iii introducing quarterly £20 charge

guitarman001

http://www.moneysupermarket.com/savings/self-select-isas/

Who are YOU moving to?
I don't trade enough to warrant the 80quid per year charge, plus I hear you're shafted anyway as there's a charge for leaving iii (not sure what that is).

Trentenders

I have a question:

I've paid a couple of thousand £'s so far into this year's ISA and my intention was to build this up at about a grand a month (at £1,50 a pop). Assuming that share ISAs work in the same way that cash ones do, if I did want to transfer to another provider, presumably I wouldn't be able to add further funds to the new provider in this tax year?

Other than taking £8k out of a savings account and putting that into my ISA before choosing to transfer (thereby losing interest until I'm ready to invest), am I snookered?

P.S. As a slight counter to some of the points raised, I've only used the sharebuilder facility on four occasions so far, but each time the purchase price has been near the high point of that particular day.

Taking control of the timing myself might save me more than the £8.50 difference in costs per trade and I won't be stuck with the 23rd of each month :beer:

Like many posters/complainers so far, I'm also LTBH (and in the early stages of building a portfolio, so it'll hit me a bit harder than most). My current thinking though is to just reduce down to 2 trades per quarter.

Ramble over

ex-iii

Is it just me, or did they also 'silently' remove the '0% commission on all funds' thing they'd been advertising as well?

@xemeter: As far as I can tell from the wording, it looks like the £1.50 charge only applies to regular monthly trades. If you wanted to put money in per quarter, it would cost you £10 a time. Either way, if you want to invest in more than one or two trackers, it looks like you're S.O.L. and will pay extra on top of the £20 quarterly fee. (3 trackers quarterly = £30; monthly = £27 )

plunt

just got the email as well and wanted to voice my opinion and disgust at these new fees!

points to note:
- when the swapped over from halifax they said no changes would occur and you should feel safe and etc (so they have miss sold with that)

- all their advertising over the year really pointed out that their stocks and shares isa has no annual/management charges. And this was the reason i went with them. therefore surely there was false advertising. not to mention i am sure this has been in the works for a while. which gives grounds to the contract being frustrated (under the ground of one party possessing greater knowledge and withholding that information)

will be sending in a formal complaint and WILL push this to the ombudman or small claims court to recover and and all expenses. Keep in mind will cost you 20 pounds to take legal action and cost them thousands in legal fees!

xemeter

@ ex-iii
I should have clarified that i meant regular monthly trades.

Surely it cant be £27 a month?

xemeter

@ plunt

I only called them up last week to check on their fees i.e. to clarify that it cost nothing to make regular monthly contributions in to funds and they told me that i was correct. They never mentioned the impending change to the fee structure

ex-iii

xemeter wrote: »

@ ex-iii
I should have clarified that i meant regular monthly trades.

Surely it cant be £27 a month?

I can't count. I meant £27 a quarter, but even that's wrong. £13.5 a quarter, I think (£1.50 a month x 3 trades x 3 months), so under the £20 cap. So it may not be a complete disaster if you're doing things monthly.

Quarterly is right out, though.

wastedtalent

IWeb might be a good alternative.

ruperts

Wow, this hurts. I've been investing a low three-figure sum into five funds for the last 18 months or so. I'm about breaking even at present. The result of this charge is that I'll now have to transfer out at a pretty significant percentage loss, rendering all the time i've spent slowly attempting to build up a pot a complete and utter waste of time.

Was the aim of these reforms to discourage smaller investers? Surely not. Where on earth is the regulatory body in all of this?


Anyway, it's obvious that a lot of people are going to be angry. It's be great if we could come to some sort of consensus about the best way to progress from here. The best case scenario for me would be locating the next best provider and then getting ii to allow me to transfer out for free.

Does anyone know if we have any legal legs to stand on regarding the amount of notice given? Or will it just be a case of complaining to ii and then threatening to complain to the ombudsman and hoping they grant us permission to leave for free? Could we get together and do something en-masse?

It would be great if someone in the know could put together a step by step guide of the best way to handle this. I'm sure a lot of people would be very grateful if you did.

wastedtalent

I can't see its legal to impose unavoidable charges on someone? As in whatever action is taken will cause loss to the customer.