Harry Sit created a guide for transferring Vanguard accounts for those who already decided to leave for one reason or another. Everyone should make their own decisions and many should perhaps stay at Vanguard.
https://thefinancebuff.com/steps-before-transfer-from-vanguard.html

I strongly urge posters to read the info in the above post before initiating any transfer out.
I had an open sell one Vanguard mutual fund and buy another Vanguard mutual fund order for the same amount. I submitted the transfer request during after hours after my trade orders were placed. When the transfer request was received the following morning, Vanguard promptly cancelled my buy order, without cancelling the sell order and did not send me a notification of their action. I logged into my account around 2:30PM and saw what happened and tried to cancel the sell order using the cancel button next to the order because I did not want to be out of the market. I spent about 40 minutes after that with a Vanguard rep to get the sell order cancelled or in the alternative, to reinstate my buy order. Vanguard refused to do either on the pretext that once a transfer request was received they will not let me buy any new mutual fund and that the cut off time to cancel a buy or sell Vanguard mutual fund order is 2:15 PM and I am not allowed to cancel the sell order.
I remember having a conversation with a Vanguard rep a few months ago about cancelling Vanguard mutual fund orders and she said the cut off time is 3PM but that if I had to cancel after that time I could call them and they will try on a good efforts basis. What is bizarre is there is an active cancel button next to my resting sell order and it allowed me to click on it but there was no resulting action. I asked the rep why they have an active cancel button if they will not allow me to use it. He said that is just technology deficiency and he will be happy to send the client feedback but that does not change the cut off time to cancel is 2:15 PM.
I will not become poor because of this situation. I have a very short memory for bad experiences but Vanguard made sure that I will never forget how they handled the situation.

Moved all our VSCSX to VG mmkt (5.28%) to be re-deployed into individual t-bills, notes, bonds (upcoming 3-yr and 10-yr auctions). Moved an overweight position in VWIAX to VG mmkt for future reinvestment to VTI, JQUA, and individual treasuries as well.

Is it fair to say you are decreasing your allocation to equities on a temporary basis?

There's a certain "fun element" in knocking Vanguard. While it's hard to find any upside to Vanguard's latest announcement, in itself it's not that big a deal. Most of the changes won't affect most people, as noted in the video Yogi linked to. It's more the idea these are more small steps in the wrong direction for Vanguard.
@randynevin wrote that Vanguard provides excellent products at competitive prices. True enough, and the main reason to have an account at Vanguard. All the brokerages have been pushing people toward digital "solutions" and away from human interaction. It used to be that a Flagship customer at Vanguard was assigned a specific rep. But it also used to be that a Private Client customer at Fidelity was assigned a specific rep. No more at either brokerage.
Fidelity can't even seem to assign me a "team" at its closest location any more. It used to be that a Fidelity team (formerly an individual rep) stayed with you for several years. These days, the turnover there is much quicker. Everyone seems to be moving in the wrong direction, even if Vanguard seems to be moving that way a little faster.
High Net Worth? Years ago, Vanguard introduced 8 free trades/year for Flagship customers. Both stock and TF fund trades were counted against those 8 trades. Then it upped the free trade allotment to 25/year. Then it eliminated stock commissions, so Flagship customers got 25 free TF fund trades/year regardless of any stock/ETF trades they make. A nice little perk moving in the right direction. A number of people have said that Schwab will cut some deals here, but you have to negotiate this.
Quality of execution ought to be high on the list of cost concerns. Vanguard, like Fidelity and Merrill does not receive payment for order flow - so it gets good price improvement. That's not changing.
Admiral shares? A long time ago, Vanguard treated index funds the same as actively managed funds - the entry level share class was Investor shares. Once Vanguard lowered the min for the Admiral share class of index funds to $3K, index fund Admiral shares became Investor shares in all but name. Consequently, restrictions on Admiral shares now apply only to actively managed funds' Admiral shares. One can usually transfer them to other brokerages but not buy additional shares.
ADR fees charged by a custodian are part of the ADR product and as Vanguard clearly states: "Banks that custody ADRs are permitted to charge ADR holders certain fees, as detailed in the ADR prospectuses." Vanguard is not trying to grab part of this any more than it is trying to grab part of the management fees of third party funds. Rather, it is adding a fee for processing divs from ADRs held in VBS accounts.
A feature Vanguard added recently is a bank sweep yielding 4.7% APY. That's still about 1/2% below what it pays on MMFs, but if one wants FDIC-insured cash at a brokerage, that may be better than anyone else is offering. Schwab? Not even worth looking up. Fidelity? 2.72%. Merrill? 4.71%, but that's non-sweep and requires a $100K min. Otherwise it's 3.54%. SoFi? 4.60%, but only if you have direct deposit, else 1.2%.
Not every change at Vanguard is in the wrong direction. Though unfortunately, most of them are.

Moved all our VSCSX to VG mmkt (5.28%) to be re-deployed into individual t-bills, notes, bonds (upcoming 3-yr and 10-yr auctions). Moved an overweight position in VWIAX to VG mmkt for future reinvestment to VTI, JQUA, and individual treasuries as well.

Continuing to add to MM position at Schwab with a 5.03% yield. It's not a rate that's locked-in as with a CD, but I like the ride, so far. Small baby steps, gummint money fund.

@MikwW - from MT Newswire
05:19 PM EDT, 05/02/2024 (MT Newswires) -- Apple ( AAPL ) late Thursday reported a surprise increase in fiscal second-quarter earnings despite a slowdown in iPhone sales while the technology giant announced additional stock repurchase authorization of up to $110 billion.
Per-share earnings rose to $1.53 for the quarter ended March 30 from $1.52 a year earlier, compared with the GAAP consensus on Capital IQ for the metric to fall to $1.51. Net sales fell 4% to $90.75 billion, but came in ahead of Wall Street's $90.45 billion view.
Shares were up 7.5% in after-hours trading Thursday.
The company's additional $110 billion buyback plan reflects "confidence in Apple's ( AAPL ) future and the value we see in our stock," Maestri said.
Apple ( AAPL ) raised its quarterly cash dividend by 4% to $0.25 per share, payable May 16 to shareholders of record on May 13.
Price: 185.57, Change: +12.54, Percent Change: +7.25

From davidrmoran's post:
"This order has potential for volatile performance and/or significant tracking error and may have higher expense ratios, lower liquidity or higher risk of fund closure than other similar funds in the same peer group."
It's interesting that Merrill does not permit trading QLTY on its platform.
1) GQETX (similar to QLTY but includes foreign equities) had lower volatility and max. drawdowns
than the S&P 500 since its inception on 02/06/2004.
2) The QLTY expense ratio is 0.50% - not the cheapest but not egregious either.
3) The Top 10 holdings of QLTY as of 03/31/2024 are listed below.
These are mostly large, well-known companies with high liquidity.
Microsoft Corp Information Technology
Oracle Corp Information Technology
Meta Platforms Inc Communication Services
Alphabet Inc Communication Services
UnitedHealth Group Inc Health Care
Johnson & Johnson Health Care
Lam Research Corp Information Technology
General Electric Co Industrials
KLA Corp Information Technology
Texas Instruments Inc
4) Total assets for QLTY were $440 million as of 03/31/2024.
I don't think there is a high risk of fund closure due to low asset levels.

OK by me. Up 5.2% since purchase.

I'm sorry some of you have had poor experiences with Vanguard. Our experiences have been exactly the opposite. We have had accounts with Vanguard for 30+ years and have received excellent support. I don't want newbies reading this thread to think Vanguard is uniformly bad. They deliver excellent products for extremely competitive prices. Their fee structure may be designed to discourage millions of tiny little accounts, but those are the bane of any mutual fund / etf company.

Agree, we do not want any newbies reading this thread to be misdirected.
I stayed away from participating on this and other threads discussing about Vanguard's negative virtues but your post prompted me to share my experience. I have a 7 figure account with Vanguard, which is my first investment account opened 30 years ago. While all brokerages' service quality has dropped since beginning of Covid, many are slowly recovering. Vanguard service quality stunk for more than 5 years and does not show any promise of abating. Rich folk do not care about costs of their investments but they care about total returns and quality of service is why they put their money in venture capital, private equity, and other structured products. Costs are important to the tiny investors that presumably (according to you) Vanguard is trying to restrict / kick out. I do not mind paying to encourage the tiny investor. Over the years, I sent many written suggestions to Vanguard to improve their service quality and then decided to keep my silence. Vanguard has a culture problem and has become the Boeing of investment firms.
Please see my previous post for what I am doing now.

@yogibb and @msf, thanks for your comments.
I am not buying I bond either. The $10K limit per year is too small for us, including the $2.5K from tax refund. The other challenge is navigating through TreasuryDirect that requires lots of patience. Will hold what we have until they reach 5 years.
Since the yield curve remains inverted, we continue to buy T bill every month as part of a ladder in our taxable account. USFR is a good vehicle I learned from this board. The yields are very competitive to I bond. Moreover, they can be bought and sold readily at many brokerages.

Robert Berger at X/Twitter.
https://youtu.be/QLBZoqTtQZ4

Good analysis by Robert Berger.
Paraphrasing here:
Flagship client used to mean something. Today it doesn't mean as much.
And now you add fees and all of this is happening and I ask you what new services or features or great website user experience or mobile app user experience have they added? Not much at all.
Every announcement coming out of Vanguard is either removing features or services making them less desirable or adding fees.
I don't know. Someone in PR at Vanguard needs to tell manangement hey how about some good news please.
Why don't we talk about what we're going to do for our customers rather than what we're going to charge them and what we're going to take away?
Having your accounts at Vanguard is becoming less and less appealing by the day.

It's not 'Admiral' status that restricts transfer, but some rule regarding certain active managed funds such as some by Primecap.
Odds are that if purchases of those have restrictions other than a min amt floor, transfers are prohibited. These are the golden handcuffs.
Speaking of guessing their rules, Vanguard has never published rules for ADR fees by their custodial bank, but looks like they themselves now want an explicit cut. I remember once getting a fixed fee of $25 on a $40 special dividend.
(tax with-held is separate)
I wonder if any vanguard employees ever lurk on MFO, as they have on bogleheads.

Robert Berger at X/Twitter.
https://youtu.be/QLBZoqTtQZ4

Comparison should be with 5-yr T-Note (4.64%) and 5-yr TIPS (2.25% + inflation).
I suppose that's as good a reference as any. I can infer the rationale for five years - that after five years one can cash out an I bond w/o penalty. But an argument can be made for comparing with 30 year T-bonds. They, like I-bonds, have a rate locked for 30 years.
I view I-bonds as cash, much as one might view a 5 year CD with a 90 day early withdrawal penalty as cash. No interest rate risk. And that may be the biggest flaw in comparing I-bonds with 30 year T-bonds. The latter is extremely sensitive to interest rates.
At current rates, one will do better with a five year TIPS (2.25% + inflation) vs an I-bond cashed out after five years (1.3% + inflation). That's true (though a closer call) after accounting for the fact that you'll pay taxes annually on the TIPS, bleeding returns. I-bonds are tax deferred until you cash out.
(To do an apples-to-apples comparison, I'm looking at taxable accounts, since I-bonds can't be held in tax-sheltered accounts.)
It's the classic trade-off. Certainty vs. expected return. In normal environments, yield goes up as the length of the debt instrument increases. I bonds are like cash, while Treasuries, especially multi-year or multi-decade ones, have uncertain mark-to-market (cash out) value.
And I-bonds have no reinvestment risk (risk of reinvesting divs after rates drop). With I-bond's greater certainty (ability to cash out w/o loss, no reinvestment risk) and more favorable tax treatment (deferred), they should normally yield less than Treasuries.
As I noted in the OP, one can hold and still improve one's position by swapping older, lower fixed-rate I-bonds for new, 1.3% fixed-rate issues. Though there is a tax cost in cashing out those old I-bonds.

Most incoming brokerages if you ask, will refund a transfer fee. Still Vanguard imho has become unfriendly to the small investor (under 5 million) in many ways. Their funds are available at other brokerages (Firstrade, Allyy invest, Etrade for example) NTF so no one has to be beholden to them.

@Sven, I am not buying more I-Bonds, but am holding the ones I have.
Comparison should be with 5-yr T-Note (4.64%) and 5-yr TIPS (2.25% + inflation).
For maturing T-Bills, also consider Treasury FRN USFR; FRNs reset (variable) rates weekly to 3-mo T-Bill auctions (typically, Mondays).

AAII Sentiment Survey, 5/1/24
FLIP-FLOP: Bullish became the top sentiment (38.5%, above average) & neutral became the bottom sentiment (29.0%, below average); bearish became the middle sentiment (32.5%, above average); Bull-Bear Spread was +6.0% (average). Investor concerns: Elections, budget, inflation, economy, the Fed, dollar, Russia-Ukraine (114+ weeks), Israel-Hamas (29+ weeks), geopolitical. For the Survey week (Th-Wed), stocks down, bonds up, oil down, gold down, dollar flat. FOMC held rates; hikes unlikely. QT reduced from Jun 1 to -$60 b/mo (vs -$95 b/mo now). #AAII #Sentiment #Markets
https://ybbpersonalfinance.proboards.com/post/1458/thread

ADR? Yes, In my experience. TRP took 25% of a dividend, but the explanation was that it was withheld "at the source." Meaning the Norway Tax Authority. b>NHYDY. Yes, a partial or full refund was available. But you'll have to register with the Tax Authority in order to do it. TRP did not charge a fee. But they do not manage their own trades. They "clear" through Pershing.
Schwab tells me a different ADR (HQ in Luxembourg) will have 15% of dividends withheld by the foreign entity. As long as the stock makes me money, I'm willing to eat that much. TS....And I've been advised that the bank which oversees that ADR might charge a fee. We'll see about that, and whether or not it's a deal-breaker.

@BaluBalu, bought at Schwab, yesterday in the A.M. It is not on the list this morning. .

Thanks. Last year I bought a few agencies and all those got called after rates bottomed in Dec / Jan. Fidelity is currently showing 6.1% for a first settlement on 5/15 and maturing in 2029.
Did you always get the new agencies at par or they charged a premium? At Fidelity there is no bid or ask price. So, you only know coupon when you submit an order for a settlement that is 2 weeks away and the order money is tied up until then, at least in MM at Fidelity- not sure if you have to move the order money to cash at Schwab.

Thanks.
I get that the principal policy tool is FF funds rates and not the balance sheet but could you please remind the forum why the Fed chose to reduce QT, rather than drop an equivalent FF rate (may be 0.25%)? They may have discussed this in the last minutes, presser or in some other avenue.
(IMO, the repeated verbal expression of concern for lower economic segment (least afford to weather inflation and economic effects of tighter monetary policy) is a lip service when easing balance sheet and not the FF rate.)