I've just had a suprisingly pleasant experience in transferring an IRA account from one fund family to another. On 12/15/99 I decided I wanted out of the underperforming T. Rowe Price Equity Income Fund and that I wanted to move the IRA to Vanguard's 500 Index and Small Cap Index funds. I called Vanguard and asked them to send me the forms. The forms arrived in two days. On 12/23 I mailed the forms to Vanguard. On 12/30 the T.R. Price web site showed that the shares in Equity Income had been redeemed. On 12/31 the Vanguard web site showed the funds had been invested in the two funds I requested. I had heard that these types of transfers sometimes take many weeks to complete. In this case, despite the holidays and Y2K, the whole process took less than two weeks (one week was taken up by me filling out the forms). I have been dealing with both of these fund families for many years and both are class acts. Maybe I was just lucky this time but I think these two companies did a great job.

dave