This forum is a great asset to Freetrade and was mentioned in the last crowdfunding pitch deck, to show the user engagement.
Most of the forums for other crowdfunding companies I have invested in, are relative ghost-towns in comparison to this one.
I like the idea that @Vincent suggested, drop some Freetrade shares to the moderator(s) as a thank you. Its low cost and supports maintaining the quality of the forum.
Thank you @NeilB, your emergence as a key moderator gave the community a second wind when engagement was dropping. Shame the habit of Freetrade not capitalisingvon a good thing continues.
Freetrade just seem to be going from one bad decision to the next. It really is a shame.
Omg!
Just to echo many above… you were the first to greet me here wayyyy back in July 2022. When i made my first of many mistakes buying into Cineworld.) (Not your fault tho!)
Hope to see you around @NeilB and good luck.
To the FT team… sadly i see this as massive wasted opportunity and loss for us users and for yourselves and a huge false economy, this now means you guys need to pickup where Niel is leaving if you dont want this community to wither away. Personally, i’m not sure you made the right decision, maybe it isnt too late…?
People like Niel inspire others. I was going to offer some of my very limited precious free time to help out in the French speaking community.
Sorry to hear you go, but wishing you all the best I. The future and thank you for all the support you gave us.
Barbara
Still radio silence from ‘official’ Freetrade.
Disappointing and in my opinion, rude.
Thank you for your dedication, and hope to see you around here from time to time.
It’s SOP from Freetrade.
Employees are heavily discouraged from engaging on the community forum unless it’s guaranteed good PR like shipping something.
That’s sad to hear.
It doesn’t paint a good picture of the management strategies of the company. (I say this as a Fellow of the Chartered Management Institute).
Surely engaging with customers (within parameters of course) by mediums like this is essential for any progressive and successful business?
Frankly I was against the idea of ‘community leaders’ at the time and said it would lead to less staff engagement on the forum.
Now the community leaders are quitting and the staff don’t engage. Fantastic.
May as well close the forum at this point, it doesn’t serve any purpose and Freetrade need to focus on securing a Series C to avoid going bust.
Starling Bank closed theirs back in 2018 and outlined very well their reasoning behind it, in particular when they said “Too often, however, we’ve found the challenge of running it has proved too big a distraction from our core job, which is to protect the interests of our wider customer base and to grow the bank.” - Blog - Starling Bank.
I’d swap this forum for a LISA any day and I think there are others who’d feel the same about the delivery of Tax Statements, JISAs, SIPP Employer Contributions, or even answers about the £10,000 NFT crowdfunding perk (details were promised very soon in early July - Freetrade NFTs - #81)
The community engagement declined with the decline of the worldwide stock markets and of Freetrade valuation/share price. Simple like that in my opinion…
Can you explain why that wasn’t the case when share prices collapsed during Covid?
Shares price collapsed for less than 1 month. s&p500 was up over 30% in 2020.
I vote for the closure of the forum. Best decision for Freetrade at the moment to focus on delivering as this is becoming more noise.
Sorry to see you step down @NeilB, it’s been great to have your contributions, leadership and energy on the forum! Hopefully we’ll still hear from you going forward, albeit in a reduced way…
Thanks @NeilB for all your work and contributions.
This is really a full time job with the community this size.
Hi everyone
Hope you are well.
It’s great to see the good wishes shared for Neil for everything he’s done for the forum. We’ll second all that with another big thank you.
We’ve chatted to Neil many times, of course, and he shared his own personal reasons with us for deciding to spend less time on the forum which of course we fully understand.
Rather than jump in with a comment right away, we wanted to hear your thoughts on the thread first. As always, we will take onboard your feedback. We are here, we are listening, and we’ll continue to engage where we can.
Given the thread is close to the wind in terms of the forum rules, we’re going to close it now and we’ll see you around elsewhere on the forum.
Thanks,
Sam