TD Direct introduce 0.35%pa platform fee from August 2013

colsten

LOL, same happened to me as well. When I called them, they said the team who "upgrade" the ISA to allow payments to be taken aren't in today. When I asked whether I could just open a new ISA, she said yes. But that was a lie. I either get an error 404, or a list of possible accounts to open that doesn't include an ISA.

Wait until tomorrow it is then. We are not amused.

JohnRo

I sacked TDDI when I couldn't sell a fund because the entry in my account didn't match any of the search terms in their available list to buy/sell. Despite some faffing I just couldn't get the system to even recognise the account entry.

After phoning to enquire why their system wouldn't allow me to sell a fund I'd previously bought on their platform I was eventually shunted to a less than polite chap in their phone dealing team, free of charge, who made the sale manually at their end after telling me it was my fault and that my anti virus or firewall was causing the problem, which was obviously complete and utter nonsense.

What he didn't know was that I had tried to sell two funds that day and the other one went through without a hitch because the search term matched my account entry, as it should.

Bit of a useless anecdote but thought I'd share.

TCA

colsten wrote: »

But that was a lie. I either get an error 404, or a list of possible accounts to open that doesn't include an ISA.

LOL. Ditto. Same 404 error or a useless list of other nice things to do when clicking on a different link. You'd think things might work on this day of all days. Their website message "Extended opening hours over the Easter break and Tax Year end" obviously doesn't apply to their technical staff then!

TCA

JohnRo wrote: »

Bit of a useless anecdote but thought I'd share.

Thanks John. They're certainly failing at every opportunity so far and that's before I've bought anything. I really just wanted a route to the Woodford IPO plus a different platform to spread the risk (and allow dividend reinvestment, unlike Bestinvest), so it seemed sensible. Doesn't take much to put me off though and they're doing their best so far.

bowlhead99

TCA wrote: »

"You cannot subscribe to this ISA because you have not made a subscription in the previous tax year. Please click here to open a new tax year ISA, or call us"

It's just getting silly now!

I find them pretty good though haven't had to deal with account opening for a long while, as been with them for several years.

Seems like the error you came up against was trying to put money into a 2014/15 ISA when it is no longer 2014/15. So their systems automatically think, "OK, I can see he has an existing TD ISA from a previous tax year with this account number, and what he really wants to do is make a subscription to a 2015/16 ISA. Did he put money into this ISA last year? If so, we'll just assume he wants to carry on this year and we'll open up the 2015/16 version of this account automatically and don't need to get any documentation or signoffs from him.

But if he didn't fund this old TD ISA last year, perhaps he was putting money into someone else's S&S ISA last year; if so, and because we know people must only contribute to one ISA, are we sure he isn't also carrying on paying into another ISA from another provider that he was using last year? We had better get him to complete the standard forms to declare he hasn't already contributed to someone else's S&S ISA this year."

I seem to remember having a similar issue when I wanted to fund an old TD ISA a few years back after a period of non-residence. I had an old ISA but had skipped a year or two since using it. So I was invited to fill out a form to reactivate the old account. That requirement is standard behaviour at a number of providers. Of course, in your case it was not that you'd skipped a year and wanted to reactivate an old dormant account, it was just that you opened it last year and never got round to funding it. They should probably have some different logic for that. I expect you'll get there in the end when it's a normal working day and the relevant people are in.

I wouldn't abandon TD over it - usefulness of a provider is what ongoing services they offer for what ongoing price, IMHO. I could care less about the actual account opening process which is a one time thing in a multi-year relationship ; though I can understand why others see it as a barometer of service levels to come.

"Extended opening hours over the Easter break and Tax Year end" obviously doesn't apply to their technical staff then

A lot of providers have been saying they have the extra hours thing this yr end.

Getting things done before tax year end is an important thing, and they know that there are a lot of disorganised people who after 364.98 days of a tax year only just realise they should use their ISA or SIPP allowance at 11.30pm on a Sunday night when all financial institutions are usually closed. So, all over the public holiday Friday, and the non-banking day Saturday, and the non-banking day and religious festival Sunday, they have had people manning the decks.

Once you've either caught the boat for 2014/15 or missed the boat for 2014/15, it's back to business as usual in terms of urgency for anything to get done with the service providers, apart from pick up the backlog of work from the crazy weekend when everyone was working abnormally. Today's a public holiday and a non-banking day and stock markets are not open, and there is no fiscal urgency to get anything done because the current tax year doesn't end for another 365.5 days. So, the amount of people moaning on forums that "pah, I don't think much of this service, I thought they were going to work over easter", seems a little OTT

Not to say it's not annoying that your account opening has been problematic, just sayin'