New AJ Bell Youinvest charges

itm2

I've just fired off my complaint to Youinvest, which will presumably be met with the same stock reply that others have reported.

I would very much like to get the view of both the FCA and the government on this, however, so will be following it up with both the Financial Ombudsman and my local MP.

In anticipation of the "don't waste your time pal" replies, I should add that I am now retired and have plenty of time to waste
Maybe if enough angry punters bark outside the authorities' window they'll open it and see what all the fuss is about. Stranger things have happened....

Thrugelmir

itm2 wrote: »

In anticipation of the "don't waste your time pal" replies, I should add that I am now retired and have plenty of time to waste

Wasting peoples time costs money.........;)

EdSwippet

bowlhead99 wrote: »

And has anyone here transferred from Youinvest to another decent provider and suffered issues around abnormal 'transfer delays'?

Two years ago, and after the last set of price rises, it took Youinvest more than six months to transfer my SIPP in specie to (decent provider?!) Interactive Investor. Each platform blamed the other for delays. It was never clear where the problems actually arose.

paul2345

Thrugelmir wrote: »

Regulators won't interfere in commercial business decisions. People are too used to something for nothing. Vote with your feet.

Maybe they won't interfere. But if the financial ombudsman investigate a complaint, then the company (Youinvest) are charged £525 per investigation.

bowlhead99

paul2345 wrote: »

Maybe they won't interfere. But if the financial ombudsman investigate a complaint, then the company (Youinvest) are charged £525 per investigation.

But if the complaint is "I do not like the price changes and do not want to pay the contractual exit fees to have them deal with transferring my assets off their books", the FO surely does not need to investigate; if they did, they would be wasting money and resource and it does not benefit the industry, but instead costs the participants in the industry (i.e. you and me) for them doing it.

However, if the complaint is "I had a service contract where the fees at x% were capped to the first £100k of my assets, but are now being levied on all £500k of my assets as well as having the % on my first £100k increased, and I believe this is unfair, especially as it will cost me a lot of money to exit the contract", then perhaps the FO would be interested in investigating to see whether the terms were in fact unfair.

I do think it is probably a bit early for people to say they will be following up the tariff changes with their MP, when they have not given the company the requisite time to respond to the complaint nor had a full response from the ombudsman. I fail to see why this should be a matter for national government, when parliament has established the FOS as an official expert in sorting out problems between consumers and businesses and the FOS has not yet had the opportunity to opine on this complaint.

EdSwippet

bowlhead99 wrote: »

... and the FOS has not yet had the opportunity to opine on this complaint.

Have you read this thread? It details how the FOS opined the last time Youinvest raised charges to multiples of what they were previously while insisting on applying transfer out fees to anyone not willing to pay the higher charges (tl;dr spoiler: the FOS rejected every complaint).

It is possible that things will be different this time, but the track record so far is not promising.

Gadfium

Hmmm...I have the majority of my smallish portfolio with iWEB and was contemplating moving what I had with AJ Bell. I have a full years ISA allowance in my AJ Bell account made up of:
Vanguard UK Government Bond Index Fund Barclays Vantage LifeStrategy 100% HSBC FTSE 250 C BlackRock Emerging Markets Equity Tracker BlackRock Global Property Securities Equity Tracker
This morning I've sold the lot and transferred to cash. To move to iWEB would have cost £150. Luckily all are up, so I'm not seeing a loss. This was an ISA allowance that I was "playing" with.....I was copying a variant of the Moneyvator passive experiment.

dougzz

Received this in response to initial complaint.

"Thank you for your email. The charges come into effect in October so the first quarter you will pay a fee is December, there will be not suspension or reduction on these. As a company decision we are not offering any free transfers away, to transfer cash form a ISA and dealing account it is free of charge and should you wish to move investments it is £25.00 per line of holding. The reason we are introducing the new charges is that as we now have a higher number of customers with ISAs and Dealing accounts, we are reviewing our account charges to remove the cross subsidy that exists whereby SIPP customers are subsidising the ISA and Dealing account customers. If you have any further enquiries, please feel free to contact us."

Have responded pointing out how the cross-subsidy statement is not supported by the potentially huge increase in charges for fund invested SIPPs. Further pointing out that the opportunity for penalty free exit when contract charges are changed so significantly is normal practice.

EdSwippet

ColdIron wrote: »

I'm looking at iWeb or Halifax Sharedealing as alternatives, does anyone have any experience of either of these platforms in drawdown, particularly in terms of setting up and timely dividend payments, tax certificates etc?

I hold some OEICs with iWeb, and I'm really satisfied with their service. They pay dividends on time, and produce accurate tax certificates without fuss.

On one occasion when a fund purchase notification was delayed by a day for some reason, someone from iWeb proactively contacted me by phone, unprompted, to let me know that the purchase had happened as it should have and it was just that the system hadn't yet been updated.

Chickereeeee

Having JUST (ie a couple of weeks ago, still not completed) tranaferred to Youinvest from Fidelity, I asked about changing my mind and exit fees. No deal, they still want the stated exit fees, even though Fidelity do not charge them (and hence I did not ask Youinvest to pay them)!

Annoying, I waited two years with a SIPP in Youinvest, and a ISA in Fidelity, to seee which suited me best....

C