Entitled to larger payment?

ssm90

Hello,

I am looking for advice on whether I should accept an offered compensation payment or ask for more. Back story as follows:

I have rounded the numbers to make the story clearer. I had £40,000 in my ISA with Trading212 and by trading myself I grew this amount to £47,000 in the space of around a year. When I started with £40,000, I had also requested a transfer in for £4,000 which never came in and I never noticed until Trading212 themselves notified me to apologise for the delay.

By way of compensation, I asked for £700 as this is exactly the amount I grew my £40,000 by over the same time span from when I was due to have received the £4,000 too. They have argued that I was never aware that my £4,000 was missing and therefore they are willing to offer me £100 as compensation. Yes, they are right that I did not notice but I have been busy and this slipped my notice, and either way, that should not be a good enough reason? They promised a service and they did not deliver and I missed out on about 12 months' worth of returns - they have acknowledged the delay was because they did not identify that the funds related to my account and the fault was in no way my own.

They can also argue that I may not have grown the £4,000 to £4,700 and that it may have been a lot lower, but surely I can argue that it could be a lot more? In either case, isn't the best estimate based on ACTUAL results of growing my £40,000 into £47,000?

What is my best option here? Should I just accept the £100 or take it to the ombudsman to get the £700?

Thank you in advance.

Manxman_in_exile

I think you'd be better off asking here:  Savings & Investments — MoneySavingExpert Forum

The_Fat_Controller

It is impossible to quantify whether you would have make a profit or loss in a trading account unlike if it was in a fixed rate cash ISA.

Being busy is no excuse for not noticing either.

They have accepted their error.

You are not out of pocket, so accept their offer.

Aylesbury_Duck

I had cause to consider the ombudsman for an ISA matter a while ago, and the advice was that they were unlikely to consider my situation to be serious enough to warrant a payment larger than that already offered by the provider.  In my case, my money was out of reach for over a year during a botched transfer.  I might have gained growth had I been able to switch funds, withdraw or reinvest the (substantial) sum in that time, but equally I might have lost through bad/unlucky decisions.  I accepted the payment offered.  I think you're in a similar situation in that you can't prove that you would have gained £700.

By all means try for more, but if the ombudsman decides not to recommend compensation and the offer is withdrawn, you've missed out on £100.

Presumably the £4,000 accrued interest or growth in its account over the year, so the £700 you think you would have gained is partially offset, anyway?

The cynical side of me says that if you didn't notice an expected £4,000 missing from your ISA, and didn't notice you still had the £4,000 in another account, it's a bit of a stretch to think that you would have made £700 on it through shrewd investing 

soolin

Moved to a more appropriate board for responses. 

Albermarle

If you had lost money in that time and therefore the mislaying of the £4K would have been to your advantage , would you have been happy to pay Trading 212 the money you would have lost?

One course of action could be to say £100 is not enough but £200 could close the matter . 

Reaper

I don't believe the ombudsman will take your side for the reason given by Albermarle. At best they will suggest inflation over the period or the rate you could have got in a savings account. In that light the £100 on offer is generous and you should accept it.

Daliah

As you are not entirely without fault yourself in this case, you should just accept their offer and learn from the experience.

soulsaver

What does their T&Cs say about admin errors?

ssm90

To answer some of the queries here, I can't find anything specific in terms of admin error in their T&Cs.

I also did not gain any interest to offset the potential £700 loss as the funds were not in any of my accounts, instead they were transferred out of my old supplier and transferred into Trading212's holding account.

The only other thing to add is, my gain from £40,000 to £47,000 was achieved by trading just one ETF and nothing else. This is why I have stated that if I had my additional £4,000 I can say with high confidence that this would have also grown to £4,700 which is why I was wondering if I had any grounds to claim this.

However, by reading the overall responses, it seems that the general consensus is that the ombudsman would not rule in my favour and that I should just accept the £100 and learn from this.

Thanks all.

P1Fanatic

I see where your coming from i.e. that they held your £4k for a year but you have to take some responsibility for not noticing almost 10% of your starting investment was missing for an entire year. I would just go back and say your earnings were clear due to all funds in Single ETF and you'd be happy with 50% of the loss otherwise you will got to FO and see how they respond. Unlikely they will withdraw the original offer so worst case your back to £100, best case they just pay £375 to close the case.