BestInvest select

Fruit_and_Nut_Case

shane002 wrote: »

Bestinvest Select online investor service for Best SIPP, ISA, Funds and Shares. Annual loyalty bonus across all funds.

shane002 is a spammer.

dunstonh

Suffolk_Farthing wrote: »

Thanks for the comments!

As I say I will update with the outcome - however, I would strongly refute the suggestion that I was "going DIY". I was prompted to make the change by a personalised (sales) letter from BestInvest, advising that with a single signature they would handle the transfer process: it's certianly not something I would have done on my own initiative....

However you dress it up, you are going DIY when you use a DIY provider like this. A marketing letter is not advice. The company should still fulfil it's requirements but it should should not provide you with any advice.

The problem is that what you wanted to happen was not possible as Fidelity didnt offer that facility. So, it will be interesting to hear the complaint outcome. I suspect a goodwill gesture will be likely as the cheapest option to close the complaint down. Rather than prolong it even if they are in the right.

straightseer

Suffolk_Farthing stated "Back in June I was simply responding to a letter from BestInvest proposing that it would be good to move our investments across to their new Platform. Regretably I didn't keep a copy of that letter, but my recollection is that it offered a straightforward transition, which they would manage, and after which we would benefit from the rebates"...
I have a copy of such a letter in front of me. (I should say I only have Cofunds holdings.) Here are the first 2 paras:
"I wanted to write to let you know of our new investment platform that we believe will work out cheaper for you than the current arrangement you have with us through Cofunds.
Last year we launched our own platform called 'Select' which has many advantages over Cofunds, including free switching and a cash annual loyalty bonus on the majority of funds. We also give you access to single company shares, investment trusts and ETFs."
Para 3 deals with SIPPs; Para 4 begins: "Transferring ISAs, investments and pensions onto Select is easy and because our loyalty bonus applies for all types of accounts, the more you consolidate, the more you earn."...
Hope this assists.

Suffolk_Farthing

Hi straightseer - many thanks for that - roughly aligns with my recollection and interesting that it only mentions Cofunds, for which the process worked 100%. Suggests that they should have left the other investments well alone...

Anyway, the sorry saga is I believe at last closed: after much proddding and just as I was about to make an external comlaint, BestInvest finally took a look a the detailed figures (which clearly didn't stack up) and identified a number of significant pricing errors (all in their favour...). There was a hiatus for a couple of months of "discussions with our Platform provider", after which various adjustments were made and some modest compensation was paid.

Overall I'm still worse off than if the funds had been left untouched, but at least the large losses were explained and corrected.

My main learning would be:
1) never forget these guys are motivated by commissions and charges: sales matter more than service to them
2) don't put 100% faith in the onine records, since throughout the lengthy process there were lots of adjustments (both up and down) which aren't logged as "transactions" so there's no formal record and the issues were only identified by me making tedious comparisons against some random printouts that I happened to have kept.