The last time I talked to my rep at VG, he told me the .3% robo-fee was in addition to any of the usual fund fees. The fee seems high to me too, I don't see th

The last time I talked to my rep at VG, he told me the .3% robo-fee was in addition to any of the usual fund fees. The fee seems high to me too, I don't see the logic (apart from VG profits) for the fee being tied to AUM given that the "work" the robot has to do is essentially the same for a $1K or $10M portfolio. If you have a sizable portfolio with VG you'll get a meatware advisor as part of the deal but it's hard for me to believe this person will be doing any substantial amount of custom and ongoing portfolio tweaking -- actual management -- for the money. I'd expect she'd be configuring and occasionally monitoring her robot alter-ego, something they could probably get an intern to do. That said, if you hate to think about money management and tend to neglect your portfolio then it might be worth it to pay the fee and, maybe, just maybe, avoid some potentially very expensive mistakes. I'm tempted, but have yet to take the VG robo-bait mainly because of the magnitude of the fee.