things well.