'interactive investor' (ii) - new customer ISA transfer experience

KevinLondon

Many thanks to all who commented.
The very recent 'Times' share ISA review is proving to be of interest, now that I need to select a new provider: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/money-mentor/article/best-stocks-shares-isa/

KevinLondon

FYI: I decided on a Vanguard fund, actually ii would have offered a subset of those anyway.

masonic

KevinLondon said:

FYI: I decided on a Vanguard fund, actually ii would have offered a subset of those anyway.

As far as I'm aware, ii offer the full range of Vanguard funds (all of those available direct from Vanguard Investor). Whether ii is the best place to hold a Vanguard fund depends on how much you are investing and how frequently you would be buying and selling units in the fund. Vanguard Investor or iWeb may be better options over the long term.

KevinLondon

Thank you for your advice. As someone who has only held shares previously I would be likely to focus on ready-made fund ISAs (under the principle of 'know what you do not know'), though perhaps adding a few of the funds that have specific appeal, from current research of their prior impressive long-term growth.

[It came as a surprise that ii seems to have better TrustPilot customer service reviews than the others, though obviously not in my experience. 'The Times' report recommends the direct Vanguard option with a Gold for customer experience, though that obviously then greatly restricts the funds that can be selected. If only ii had made some attempt at progressing the transfer, especially given my attempts at chasing both parties...

I fully appreciate that fund investments are for the long term and so I will just need to learn to be more tenacious when dealing with the next provider. Yes, I STILL have not decided on who to select next; if it takes 5-8 weeks for the transfer then I might as well invest my time now...]

masonic

KevinLondon said:

Thank you for your advice. As someone who has only held shares previously I would be likely to focus on ready-made fund ISAs (under the principle of 'know what you do not know'), though perhaps adding a few of the funds that have specific appeal, from current research of their prior impressive long-term growth.

You mentioned in your previous post "I decided on a Vanguard fund". Vanguard does not offer ready-made fund ISAs. You choose your own funds to hold within their ISA. The difference between Vanguard and a fund supermarket like ii or iWeb is that Vanguard doesn't offer funds from other providers. But other providers do offer the full range of Vanguard funds.

Ready made options (known as 'do it for me' in MSE speak) automatically put your money into their proprietary blend of investments, at a price. The same result can be achieved using a fund supermarket and selecting a single multi-asset fund to invest everything into. Vanguard offer such funds, you can hold such a fund through a third party provider and end up with exactly the same investment portfolio at a potentially reduced cost. I suspect some people go with the former option because they don't know the latter option is available to them.

KevinLondon said:

[It came as a surprise that ii seems to have better TrustPilot customer service reviews than the others, though obviously not in my experience. 'The Times' report recommends the direct Vanguard option with a Gold for customer experience, though that obviously then greatly restricts the funds that can be selected. If only ii had made some attempt at progressing the transfer, especially given my attempts at chasing both parties...

It should not come as a surprise if you read the earlier comments in the thread about Trustpilot. Better reviews mean that the company is willing to spend more money at Trustpilot so that they can drive customers to leave reviews and perhaps incentivise them to do so. It has nothing to do with how good a company is. Notorious scammers London Capital & Finance had a 5 star rating and pages of glowing reviews right up to the point the news broke that their investments were fraudulent.

Several of the major investment firms don't bother with Trustpilot, so with them you just get the undiluted negative experiences and none of the incentivised positive ones.

KevinLondon

1) Thank you for your response, I had been referring to Vanguard's LifeStrategy Funds (ii, Fidelity etc., and obviously Vanguard itself).

https://www.vanguard.co.uk/professional/product-types/lifestrategy

2) In terms of ii customer service, 1 final update: I just emailed them to ask why my account remained open and to attempt to gain some insight into what went wrong with my initial cash ISA transfer, using the 'transfer in' email address that I had been told to use when their 'secure message' web form bounced my message from week's back, with a 'This mailbox is no longer monitored'. The auto reply stated that the provided address was purely for brokers and that I should have used the 'secure message' web form... ...at that point... ...actually, I just noted that another auto resply has arrived... ...'This mailbox is no longer monitored'...

3) I had only this afternoon noticed that 'Motley Fool' had awarded a 5* rating, although 'the Times' assigns a 4*.
https://www.fool.co.uk/mywallethero/share-dealing/reviews/interactive-investor-stocks-shares-isa-review/