Cavendish or Charles Stanley?

jimjames

le_loup wrote: »

I have not used either and am with H-L.
But
I have looked at both of them and I'm not impressed with their websites lack of ease of use compared to H-L.
I will probably defect to one of them but life may be less easy if I do.

I'm with Cavendish both as FN and Cofunds.

Neither are as easy to use as HL but when I'm saving a few hundred pounds a year I can put up with that.

le_loup

jimjames wrote: »

I'm with Cavendish both as FN and Cofunds.

Neither are as easy to use as HL but when I'm saving a few hundred pounds a year I can put up with that.

Difficult to disagree with that but the one great thing about H-L is their immaculate service. I have had some problems with them but all sorted in a nanosecond by people who seen to be properly trained.
I sound like an apologist for H-L and I don't mean to be but ... then again, I don't shop in Asda but as an MSE, I probably should!

Rollinghome

le_loup wrote: »

Difficult to disagree with that but the one great thing about H-L is their immaculate service.

I would have agreed with that until they screwed up my account for a substantial sum and then took almost two weeks, a week from when I noticed and drew it to their attention, to correct the error - I assume because they were scratching their heads working out what they'd done.

Had any bank done the same and caused so much hassle I'd have expected a generous sum in compensation. Not from HL. Not impressed.

plunt

would anyone mind taking some screenshots of their platform so we could take a look and compare?

Perelandra

I have my ISA with Cavendish/Fidelity.

I'd agree with the comments above that the interface is basic, and doesn't supply all the information you might like to have readily available, but I have my own Excel sheets that fill in this gap for me.

I've experienced the Fidelity customer service on one occasion when my monthly savings plan was cancelled, rather than transferred to my new account, during a switch in my personal current accounting.

It took about 4 weeks to get everything working back to normal- caused by cut-off dates in setting up Direct Debits- which was longer than I think would have been reasonable. But I was given cash compensation for this, which I thought was generous (I'd not asked for this, as in my mind the issue was caused by me switching accounts, and Fidelity hardly make much of a profit from me each year!).

So all in all, I'm happy with Fidelity/Cavendish. CSD I've had no experience with.

le_loup

Rollinghome wrote: »

Had any bank done the same and caused so much hassle I'd have expected a generous sum in compensation. Not from HL. Not impressed.

Again, I agree. But ... we honestly don't hear too many complaints on here about them. Then again, I can't remembers seeing that much about other providers. Now, if they were BANKS, the complaints would be unending!
Again, not being an apologist for H-L, just, perhaps playing devils advocate.

mf78

vectistim wrote: »

And monthly/regular?

Both my wife and I have ISA's with CSD. Although I initially bought £500 worth of VLS fund manually, then setup an automated monthly investment, for my wife I just started from scratch and set it to buy £200 pm. It went through ok. I thought the system may have refused but her account went from £0 to £200 worth on the usual regular trade day. So you may not have to make an initial investment of £500 afterall.

Marazan

For funds who's unit price is more than you want to invest monthly you have to message CSD support through the website with instructions and they will manually setup the investment - I have £50 a month going into a LifeStrategy fund who's unit price is well above that

They said this is a bug they are looking to fix by it is a couple of months old now so it seems to be an ongoing thing.

kidmugsy

le_loup wrote: »

... we honestly don't hear too many complaints on here about them. Then again, I can't remembers seeing that much about other providers. Now, if they were BANKS, the complaints would be unending!
Again, not being an apologist for H-L, just, perhaps playing devils advocate.

I was struck by the astonishment and outrage when HL mucked up at the time of the Royal Mail flotation. Clearly people had always had impeccable service from them and expected more of it, which speaks pretty well of them. I'll leave my small SIPP with them. If I had a big ISA, though, especially one with investment trusts in it, I'd probably vamoose.

pip895

I am considering CSD - mainly because they have a wide range of funds available. I may transfer some cash I have in HL and have a play before making up my mind. They seemed helpful when I rang up with a couple of queries.


Does anyone know of any platform offering free fund trading and a capped fee?