How can this be legal?

mluton

I know its not of much help but compushare only charged me £15 for selling half of my standard life shares as this is there fixed fee.

mum23boys_2

Well after doing a lot of reading on the internet, speaking to lots of people,
basically passed from pillar to post as nobody can give me a straight answer.
I found on the form, their terms & conditions this snippet....

"We reserve the right not to accept instructions
which are not given on our standard claim form,
or which have not been properly completed. Any

forms which we reject will be returned to you."

So basically if according to them I havent ticked any boxes giving them instructions on what to do with my shares then the form isnt properly completed & they've broken their own terms & conditions!

Just spent god knows how long on the phone again & they still are about as much use as a glass eye! So now I'm starting the complaints procedure which will probably take forever but hey ho!

catz1ct

Well the charge is for tracing you basically. Surprised its £121.08 though. The people on the phone wont really be able to help much as they only have the information thats in front of them. It's also not very likely they can get the original but the scanned one should be fine.

You might be better complaining to Standard Life as well as Georgesons. Make sure you do this in writing.

mrposhman

catz1ct wrote: »

Well the charge is for tracing you basically. Surprised its £121.08 though. The people on the phone wont really be able to help much as they only have the information thats in front of them. It's also not very likely they can get the original but the scanned one should be fine.

You might be better complaining to Standard Life as well as Georgesons. Make sure you do this in writing.

why should he OP have to pay them the finders fee? Surely, their employer was standard life?

catz1ct

Employer? Not sure what you mean. I don't think the op is a standard life employee.

I thought you could go to standard life directly to claim them anyway without paying any tracing fee.

nilrem_2

Is this not the case that this particular company has found a way to make money by charging people to reunite them with stuff they have lost track of due to change of address? Much like the companies who advertise to track down your premium bonds and prizes for a fee, the fact that you can do these things for free anyway does not prevent companies charging for doing so.

What they are doing is fully within the law I am sure, but morally it's not much better than what scammers do with so called competitions where you pay to claim a prize. (IMHO)

mrposhman

catz1ct wrote: »

Employer? Not sure what you mean. I don't think the op is a standard life employee.

I thought you could go to standard life directly to claim them anyway without paying any tracing fee.

Maybe I misread the post but as far as I understand it, Standard Life employed a company to find the OP, to which they should be due compensation. It would seem they have sold just a few of the OP's shares to pay this commission and my point is that Standard Life approached this company, they found the OP and they then charged the OP?? Surely they should have been charging Standard Life the finders fee?

Biggles

mrposhman wrote: »

Maybe I misread the post but as far as I understand it, Standard Life employed a company to find the OP, to which they should be due compensation.

It seemed to me that they were just another of these firms (there have been several threads of this type over the years) that access the shareholder register, track down small shareholders and approach them speculatively, with the aim of recouping their costs by making excessive commission charges to those who agree to let them sell their shares.

The scheme obviously relies on making the maximum amount of money out of those who know least about holding and selling shares, as nobody would use their 'service' otherwise.

catz1ct

^ got it in one matey.

Biggles

I see there's a related thread, which bears out my suspicions.

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=201854

It looks like they have ripped you off, Mum23boys. Unless you get any result from their small print, I'd be inclined to consider the Small Claims Court.