Many release that type of information once a year, in the fourth quarter statement, Kaplan said. So, the disclosures that go out in the beginning of 2013 might get a different reaction than these first notices.

Since fee disclosures for both plan providers and participants only went into effect this year, it is too soon to tell if they have had much of an effect on the industry. Anecdotally, Kaplan said that he has heard from U.S. Department of Labor representatives who say that pricing margins have come down and that many plan sponsors have started shopping their plans around because they didn't like the fees they were paying.

"It's an ongoing process so we're just starting to see and hear results from that," Kaplan said.

Edward Ferrigno, vice president of Washington affairs for the Plan Sponsor Council of America, said that he doesn't expect the Nov. 14 disclosures to amount to anything.

"The participant fee disclosures have resulted in extremely low activities by participants, as far as them generating calls to call centers or employers, so I think we have to go back to square one and look at the methodology," Ferrigno said.

Many people in the retirement industry predicted that nothing would come out of these disclosures and "they appear to be correct, at a significant cost that is born by participants," he said. "I think a reevaluation is in order, but I'm certainly not expecting it. Hopefully the Department of Labor will sit down with people and see what worked and what didn't. It was a very expensive non-event. It's kind of a shame."

Chad Parks, president and CEO of The Online 401(k), has been very vocal in his belief that the fee disclosure regulations didn't go far enough.  In a perfect world, there would be a box on every plan statement that told individual participants exactly how much of their accounts went toward plan expenses, but that's not what has happened, he said. Most of these disclosures are buried in the fine print or are not written in plain English.

Many service providers have complained that it is too difficult to break out each individual's expenses, but Parks believes it is only too difficult because providers don't want to answer the question. If companies are keeping track of account balances, what the dividends are and every dollar that goes in and out of each account, "it is not much further of a stretch to do the math based on the assets your plan is holding," he said.

The disclosure regulations fell short. Even if providers are disclosing the exact fees someone paid from their defined contribution account, there was no benchmarking provision attached so the numbers are "meaningless," Parks said. "If you paid $500 in fees this quarter, that could have been the bargain of a lifetime vs. the person who paid $2,500 in fees this quarter. They fell short."

Because it took the Department of Labor a decade to get the fee disclosure regulations out, Parks said he isn't that hopeful it will assess how things went and make changes to the regulations anytime soon. He does believe that if people continue to bring it up next year, "we will see activity later in the year and into 2014."