Fun with 401(k)s

I logged into my company-sponsored 401(k) plan website yesterday to check up on things, as it had been a while. Something looked very wrong with my fund allocations, so I tried doing a transfer to correct it. Except...I couldn't! I had submitted an investment election change on 12/29/2005 and it was still showing as pending! Only, what, 7 weeks? Unacceptable!

I called over to our HR office and she said something was definitely whacked and contacted the plan administrator immediately. As of today at Noon, she still didn't have an answer for me, but she said that this had happened to her with this same plan, and it took a month to get it fixed. She also pre-emptively asked them, on my behalf, to back-date the transactions.

This pending transaction is also blocking me from changing my current fund allocations - basically, my money's tied up in a fund I don't want it in.

I was so spoiled my my previous employer's plan. It's managed through Fidelity and everything is run top-notch, transactions turn around in a day or so, and I can download everything into Quicken seamlessly. I feel so lucky that they don't require me to roll my money over now that I don't work there anymore - I made a 20% return in 2005 with that plan! If these difficulties keep up with my new employer's plan, I'm going to seriously consider rolling everything I have vested in the account over to my Fidelity account on an annual or semi-annual basis. I'm gonna have to live off this money in 40 years, I need it safe, secure, and working for me.