New User Observations

Freetrade Chat 🔥
1

Hey guys, just thought I’d share my thoughts and feelings about the app as a newbie (signed up yesterday!).

Firstly, I think the registration process was process was great. App looks slick, feels modern and works well.

Depositing money. This wasn’t the best experience, having to copy all the details over to my bank app to send money to my own account. I believe you’re working on this, but as I sent the money on a Sunday I had to wait until this morning before I could do anything else.

Time to invest. I love the simplicity, but investing isn’t simple. I wanted to try and filter the list of stocks by GBP, or by tech companies for example which doesn’t seem to possible (at least on Android). Next, on the stock pages the graphs are beautiful, but I found myself searching the stock on Google and using theirs instead as I wanted to see the actual price on certain points of the graph (I tried tapping - doesn’t do anything) and also I like to see the market cap to get a gauge of how big the company is.

Buying. On the buying page, I was trying to understand whether the buy price was a maximum (so I should potentially put a higher price than the current price) or if it should just be what the current price is, I did a basic order so I was waiting til 4pm. I also wanted to just type in a number of shares rather than an amount, but I guess it makes sense not to be able to do this if the number above it a maximum spend amount.

Waiting for 4pm. Noticed after 4PM, my trades should have gone through, but didn’t a receive a notification or anything, that would’ve been nice. Opened the app, and one had disappeared from the list. I find it under ‘Activity’ as rejected, my buy price appears to be above the latest price, but it shows no reason for rejection. After some googling, I believe this is due to it only being a single purchase of a £42 share, however as a brand new member, I don’t feel comfortable spending hundreds on the platform just yet.

A few minute later, my next purchase appears to go through the queue after 4PM and buys successfully! But it doesn’t show my purchase price, nor does it show anything in ‘Activity’. As my portfolio price is down 5p, I can only assume it’s a combination of fees and a slight downward price movement, but it’d be nice to see this somewhere. The ‘Investment gain/loss’ in the stock page is blank.

Overall, I still think it was a good experience. Just right now it feels like it caters to people who just think, oooo I can buy a piece of Apple and buy one share. Which I guess is the mass market you are aiming for. It’d be nice if there was just a tiny bit more detail in the apps, like I mentioned earlier. Even if only basic info, like a link to the website and NOTIFICATIONS please!

I understand this is still all in development, but I thought you may want to hear some thoughts from someone new to this. (I do have basic investment knowledge, have £40K in stock from my company, £1K in a FTSE250 company, £2K in a private investment and £5K in Nutmeg).

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2

Everything you’ve said is valid, and I think the team are aware of most of it. If you look at Freetrade’s roadmap:

https://www.notion.so/6f1f87c6027642639ab342e7c161f8b8?v=663c5caa208d4b2ba91a29bbf1b968a3

You’ll see that many of your issues are already being looked at. That being said, you should add anything that isn’t in the roadmap to the Ideas thread (if it hasn’t already been created, believe me @Freetrade_Team1 will correct you if you miss anything!)

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3

Cheers, will take a look!

Alex is everywhere, he used to be all over the Monzo forum haha.

Have an update on the above, the activity page has now added in my successful trade, and it does now display the purchase price etc. guess it just took some time to process (however it does say it went through at 4:02PM, definitely didn’t show that in the app at that time!)

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4

Yeah there’s a slight delay :+1:

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5

Noticed some funny descriptions

BT : Slow internet :smiley: :smiley: :smiley:
Baidu : Chinese google
Sportsdirect : discount trainer

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6

Those descriptions make me have a good giggle!

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7

I raised a similar point when beta testing the Android version.

I don’t know where Freetrade are sourcing these descriptions from but they need to be careful otherwise they will end up on the wrong side of a court case…

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There’s a blog for that

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Having just read the blog and the associated thread (now closed) from when Freeserve barely had any customers, I think Freetrade have just lost me as an investor.

It’s frankly irresponsible to describe companies in such terms which can be construed as misleading, inaccurate or unfair - and BT isn’t the only example.

It’s one thing to put short descriptions against a company, another for it to be something which could get open Freetrade up to damages and/or legal costs - which I doubt they could afford - and not where I would want my investment funds to be spent.

While I know Freetrade may want to have a degree of fun and appeal to younger users, they have to remember they are also trying to establish themselves as a serious company in a serious industry who you can trust with your money.

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Without wanting to tread on old ground too much, can’t you be a serious company and have fun at the same time? Isn’t the boring and dull image of investing what they’re trying to get away from?

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11

Being fun yes - being irresponsible no. It’s also likely not to please shareholders in those firms and could discourage them from using the platform as well.

While its all well and good to attract new people to investing, the ultimate aim of Freetrade is supposed to be using new technologies to disrupt the industry and form a sustainable business for themselves

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12

Why is it irresponsible? There’s nothing scandalous or slanderous. If the companies complain they can change it.

It makes people smile. Not enough of that in the world at the moment

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The previous conversation established that there is a line for the descriptions and that certain descriptions were either on the line or just crossed it, depending on your opinion.

This type of light hearted controversy gives Freetrade personality. It looks like it’s part of their social media strategy, which IMO has been successful as I’ve seen lots of people are sharing their favourite descriptions on Twitter & WhatsApp! I was originally leaning toward one to be slightly adjusted, but now I see it as a good thing as it was the most complained about service in the UK and is big enough not to care…

More and more brands will be adopting these modern but slightly controversial marketing tactics because they work.

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14

Further update on my OP, made a second deposit and it’s taken around 17hrs so far and still not come through :frowning:

Support said there was an issue with their bank. Not the best experience!

15

Almost 24hrs now and still nothing turned up :disappointed_relieved:

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16

Have you contacted customer services via the app?

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Yeah, just said there were some issues with their bank and they’ll keep me updated.

The longer this goes on the more trust I’m losing in them though.

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It can only be processed during working hours so hopefully they’ll be able to sort it in the morning

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19

That’s a shame. My first deposit took about 1 hour 40. My second was about 40 mins. Stick with them!

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20

Finally came through :raised_hands:t2:

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