AJ Bell Youinvest feedback

Gobosly

Hi there, I've been with Sippdeal, now AJ Bell for around 5 years now and I run a Dealing, ISA and Sipp account with them. I also run a couple of Barclays Stockbrokers accounts (BSL), which I am slowly migrating from.
I must admit that I've never had any problem logging in, but I don't tend to log in at your times. I will try tomorrow morning, as your experience sounds awful, and quite frankly not good enough.
With regard to AJ Bell in general, the reason I have kept the BSL accounts for so long is that I prefer their web pages, research, etc. I have also tried other platforms and I have realized that I don't like changing platforms. I therefore always keep any platform for at least a year to see if I get used to it. This happened with a SaxoBank service I used to get cheap access to a really wide range of international markets. I found it good in the end, but it was a totally different way of working.
Backto AJ Bell, in my experience I'd summarise them as follows:
Advantages:

• Low cost - in all aspects not just trading.
• Access to most European markets as well as British ones in the standard set up.
• Exchange rate charges are not as high as most (0.5%)
• Reasonable fund and ETF range.
• Phone dealing service is also cheap and helpful.

Disadvantages:

• Website is utilitarian and text very small! It is no where near as polished as HL or BSL.
• Retail Bond market has to be accessed by telephone (although it is still £9.95 a trade). Whereas other platforms (BSL) are simply online.
• Market research section is a bit weak! Although you can simply use Digital Look separately - you will have to something else to look at charts, etc, as the website is not good enough.
• Can be hard to find certain stocks, particularly in other European markets. Most times I have to phone, and they have always helped with Ticker codes, etc. Never have this problem with BSL or SaxoBank, although you have to pay extra there to access overseas markets.
• No annual paper summaries unlike BSL, although BSL seem to go to the other extreme and send everything by paper as well as web.

I hope my experience helps, although your experience with regard to access seems like a showstopper. I'll let you know what happens tomorrow morning.

Gobosly

Right. I've just tried to log on the each of my accounts. The time was 8.20am. Logged on the each of them fine as usual? I can't understand why it's not working for you? Doesn't make sense. The only caveat is that it is Friday (is this a quieter day)?

mystic_trev

I've been using Youinvest (previously Sippdeal) for 15 years. I guess I must have been one of the first using their online platform.In all that time I've never had any problems and been really pleased with their service.

mf78

Speaking as a very experienced pc techie, invalid password errors usually are a result of something wrong at the users end. Perhaps entering incorrectly (sometimes when setting it up), keyboard layout being set to another country so the character you're typing isn't what is printed on the key, date and time being set incorrectly on the machine (definitely check this first) or quite possibly some sort of browser problem. If you're having these issues from using a pc or laptop, trying using a different browser - Chrome or Firefox for example - and see if that helps. Are you connecting over your own internet connection or using a public wifi network?

Gobosly

I would now agree that the loggin in problem is not down to AJ Bell server as I repeatedly tried logging on this morning between 8am and 9am and not had any problems. I doubt AJ Bell would have survived this long if the platform was that shoddy. For info I use Chrome to login.

noh

Youinvest appear at least for me and my wife to force the first letter of the password to be upper case even if you originally selected lower case when first defining your password.
During the OPs failed logon attempts was the first letter of the password one of the requested characters?

epicurate

I'm a relatively recent customer of AJ Bell, and I have not had any problems logging in aside from during scheduled downtimes. I'm probably logging in far too much for my own good in fact, given that I plan to pursue a passive strategy! Put it down to newbie keenness. I'm just looking, not trading.

Anyway, that means I log in quite a lot, and I also log in quite frequently at the times mentioned in the OP. It's never given me any trouble.

Overall, I've found them to be reasonably good and fairly responsive to questions. I'm not a huge fan of their trading interface, which seems a little unintuitive, but (a) I've got nothing to compare it to, and (b) I shouldn't need it much anyway!

mf78

noh wrote: »

Youinvest appear at least for me and my wife to force the first letter of the password to be upper case even if you originally selected lower case when first defining your password.
During the OPs failed logon attempts was the first letter of the password one of the requested characters?

I think its quite probable that you set it up with an upper case letter, perhaps without realising or if the capslock key had been hit my mistake. Its easily done, and I have entered uppercase letters just through habit if its a word I often type elsewhere or for other logins.

noh

mf78 wrote: »

I think its quite probable that you set it up with an upper case letter, perhaps without realising or if the capslock key had been hit my mistake. Its easily done, and I have entered uppercase letters just through habit if its a word I often type elsewhere or for other logins.

It's possible that we both set it up like that because a capital letter is required in the password.
I have just taken a look at the Youinvest site and it requires the password to contain at least one capital letter and one number. I suspect that the OP is forgetting which letter of his password is uppercase.
It also isn't random in which letters it asks for from your password if you get it wrong ie if it asks for the 3rd 5th and 7th and you get it wrong it will ask for the 3rd 5th and 7th the for next attempt and then again if you get that wrong.
If the OP has forgotten which letter of his password is uppercase and it is requested once it will be requested the next two times in that session and he will be locked out.

jimjames

Gobosly wrote: »

Right. I've just tried to log on the each of my accounts. The time was 8.20am. Logged on the each of them fine as usual? I can't understand why it's not working for you? Doesn't make sense. The only caveat is that it is Friday (is this a quieter day)?

I've found the version of browser can make big difference. It may not be relevant here but worth trying others. For example I cannot logon to nationwide using ie9 yet chrome is fine.