Iām really sorry about the experience that youāve had. Iāve flagged this with our Director of Customer Service who is investigating the matter to figure out what went wrong.
For your background, weāve been in the process of updating and improving our transfers process (both in and out) as a result of feedback that weāve received, like yours. As an interim measure, weāve had a number of temp staff hired to help us address a backlog and get transfers that are in progress completed. We are also working with our product leadership to take a fresh look at our processes.
When it comes to transfers, too, thereās always a difficulty when identifying what went wrong. Youāll always have two companies involved - one losing a customer, one gaining a customer - and there can be a tendency to point fingers rather than arriving at a constructive outcome to benefit the customer.
Weāre not interested in that.
Weāre keen to make sure that youāre journey with us is seamless and stress free.
Clearly weāve not lived up to that in the case of your wifeās transfer. I see that youāve sent me a DM and Iāll get back to you so that you can connect directly with our customer service director and get to the bottom of this issue.
We are talking about one personās 7 figure ISA resulting in higher returns for freetrade than multiple smaller ones. That is not correct.
FX fees for 10 Ā£100,000 (for instance) accounts are not going to be more than Ā£1,000,000 worth of FX fees (if there is any). Not is the interest rate profits (if there is any) going to be higher.
Donāt really feel like you are providing a positive contribution to this thread Beenthere, why are you hell bent on being abrasive and argumentative?
Chill out, the poster has a genuine concern, just because you donāt agree with their comments doesnāt mean they should be belittled.
Itās been a problem since at least the new financial year. And Freetrade have responded on a few occasions, including the recent q&a for potential investors.
Itās a problem Iām concerned about as well tbh, as Alex said they are working on solutions, but that doesnāt provide much reassurance or confidence for customers whoāve already got lost in the pile of transfers or were considering transferring and have stopped because of this
@Mattywallace it was a communication gap. That happens. They promised to fix it and thatās where itās got lost. After the initial transfer took 2 weeks which was twice as long as my past experience (but still not that end of the world), remedial action should have been prioritised.
To make matters worse. Several messages went unacknowledged.
The untold reputational damage that these experiences do can take years to rectify.
Chance events resulting in unexpected delays also happen everywhere. No provider is immune to this. But some providers seem to have a disproportionately large incidence of these problems and FT for whatever reason seems to be one of them. Also I see service related complaints being an issue that dogs the company for several years.
Youāre making a fair few assumptions there that the trading patterns and cash balances are the same for all sizes of account so you are forgetting factors (as I said originally - youāre very keen to point out inaccuracies that others claim about your posts so please donāt put words in my mouth that I didnāt say ie I made no claim about service or you making a mistake).
So how much are your freetrade shares worth? You put money into and get no info back regarding share price? Your just giving them free money!
Crown funding seems a really bad idea in my eyes if anybody would like to explain how itās going from last crownfund! Better or worse.
Please share away
I too am potentially a larger investor with Freetrade and a recently retired IFA. Are you aware that the maximum trade on FT is a mere Ā£9,900? That means that if you built up a large holding in a single share or ETF and you wanted to sell it you would have to execute this in multiple tranches of Ā£9,900. Discovering that has put me off transferring my other ISA to FT.
I think a complaint on service has become a war of words and cross talk here unfortunately.
It is right of anyone to expect a good prompt service
But trust me, anything short of a month is a standard for ISA transffers
I tried sending money out from Nutmeg, Investengine , hargreaves onto Coventry cash ISA recently
Hargreaves was super fast, followed by Nutmegā¦ Investnegine dragged on and I had to send in a second set of physical forms which even now after 2 months is still ongoing.
So AMol expect 4-6 weeks of complete silence rather than expect a micro movement report.
That is the way most of these transfers work, even in the times of fast instant bank transfers
This issue is as yet unresolved but to end speculation I will put out some facts.
I consolidated 4 s&s ISAās from EQI & Fidelity to HL. All 4 completed in under a week each. I then decided to move them from HL to FT.
My ISA transferred in 2 weeks. Still acceptable, but notable than Comms from HL were superb despite them losing long standing customers.
My wifeās ISA was also going to take 2 weeks and a date was advised. Since it was still a week away, a good portion was a cash holding, I decided to buy a holding rather than be left out of the market. Unfortunately the transfer process missed out this holding and it got left behind at HL. When I flagged it to FT, it became clear to me that transfers involve agreement between both firms about the specific holdings and cash values to transfer and a date for this. In this instance, I interfered with the process and caused the problem. I accepted my role in the delay and asked for the remaining holding to be brought over and FT agreed to this. This was on 22/23 June. After this point two whole weeks went by with no activity when the transfer was finally raised. 3 weeks later the transfer is still not complete with no ETA.
By the simple act of deduction it is clear to me that EQI, Fidelity and HL have a 100% customer service satisfaction rate, whereas FT donāt. Before anyone jumps on me, I accept that the sample size isnāt large enough to make empirical observations, but I can only be informed by my own experience and my observations are supported by what I read on the internet. Just to make another little point, I had another experience with the process of opening and funding my GIA with FT which was also delayed, though the delay was not nearly as long.
I sense that a number of members on the forum seem more accepting of long delays for transfers, atleast with some providers. It is clear that transfers inside a week are possible. After all this isnāt rocket science, so those providers that canāt or wonāt meet this standard of service have to become more accountable to their customers.
I now need to decide what price I am willing to pay for good customer service. While I am in the process of leaving HL, I have to say that their customer service is peerless and maybe that justifies their pricing.
If youāre a buy and hold investor with a large existing portfolio Iām not sure why you would switch from HL to FT. Yearly charges capped at Ā£45 on HL.
I was looking to consolidate ISA/SIPP and GIA into FT to have a single platform to deal with.
Even though I do lump-sum payment into my ISA, I rebalance quarterly so in essence I would probably end up doing around 8-12 trades a year per ISA. At 8 trades itās Ā£96+45 on HL Vs Ā£60 on FT. Is the Ā£90 saving worth it? When I look at this across 6 accounts, itās not insignificant, but I am definitely rethinking the wisdom of my decision.
Not once in 17 years it dealing with HL have I had a reason to complain (except of course the Woodford fiasco).
Amol, I am impressed by your knowledge and experience of the platform market and I feel that some of the criticisms you have received are harsh and unwarranted.
I am curious to know whether a maximum trade size is common across all platforms, in particular HL and ii? Like you I am not a trader but if I lose heart in an investment I want to get out fast and preferably in a single trade. Also, I tried to purchase slightly more than Ā£9,900s worth of a single share on FT recently and had to execute this in two tranches which is when I first became aware of this limitation on FT. I am embarrassed to admit this lack of prior research by myself, particularly in view of my former occupation!
Hi @Dick . Kind words. No I am not an expert. I had legacy accountās and I didnāt pay much thought to costs largely due to lack of time.
I recently decided to consolidate and spent a few hours researching the market to see what works best for me. Itās clear I paid too much attention to the cost element and against my advisors recommendation switched to one of the cheapest platforms. But one lives and learns.
I wasnāt aware myself of the trade size restriction but I simply looked at it and thought apart from the trade hit price being slightly different to split a buy/sell into chunks (and I had to split it into MANY) chunks, and a wasted 10 minutes placing multiple trades, there was no downside. I donāt recall such restrictions on the platforms I have used. I suspect these restrictions somehow play into the business model but I stand corrected, if not.
if anybody would like to explain how itās going from last crownfund! Better or worse.