Quick update: Crowdcube made the pitch private to fix their technical errors.
If you accidentally had duplicate investments, they are working on that issue right now.
We are in contact with Crowdcube, and will communicate with you all as soon as we hear updates, of course.
Hour of my life I wonāt get back, very disappointed along with many others no doubt
Logged on and followed the link at 11:45. Still not been able to invest. Certainly wonāt be bothering with Crowdcube or Freetrade in the future.
Real freetrade users should of been given at least 1 hour early access. So dissapointed , iāve been trying since 11:40 but because of these CrowdCube checks everything failed
For the stats, I invested when the total was at around Ā£1.6MM and everything went fineā¦
This really is an unsatisfactory experience. CC should be pretty ashamed that they couldnāt handle the load.
Then thereās the app not registering youāre online and so doesnāt update your profile or pull through all the details.
@ Freetrade (cc @Freetrade_Team1) - I know itās not you. But I would seriously examine your SLAās with CC and hammer them for the downtime. Particularly for reputation damage.
Iām glad thereās a lot of people in the same boat as me. Iāve been patiently trying to invest since 11:30 still no success. Just as I made it through to the payment page it got pulled from the site. Really disappointed but ima keep trying
I had email on refreshing constantly and it didnāt come through (gmail) until 11:44. Meanwhile the forum link was given bang on. I invested after a a few hiccups in that first 3 minutes of the link going live and already Ā£300k was invested. I then got the freetrade email after I invested.
I think anyone waiting at their inbox could have been stuffed, while some randomers on the website walked off with the goodies. Shame. That link should not have been put on forum.
To be fair, this is a crowdcube problem, thereās not much freetrade could do about it without doing a lot of work in house on the raise. So I wouldnāt let it put you off freetrade though I totally see why youāre frustrated, itās not been a good experience.
Crowdcube should have known this was coming and taken steps to deal with high traffic. It appears they did nothing to customise the page or make the steps simpler. Even just a simple static landing page to show all the particulars could have withstood huge traffic without problems, then only have it dynamic where it needs to be.
It is not 30% but a 30% refund on your investment. But the refund cannot exceed the amount of income tax you paid (i.e. if you have Ā£0 income tax, you will not get any relief).
Listening to all of the experiences (my own included) Iām very disappointed in crowdcube again and Freetrade shouldnāt be tarnished by CC poor performance!
After hammering F5 like mad for like 45 minutes, finally get to enter my payment details only to get message āOpportunity restricted to certain usersā.
Deeply saddened how this was handled.
Itās always 30% of the amount invested that will be deducted from your annual income tax bill (with a cap, so 0Ā£ income tax is the minimum)
No, the normal basic rate of tax in most of the UK is 20% (after your tax free allowance)
So I did as someone suggested and emailed CC and this was the response I received:
I have checked your account and can see that there are no investments that have been made in Freetrade.
Unfortunately we are experiencing technical errors on our website and the pitch has temporarily been taken down.
Freetrade will be issuing an update to investors when the page is back up and running.
We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.
This is despite be even stating that I wasnāt able to put the payment through due to the damn assessment issueā¦ even their customer service is awful if theyāre not reading userās emails properly.
Its a relief. Not a refund of your marginal rate of tax.
The Freetrade team shares your frustration.
Weāre doing our best to provide support for you and the rest of the community and make sure everyone gets their investment.
Please check back on this thread!
Will we be alerted when it comes back up?
Tried with multiple cards, + apple pay just in case and no luck, also tried since 11:40 - where it i saw only 7 people had invested and it was already at near Ā£25k seconds after opening!
Disappointing, Freetrade should do another round at the same share price?
Regarding that 7.5% fee. I imagine Freetrade might get a bit of a refund after thisā¦!