iii introducing quarterly £20 charge

afwone

Having drawn many in with the promise of no fees, the sudden imposition of these charges by iii is unfair. The more so in that they seem to have been encouraging their customers to build up multiple small holdings that would each incur costs to transfer elsewhere.

Their marketing has been targeted at those with small sums to invest, and existing investors with them have been encouraged to buy extra shares recently through waiving the commission fees on certain days. The new charge structure is more appropriate for those with large sums invested.

The costs of transferring elsewhere, will probably keep me as a customer for now, albeit a disgruntled one. The inconsiderate way that customers have been treated (the wording of the letter just makes it worse) gives me concerns over this company

The earlier post that iii has been making substantial losses is interesting. What would happen with access to holdings should this company cease trading? :eek:

BLB53

I have been with iii for over 10 years (from when it was called 'Ample'). Very happy until last November since when lots of problems with dividends and now £20 /qtr admin fees.

Things seem to have gone downhill very quickly and I can only assume this is down to poor management. From what I can gather, iii are far from profitable and had to have an injection of capital from the parent company to get this years accounts past the auditors.

The introduction of charges feels like a panic response and I fear things will go from bad to worse over the coming year.

Having lost confidence in them, I will be moving my a/c to Sippdeal on Wednesday. I will ask iii to waive any exit fees - if they refuse ,which I suspect is likely, I will lodge an official complaint based on unfairness and take the matter to the Financial Ombudsman.

I believe Selftrade had problems trying to impose exit fees on unhappy customers a while back and were forced to back down by the FO so I think iii will eventually back down if they try to hold a hard line on this.

The other aspect is the short notice. I think by law they need to give at least 20 working days. I received notice of the new charges on 31 May which means only 19 days to 1 July so they may have difficulties here also.

miller

Yes - it was mentioned elsewhere on this thread about the 19 working days (due to the double bank holiday).

May give our complaints a bit of extra weight with the FOS (which in all likelyhood looks like where they will be going).

i1189

gadgetmind wrote: »

I'm met some funds with gnarly one-offs, but £10k per month? Yikes!

Do you mind me asking what fund this is? One of oft-touted advantages of OEICs over ITs is liquidity and hence low minimum regular sums.

It's not necessarily £10k per month - this is listed as the minimum initial investment, and the minimum sub investment (which I am interpreting as further purchase once your already own some units) for the fund. Still too much for me as I prefer to invest smaller sums regularly to even out price movements. Fund is Trojan Income. iii's minimum monthly investment on this is £20, so a bit of a difference to ST!

Aureus

cloud_dog wrote: »

Can I ask a question of people who appear to have decided to go / go-back to Selftrade.........

I was just wondering if anyone has any sort of confirmation that a regular / monthly investment (funds or direct holding) would be treated as an investment/trade.

I've looked at the website and it is pretty black and white, stating:

"From 1 July 2012 we will no longer charge an Annual Management Fee. Instead, there will be a Trading Inactivity Fee which is only payable if there is no trading activity on your account during a calendar quarter. If you make one trade in a quarter, you will not be charged a Trading Inactivity Fee for that quarter. "

Their site states that there is ""no dealing fee on fund purchases". So unless I'm missing something it would be pretty easy for a fund investor to avoid having to pay any fees for this account.

One caveat though is that Selftrade, like II, have a £15 per line of stock transfer-out/entrapment fee.

i1189

Aureus wrote: »

One caveat though is that Selftrade, like II, have a £15 per line of stock transfer-out/entrapment fee.

From what I can understand, ST have a history of waiving the transfer out fee in the wake of changes to their charges. They bowed under pressure when they introduced an admin fee a while back and let people transfer free. They have now just changed the admin fee to an inactivity fee from Jul 1st, and in the small print it says that people unhappy with this can move with no transfer fees.

Bit different to iii who have flatly refused to waive transfer fees.

sabretoothtigger

Selftrade also treated regular investments as a trade and therefore would not trigger an inactivity charge at Selftrade themselves.

Yes I was interested in this myself. There was a thread on here, Selftrade allow this type of trade and it counts as dealing activity

I do agree the exit charge is unfair, does it really cost them this much? Halifax charge 25 to exit I think. Where as the old system of paper certificates you could go wherever you like and it was nothing to do with them.
unfortunately share dealing is a fairly rare thing in the population so Im not sure the law on this would ever change due to popular dissent

I know people who refuse to own shares because of this kind of entrapment setup but unfortunately I cant think of a good cheap way to hold paper shares

cloud_dog

TBH I don't have an issue with a fee for transferring out stock per se, I do have an issue where there is an account closure fee in addition to transfer fees.

Obviously the situation with iii is very different to someone choosing to transfer stock and possibly close the account, and as Selftrade demonstrated a while there are circumstances where these should be waived.

I think I will open a Selftrade account (or should I say move the OH iii investments back to Selftrade), as they will cover transfer costs. I'll then move the regular saver across from HL so as to negate the possibility of inactivity charges from Selftrade.

EDIT: Duh!!!! Didn't look closely enough at their Introduction Of A Trading Inactivity Fee, which states:

What Constitutes Trading Activity?
"All completed trades that you carry out in any of your trading accounts will be counted as trading activity, regardless of the trading fee payable. So, for example, all completed purchases and sale orders, including Regular Investment, Dividend Reinvestment, fund purchases and limit or stop orders, are included."

deadpeasant

I see various comments about the bad shape that ii are or may be in. Is there any real change they'll go belly-up? I had deposits in Iceland and escaped unscathed, but I've never had an investment platform go lehman.

sabretoothtigger

You wouldnt lose anything. I think a broker is covered upto 85k anyway