Equiniti Shareview email address

coyrls

nfs_daemon said:

coyrls said:

nfs_daemon said:

there should be no reason on earth why I should have to register to be able to ask them.

But you've said that you are registered with them, so what's the problem?

There are two problems:

 

1) They do not have an email address.

 

2) I asked if anybody knew of an email address and Browntoa thought that telling me about something which wasn't an email address was a good answer.

1) You could send them a secure message and ask them why they don't have an email address.

2) That was nearly two years ago.  Has it been bothering you all this time?

nfs_daemon

My explanation is that if they want to use outgoing email to contact me then morally they should provide the symmetry of allowing me to send email to them.

 

My explanation is that email is sometimes the most convenient and appropriate way to contact an organisation.

 

My explanation is that I do not use Twitter, or Facebook etc because I am an intelligent adult with a real life, and platforms like that are not appropriate for business use.

 

My explanation is that no, online help does not work - those "virtual agent" tools are a wonderful example of artificial stupidity, and are only of any use to people who can't read FAQs.  And both they and online chats with real people have the same drawback as phoning - they are not the most efficient way to get an answer to a well bounded question when the time it takes to get the answer is less important than the time it takes to ask the question, or when the person asking finds that he wants to get his question asked at a time of day when there is no telephone or live chat facility.

 

My explanation is that no, secure messaging doesn't work unless you first register with them, which both denies the possibility that people might have legitimate questions to ask even if they aren't customers, and is dreadfully intrusive if all you want to do is to ask a question.   How would you feel if, say, you went into a shoe shop to ask if they had a pair of shoes you'd seen in the window in your size, and they refused to even let you ask unless you "registered" with them, and gave them your name, address, phone number, date of birth and email address (which they would use to send you marketing blurb but which they would forbid you from using to send them anything)?

 

My explanation is that no, phoning is not always the best way to get a question asked - see above re online help, and also although I'm not, some people are profoundly deaf, so telephone support is of no use to them whatsoever.

 

And if I seem tetchy, I am, because I am sick to the back teeth with asking questions and getting "answers" where the person replying has either not bothered to read the question properly, but has spotted some keyword and sent out a tangential response to that, or has patronisingly decided to use his interpretation of what I actually mean by my question because obviously I can't be trusted to have actually written what I meant or actually meant what I've written.   Not just here, but in so many contacts with organisations - I've got two ongoing complaints about that sort of thing where I've escalated it via a written letter to senior directors/chief execs because I'm just not going to put up with their employees telling me nonsense.

 

When I asked about email, that was because I wanted to know about email, not secure messaging, not Twitter, not phoning, not online chat.  I did not need, and seriously did not appreciate, replies founded on an assumption that I didn't actually mean what I asked about and therefore needed to be "helped" by being told about things I hadn't asked about.

eskbanker

Wow, someone got out of the wrong side of the bed this morning!  You superficially dressed it up as asking a question but obviously wanted to start an argument, so don't be surprised when people join in and/or try to help.

You were obviously well aware of the fact that Equiniti don't publish an email address, which they clearly would if they were prepared to accept contact that way - even if someone posted an address then the fact that it wasn't official would compromise its usefulness, you might as well try all the usual permutations of customer.service@... or info@..., etc, if you want to fire off messages into the void in the hope of them being answered.

Anyway, perhaps someone else has the time and inclination to go through your latest angry rant and pick the holes in it....

bowlhead99

nfs_daemon said:

My explanation is that no, secure messaging doesn't work unless you first register with them, which both denies the possibility that people might have legitimate questions to ask even if they aren't customers, and is dreadfully intrusive if all you want to do is to ask a question.   How would you feel if, say, you went into a shoe shop to ask if they had a pair of shoes you'd seen in the window in your size, and they refused to even let you ask unless you "registered" with them

But you *are* registered with them. 

A shoe shop offering style advice or showing its wares to walk-in customers is not a regulated financial services business which authorises its employees to engage in written communications with its customers through a traceable and secure medium such as online messaging. 

They offer a phone number where they will answer your question about what products are available over the phone, like a shoe shop would. You believe the employees' answers over the phone will be inadequate and want the answer 'in writing', and are a registered customer so could send them a secure typed message and receive one in reply, but don't want to do that. 

You ranted about how such a typed communication is not, not, NOT email even though it is adequate for what you need to do (exchange written communications electronically) and so two years later you still don't have a resolution to your issue, while other customers have presumably been able to resolve their issues using the communication channels available.

and gave them your name, address, phone number, date of birth and email address (which they would use to send you marketing blurb but which they would forbid you from using to send them anything)?

As email is not a secure communication medium and they're providing financial services, they don't want their customers to use it when better channels for electronic written communications exist. They don't 'forbid' you from sending things to them (it's not against criminal or civil law to reply to a marketing email) but they may not read it or even monitor the mailbox, just like you are free to ignore or filter their marketing emails to your electronic bin.

My explanation is that no, phoning is not always the best way to get a question asked - see above re online help, and also although I'm not, some people are profoundly deaf, so telephone support is of no use to them whatsoever.

The complaints, "what if I was deaf (although, actually I'm not deaf)" and, "what if I wasn't a registered customer (although, actually I am a registered customer)" seem to simply be strawman arguments to support your rant - while in practice all they are doing is adding two years to the length of time that it takes to resolve your issue, as they don't appear to be impediments to getting the answers you seek because you are not deaf or a non-customer.  You can write to them by post, or you can send them an electronic message, or you can call them

When I asked about email, that was because I wanted to know about email, not secure messaging, not Twitter, not phoning, not online chat.  I did not need, and seriously did not appreciate, replies founded on an assumption that I didn't actually mean what I asked about and therefore needed to be "helped" by being told about things I hadn't asked about.

The people here noted to themselves that it's correct that they don't want to invite customer queries via email because they have an online FAQ, a secure written messaging system, a postal mail system and a telephone system, and set about suggesting the best ways to communicate with them given that the email service you want, is not offered.  Some people would be grateful that people had taken their free time to do that and say, "OK, thanks anyway, I suppose I will just have to send them a message or write to them or call them or perhaps use social media to get their attention".

It seems you didn't want us to infer what you meant by your question and offer solutions, you just wanted someone to say yes yes it's terrible isn't it, I don't know how you can possibly send an electronic written message to them and get a reply, because online secure messaging is more secure than email so it is not not not email, therefore it's impossible for you to get your query answered electronically in a written message, so we agree with your initial post that the service offered by Equiniti should be 'illegal'.

Unfortunately some parts of this forum exist for "solutions, not sympathy" and there's no point in indulging in crackpot ideas about how we would change the laws of the land if we all had our own way.

 

nfs_daemon

eskbanker said:

You superficially dressed it up as asking a question but obviously wanted to start an argument, so don't be surprised when people join in and/or try to help.

No, I did not dress up anything as something it wasn't, nor did I want to start an argument. My question was exactly what I wrote, nothing more, nothing less. It did not need any "interpretation". It did not need anybody to try and wonder what I "really meant" and to try to answer that. You seem to be one of those people who reads what another has written, decides to imagine that they have written something else, and then when finding you don't like what you've imagined decide that it's OK to criticise them for what you invented.

eskbanker said:

You were obviously well aware of the fact that Equiniti don't publish an email address, which they clearly would if they were prepared to accept contact that way - even if someone posted an address then the fact that it wasn't official would compromise its usefulness, you might as well try all the usual permutations of customer.service@... or info@..., etc, if you want to fire off messages into the void in the hope of them being answered.

Anyway, perhaps someone else has the time and inclination to go through your latest angry rant and pick the holes in it....

At the time I posted the question I was not aware of that, but I was aware that sometimes organisations do have email addresses which they don't necessarily publish.

bowlhead99

nfs_daemon said:
At the time I posted the question I was not aware of that, but I was aware that sometimes organisations do have email addresses which they don't necessarily publish.

It's generally fair to assume that if the email address is one which they don't publish, it isn't likely to be the one through which a mundane customer service query is welcome.

nfs_daemon

bowlhead99 said:

But you *are* registered with them. 

That's not the point. You obviously missed the bit where I said that (at the time) I couldn't find a messaging feature to use as a registered user.

 

 

bowlhead99 said:

A shoe shop offering style advice or showing its wares to walk-in customers is not a regulated financial services business which authorises its employees to engage in written communications with its customers through a traceable and secure medium such as online messaging.

And not every communication with a registered financial services business is of a regulated financial services nature which limits them to only engaging with it when it is done through a traceable and secure medium. Let me give you a couple of examples (the second one of which, BTW, is one of the ones I've complained in writing about to a senior manager of the company concerned).

 

1. Equiniti offer EQi and Shareview. Why should someone have to register with either of them to be able to ask Equiniti what the differences between them are?
2. I encountered a broken link on a web page of a share registrar, so I reported it. They said that they could not deal with my enquiry unless I gave them my name, address, client number and details of the shareholding. Think about that for a minute. They refused to look into, or to refer to their IT department, a report of a problem which had nothing to do with any particular account or shareholding. A problem which was nothing to do with any financial product or service. A problem which did not involve any regulated activity. A problem which could be encountered by anybody in the world, even shock horror, someone who wasn't a customer or owned any shares in any company at all.

 

 

bowlhead99 said: They offer a phone number where they will answer your question about what products are available over the phone, like a shoe shop would. You believe the employees' answers over the phone will be inadequate and want the answer 'in writing', and are a registered customer so could send them a secure typed message and receive one in reply, but don't want to do that.

That's not the point. You obviously missed the bit where I said that (at the time) I couldn't find a messaging feature to use as a registered user.

 

 

bowlhead99 said:

You ranted about how such a typed communication is not, not, NOT email even though it is adequate for what you need to do (exchange written communications electronically)

Any adequacy is irrelevant - I didn't ask if anybody could suggest an adequate way to exchange written communications electronically, I asked about email. Let me give you an analogy.

 

I stop you on the street and ask you if you know where I can buy an orange. If you don't know, you say "Sorry, I don't know". If you know that there is nowhere, then you say "There isn't anywhere, I'm afraid".

 

What you do not ever do is to think "He doesn't really mean orange - he's unsure of what he wants. I guess he actually wants to buy a piece of fruit so I'll tell him that the garage on the corner sells apples".

 

If after your initial answer about oranges I say "Oh, OK.  What about other fruit - is there anywhere I could buy something else?" then you  can tell me about the garage on the corner selling apples, but until then you are not helping me by telling me about apples whan I've asked about oranges.   What you are doing is insulting me by making it clear that you dont think I know what I'm talking about.

 

 

bowlhead99 said:

and so two years later you still don't have a resolution to your issue, while other customers have presumably been able to resolve their issues using the communication channels available.

The issue which has arisen again is not the subject matter from 2 years ago, it is the problem of wanting to email a company about something which is absolutely not a subject which requires a secure messaging channel. Searching here for info turned up this old topic of mine, which I'd completely forgotten about, and in which, as I said, I didn't properly reply at the time.

 

 

bowlhead99 said:

As email is not a secure communication medium and they're providing financial services, they don't want their customers to use it when better channels for electronic written communications exist.

I'll leave you to consider my example of wanting to report a broken link on a web page and see if you do come to the realisation that not every communication with a financial services provider is necessarily of a nature which means that insecure email must not be used.

 

bowlhead99 said:

They don't 'forbid' you from sending things to them (it's not against criminal or civil law to reply to a marketing email) but they may not read it or even monitor the mailbox, just like you are free to ignore or filter their marketing emails to your electronic bin.

As an aside, an unmonitored/unread mailbox is the electronic equivalent of taking letters delivered by postie and tossing them straight into the bin without opening them. No company would dream of doing that with letters, and they should equally not dream of doing the equivalent with email.

 

 

bowlhead99 said:

The complaints, "what if I was deaf (although, actually I'm not deaf)" and, "what if I wasn't a registered customer (although, actually I am a registered customer)" seem to simply be strawman arguments to support your rant - while in practice all they are doing is adding two years to the length of time that it takes to resolve your issue, as they don't appear to be impediments to getting the answers you seek because you are not deaf or a non-customer.

No, they are not straw man arguments, they are (or were supposed to be) reasonable examples of situations where phoning might not be a suitable method, or  someone might not be able to avail themselves of "secure messaging" without going through unnecessary and time consuming preliminary process.

 

Are you prepared to accept that sometimes email really is the quickest, easiest, and therefore the most appropriate method, or are you determined to insist that it can never be OK, not even to request marketing onformation, or report a website problem?

 

bowlhead99 said:

You can write to them by post, or you can send them an electronic message, or you can call them

All of which take longer than an email, and the first one also costs more. Is it worth pointing out again that not all communications are unsuitable for email, and that email can easily be faster to use than other methods, that other methods may not be available to everybody at any time, or to anybody at some times, or are you just not prepared to accept that any of that can ever be true?

bowlhead99 said:

The people here noted to themselves that it's correct that they don't want to invite customer queries via email because they have an online FAQ, a secure written messaging system, a postal mail system and a telephone system, and set about suggesting the best ways to communicate with them given that the email service you want, is not offered.

And set about answering on the basis that I didn't know what I wanted, but whatever it was it couldn't possibly have been what I asked.

bowlhead99 said:

Some people would be grateful that people had taken their free time to do that and say, "OK, thanks anyway, I suppose I will just have to send them a message or write to them or call them or perhaps use social media to get their attention". It seems you didn't want us to infer what you meant by your question and offer solutions,

Strange as it may seem what I wanted was an answer to the question I asked.

bowlhead99 said:

you just wanted someone to say yes yes it's terrible isn't it,

No, I just wanted someone to answer the question I asked. Just like when I go to Amazon and search for something I want them to show me what I've asked for not what I haven't asked for.

bowlhead99 said:

I don't know how you can possibly send an electronic written message to them and get a reply, because online secure messaging is more secure than email so it is not not not email, therefore it's impossible for you to get your query answered electronically in a written message, so we agree with your initial post that the service offered by Equiniti should be 'illegal'. Unfortunately some parts of this forum exist for "solutions, not sympathy" and there's no point in indulging in crackpot ideas about how we would change the laws of the land if we all had our own way.

There are 3 sub-topics swirling aroud here, and people are mistakenly conflating them

1) Whether email should not be offered under any circumstances just because it isn't appropriate in all circumstances. Patently a daft idea - what would life be like if we could only ever obtain services or product which were appropriate to 100% of the population 100% of the time?

2) Whether companies should be compelled to offer proper customer-centric levels of support. Yes - if they won't do it voluntarily then they should be forced to by law, just like we had to do with pay, and health and safety, and so on.

3) Whether people should answer questions as asked. Here's a cast-iron principle for you - if you want to help people, answer the questions they've asked, not ones which they haven't.

coyrls

Have you any idea how ridiculous you’re being?

bowlhead99

nfs_daemon said:
There are 3 sub-topics swirling aroud here, and people are mistakenly conflating them 

1) Whether email should not be offered under any circumstances just because it isn't appropriate in all circumstances. Patently a daft idea - what would life be like if we could only ever obtain services or product which were appropriate to 100% of the population 100% of the time?

I don't think that just because email isn't always appropriate, "it shouldn't be offered under any circumstances", nor do I think any person on this thread thinks that. You are arguing against nobody there, by making up something ridiculous - so that you can feel that people would be on your side.

2) Whether companies should be compelled to offer proper customer-centric levels of support. Yes - if they won't do it voluntarily then they should be forced to by law, just like we had to do with pay, and health and safety, and so on. 

If 'offering proper support' was compelled by law, you would still be on a hiding to nothing trying to get Equiniti charged with a corporate crime simply because you couldn't email them to ask a particular question, if they offered the facility to call them or write to them or send them secured messages from your account; and your 'but what if I wasn't a customer?' argument wouldn't hold water if you were asking the government to compel them to offer customer-centric support.

Perhaps it is the case that the secure messaging facility is only available for the people who have a proper 'investment account' with Shareview or EQI rather than people who are merely using a corporate sponsored nominee service or are just trading the odd paper share cert from time to time. Still, the Help pages provide an email address for enquiries for those services at https://www.shareview.co.uk/4/Info/Portfolio/Default/en/Home/Products/svd/Pages/Contactus.aspx and alternatively if you have a general query about dealing that you couldn't resolve over the phone you can use sharedealing@ equiniti.com.

3) Whether people should answer questions as asked. Here's a cast-iron principle for you - if you want to help people, answer the questions they've asked, not ones which they haven't.

From my experience of 15 years on the forum, I can tell you that I made over ten thousand posts while being virtually 'thanked' in over 70% of them. In a great many of those posts I looked beyond the exact wording of the question to anticipate how my knowledge could be of use to the poster beyond the simplest of possible responses to the exact question asked.  Answering the question which was not specifically asked, was generally appreciated.


You ask: Equiniti offer EQi and Shareview. Why should someone have to register with either of them to be able to ask Equiniti what the differences between them are?

So this is an example of a question that you did not want to call to ask them about, or read the respective websites, because you needed an answer 'in writing' sent to your email address, and the law should compel them to answer all your questions by email?

If you had looked at the websites, you would see that 'Shareview' is a basic service which allows you to hold and buy/sell a range of investments which are traded on the London financial markets, including shares, shares of investment trusts or ETFs, gilts and other bonds. They charge a custody fee as a percentage of the value of your investments, though it is capped with a minimum and maximum charge. Meanwhile their newer more comprehensive service 'EQI'  - which they acquired from Selftrade and rebranded after takeover - allows you to also invest in open ended investment funds (OEICs and Unit Trusts), has market information and research tools powered by Morningstar, offers SIPP and LISA investment wrappers in addition to the ISA and general investment account types that are available through Shareview, offers a range of international stocks and also allows you to trade more complex investments such as warrants, covered warrants, and structured products. The EQI services has a different fee structure with a fixed custody fee which buys you a credit towards the dealing commissions on each trade.

I apologise for telling you that, because I appreciate we should only answer the questions asked, and you were only asking why someone should have to register to ask them for the differences, you were not asking what the differences actually were. Still, might be of use to some other reader.

I found the differences by looking at the two web pages,  https://www.shareview.co.uk/4/Info/Portfolio/default/en/home/products/Pages/Buyandsellshares.aspx  and https://www.shareview.co.uk/4/Info/Portfolio/default/en/home/markets/Pages/MarketInfo.aspx (which leads to https://eqi.co.uk/). 

I don't think the long arm of the law should compel them to receive your email and write you back a nice email telling you the differences point by point when all the information is on the website for customers and non-customers alike.