Hoodless Brennan finally drop the ball !

moanymoany

If HB has chosen to absorb these in the past, then that is entirely up to them. Just the same as if a supermarket decides to offer BOGOF or other offers.

The cost of BOGOFs is borne by the producer not the supermarket.

Xbigman

strange wrote: »

To extend the supermarket analogy, it's like buying a bag containing 24 bags of crisps for a fiver. Halfway through eating them, the supermarket phones and says 'Now you're going to have to pay us another 10p per bag for the ones you haven't eaten yet'.

Str

Thats a nonsense. If you bought 24 packets of crisps and the supermarket offered to store them for you until eaten, then after 6 months they told you they would charge for the storage, that would be a better comparison (and quite reasonable).

On the HB front.
People don't like the tone of the letter. Really, how are they supposed to tell you their charges are going up and not upset you. I think the way they have put the letter is not unreasonable. They have pointed out that inflation would have put the £7 up a lot higher, which is true enough, so they are still cheap. Talking about tones of letters is pointless when its whats in the letters that matters.

Now what are we really getting upset about? Simply that they have changed their business model. They no longer want unprofitable customers who do not use their trading service. Its that simple.

So anyone who does not trade has three choices. Move, pay the fee or start making some trades. You decide which is cheapest and then do it. Letters of protest or any sort of campaign just distracts from the business of being smart with your money. Personally I'd consider this the ideal time for a portfolio review. Anything that needs changing, then just sell up and buy back elsewhere. You do the same with corporate actions, dividend reinvestment and anything else that leaves cash on hand. The costs to get out of HB and move on can be minimized with some carefull thought.

That said, just how many of you trade less than three times a year. The real cut off point, given that other dealers charge higher trading fees, means that if you trade as little as twice a year you can break even vrs other brokers.

Having the market leader up charges is always annoying, but never worth getting upset about.
Regards



X

PS I use Selftrade.

mattbass

Well seeing as I usually only trade once a year and not at all this year I am going to be worse of if I remain inactive. Cant afford to buy and dont want to sell!

quote HB-"Transfer of Holdings to other institutions - £10 per item."

So if I want to transfer my various amounts of Barclays, Tesco & Vodafone shares, will that count as 3 items, i.e £30?

Well under the value of Selftrades £100 refund offer.

CashSaver_2

What some people don't realise is that the companies, such as Hoodless Brennan that charge lower trading fees, don't always get you the best possible price in the market.

It is possible for you to trade at a price better than the quoted spread. For example, the offer price on ABC Ltd is 35p, but you can actually buy them at 34.2p. I have found that although my online account charges £12.50 a trade, the price improvement in buying the shares can amount to a saving of tens of pounds. I have a couple of trading accounts and have found that they all differ in the quoted price to both buy and sell.

Don't automatically assume that the cheapest trading deal charge saves you money.

Geoffo_M

CashSaver wrote: »

What some people don't realise is that the companies, such as Hoodless Brennan that charge lower trading fees, don't always get you the best possible price in the market.

It is possible for you to trade at a price better than the quoted spread. For example, the offer price on ABC Ltd is 35p, but you can actually buy them at 34.2p. I have found that although my online account charges £12.50 a trade, the price improvement in buying the shares can amount to a saving of tens of pounds. I have a couple of trading accounts and have found that they all differ in the quoted price to both buy and sell.

Don't automatically assume that the cheapest trading deal charge saves you money.

HB frequently beat both bid/offer prices. Sometimes they can't provide a price and you have to ring up - usually when you're trying to buy/sell a tiddler

DontDoDebtKids

OK, so my gf uses Hoodless and has shareholdings in six companies.

I have checked both the Selftrade and Hoodless websites, and posted the relevant info and links below (DYOR!) and it seems that it will cost 6 x £10 to transfer our of Hoodless = £60. Selftrade will refund up to £100 as it is all in her normal dealing account. Great!

Bye bye Hoodless. Thanks for the month's free dealing last year

Hoodless charges:

http://www.hoodlessbrennan.com/products-services/online-trading/online-charges/

Other Services

• Internal Stock Transfer (Online to Advisory accounts) - £10 per item. (Transfer of stock between accounts at Hoodless Brennan).
• Transfer of Holdings to other institutions - £10 per item.
• Transfer of foreign holdings outside of Crest via Agent £40 per item.
• Overseas market listed share certificate deposit £50 per line of stock.
• Splitting Bargains - £10 per item.
• Audit requests - £15 per item.
• Probate Valuations - £35 or 0.5% whichever is greater.
• Sale of shares under probate - £17 per stock line.

• Corporate action handling - £5 per item.
• Request for duplicate dividend voucher - £5 each.
• Request for hard copy of annual reports - £5 each. (Free if requested online).
• Request for hard copy of statements - £2 each. (Free if requested online).
• Tape recordings of telephone conversations - £25 minimum charge (full details of charges on request).
• Customers holding cash on their account with us will be paid interest at the flat rate of 2%. Interest is calculated daily and credited at the end of each quarter. We reserve the right not to credit interest where the amount would be less than £5 per quarter.
• Stamp Duty - UK Equities 0.5% on all purchases. Different rates may apply to Foreign Market listed shares.
• PTM Levy - Panel of Takeovers & Mergers Levy - £1.00 on all transactions of £10,000 and over for UK Equities.

Selftrade Offer:

http://www.selftrade.co.uk/services/news/
We'll pay up to £400 of transfer costs when you transfer to Selftrade
Transfer your Dealing, SIPP Dealing, ISA and PEP and accounts to Selftrade and we'll pay a maximum of £100 per individual account type. We'll make the payment into your Selftrade Dealing account once we've seen the final statement showing the transfer out charges. The refund offer applies to all transfer requests submitted in writing to Selftrade and received between 3 July 2006 and 31 July 2007. Selftrade reserves the right to terminate or amend the offer at its discretion.

Just send in the exit statement and we'll credit your Selftrade Dealing account.
We also offer refunds of up to £100 on transfer costs of Investment Club accounts.
If your exit charges are substantially higher than £100 per account, please call us and we will see what we can do.

EDIT: I believe there is also a referral scheme enabling you to get £50 for transferring to Selftrade (and the person referring you also gets £50).

SBB_2

I am looking for the cheapest way to self-trade within an ISA wrapper - does anyone know who the cheapest managers/brokers are for this? I already asked the question a while back but can't find the thread!

Thanks all...

debbie42

SBB wrote: »

I am looking for the cheapest way to self-trade within an ISA wrapper - does anyone know who the cheapest managers/brokers are for this? I already asked the question a while back but can't find the thread!

I'm with Selftrade: £25 p.a. for the ISA wrapper + 12.50 per trade.

btw, if you want to find your old posts: click on your name (on the left) and find previous posts.

antoniomontana

so who is the cheapest if you wanna pay a flat fee to buy/sell and not pay an inactivity charge?

jameswinter

my problems with Hoodless Brennan have been re the unreliability of the platform. I've had multiple attempted trades fail for no reason (including my first ever trade with them, meaning I had to call them and beg for them to do the trade for me!). Basically, you really do get what you pay for with this platform. Maybe they're trying hard, but the fact that you can't rely on the platform is a major issue. You can't buy on margin, can't sell short, and if you're really lucky you may be able to go long. I really wanted them to impress me, but I'll be taking my business (and significant trading flow) elsewhere.