Are iweb really that bad?!

havingaball74

Hi all,
After much research and discussion, I'd pretty much decided to invest with iweb. I have £85,000 in a cash ISA to invest. I'm a total beginner when it comes to investing. Then, I read quite negative reviews on Boring Money and other sites and so now I'm having second thoughts. They quite like Vanguard and Money Box. Any thoughts would very much be appreciated.

Alexland

Boring Money are unlikely to get any lucrative consultancy work from Halifax Share Dealing so have no reason to be complimentary about their brands such as iWeb.
From an end customer's perspective I can do my research elsewhere and its a very cost effective basic platform for larger accounts and I have not had any bad experiences with iWeb.

masonic

I guess I fall into the category of "people who know what they're doing and want to buy and hold with minimal charges", so I like iWeb. There are plenty of other places that can give information and guidance to novice investors (it's generally better to avoid relying on the marketing department of your own platform for that anyway).

Presumably Holly likes Vanguard and MoneyBox because there is less choice and she is easily confused when presented with lots of options. It probably didn't occur to her that she could voluntarily restrict herself to Vanguard funds at iWeb if she wished. She's probably writing for those who don't have much in the way of savings and can only afford to invest small amounts, so the percentage based fees of Vanguard and MoneyBox are cost-effective.

Alexland

masonic said:

Presumably Holly likes Vanguard and MoneyBox because...

Boring Money's brand is all about trying to make investment more engaging, improve the user experience, etc and some providers have deep pockets pay for such consultancy, sponsored newsletters, commission research, etc. Holly isn't running her website as a charity so there are commercial incentives at work which is why she issues awards to her favourite customers providers and is going to find ways of presenting comparison data to show certain results while still keeping close enough to the facts to appear credible.

ChilliBob

There is nothing wrong with iweb really. Yeah it's not snazzy like some other sites, but, it has what you need, it works, and chat support is decent too. 

fred246

Well it took 2 days for me to be able to get cash into my account this week. The money went from my current account and just disappeared. Phoning them up you had a wait of over an hour to talk to anybody and then they just said they had problems and it will appear in your account some time in the future. They didn't seem to have any urgency to solve the problem.

cattie

I've been with iweb for about 18months now & more than happy with them. Whenever I've needed to phone them (never during a lockdown) the phone has been answered promptly & the advisor very helpful.

During the lockdown we've all had to learn to be patient when trying to phone organisations & waiting an hour or more has been common for many companies, especially with many employees working from home. Even GP's have horrendous phone waiting times of much more than a hour in some cases.

As far as I'm concerned, the amount of money I'm saving in fees paid to ifa & former platform, moving to iweb was a decision I certainly don't regret.

masonic

Alexland said:

masonic said:

Presumably Holly likes Vanguard and MoneyBox because...

Boring Money's brand is all about trying to make investment more engaging, improve the user experience, etc and some providers have deep pockets pay for such consultancy, sponsored newsletters, commission research, etc. Holly isn't running her website as a charity so there are commercial incentives at work which is why she issues awards to her favourite customers providers and is going to find ways of presenting comparison data to show certain results while still keeping close enough to the facts to appear credible.

I've never heard of Boring Money before today, sounds like one to avoid.

masonic

fred246 said:

Well it took 2 days for me to be able to get cash into my account this week. The money went from my current account and just disappeared. Phoning them up you had a wait of over an hour to talk to anybody and then they just said they had problems and it will appear in your account some time in the future. They didn't seem to have any urgency to solve the problem.

Someone else posted about the same issue affecting Halfax Sharedealing. It wasn't clear from their post how they were funding the account (I'd assumed it must have been a bank transfer that didn't arrive), but as far as I'm aware iWeb only let you fund electronically by debit card, and usually the money is available to invest a couple of days before it debits the current account. Perhaps there was a system-wide problem at some point in the last week. Strange though that it wasn't reported on, given the increased activity normally associated with the first week in the tax year (see for example this article about a payment delay).

Eco_Miser

I've been using Iweb since 2015. Perhaps I've been lucky, but I've never had to phone them at all.  ISA transfers in went through quickly, debit card deposits have been available to use same day.  Dividend payments hit my bank account on the fourth working day from distribution, that's one day at Iweb and three days BACS. Never had a problem logging in. Ridiculously low fees. Would definitely recommend.

Alexland

masonic said:

I've never heard of Boring Money before today, sounds like one to avoid.

I get the newsletters each Friday and they are useful enough that I give them a quick read.
I wouldn't take the recent issue around iWeb's integration with their payment provider to be representative of their long term service quality. All platforms seem to have IT issues occasionally and when that happens their helpdesk tends to get overloaded so it's in their interests to ensure it doesn't happen too often.