Simple Your suggestion would wipe out most new Plus members who joined for meme stocks in 1 easy stroke. This would be a very bad impact on FT. The amount of people who will spend once every 3 months but only want plus stocks will be much lower.
It may be annoying for you personally but business strategy wise it is a no brainer.
Reason I ask is if you only make a single trade every three months then surly a broker that costs per trade would be far better value than a fixed monthly fee broker?
Freetrade frankly isnāt the broker for you in that case
Thereās a myriad of options out there dependent on anybodyās individual situation. I would suggest that finding a broker that suits personal exact circumstances is easier ( and more productive ) than choosing one that doesnāt and asking them to change.
Seems like everyone is ganging up on the OP, but I donāt think itās such a terrible idea to have a slightly cheaper option without the ISA and some other stuff.
I know Freetrade have looked at this and decided against it, but Iām not dead set against it
Iām not meaning to gang up but just showing the reality of the situation as I see it. Freetrade isnāt meant to be all things to all people, and if youāre only making one trade every three months itās cheaper to go to a broker that charges per trade. That just seems obvious to me
Understand the OPās frustration but key here is simplicity, for Freetrade to keep their pricing simple - Plus or no-Plus, with no shades of grey in the middle.
Thatās not to say that they couldnāt introduce them in the future as the business grows but for now, it doesnāt look like pricing structure will change.
Freetrade will know the stats / correlation around the total portfolio value and how many people have opted to pay for Plus.
Clearly if an individual has an account value of say Ā£250, it would almost never make financial sense to pay Ā£10/month for Plus.
Assuming the additional cost to Freetrade of providing the Plus features to more people is negligible, then I think a tiered system based on portfolio value could make sense.
Iām sure a tiered system has been suggested a few times in the past.
This would be bring in additional revenue to Freetrade from some accounts that are only currently using the free service. Would be more likely that customers would stay with Freetrade, and at the point in the future the customer has hopefully grown their portfolio value to a large enough value - Freetrade would collect the full Ā£10/month.
For example, a monthly charge 0.2% of the portfolio value (with a min charge of Ā£1) and cap the charge at a max Ā£10 / month.
Personally, Freetrade gated some shares I purchased regularly before they did. I kind of now do what the OP states, every few months will pay Ā£9.99 to buy some shares, then cancel it. 4 times a year then Freetrade gain Ā£40 in 12 months. If I paid Ā£5 per month for all share access, they would get Ā£60 in 12 months. Clearly better for Freetrade from my point of view, just to open a few more shares to the market. Obviously would be a hit if people downgraded if they just wanted that. The question is, would they get more people sign up then downgrade?
Monzo now earn Ā£5 per month from me for having a smaller tier.
I personally think Freetrade should implement a minimum sign up of 3 months for plus membership. To stop all these skinflints always trying to find ways to save a couple of quid.
And OP would still be better off going somewhere else since they only make 4 trades per year, Ā£5 a month costs more than just paying per trade elsewhere.
I donāt get the impression that the OP was intending to only make a trade every 3 months. I think that timeframe was chosen because of the 3 months time you have to wait between cancelling and re-joining plus, so he was saying heād buy it for a month, cancel and then re-join 3 months later.
It still seems like an awful lot of work for someone who said itās too much of a hassle to just move Ā£4000 of his savings to FT to get the plus features for free, but each to their own.