Barclays Smart Investor regular investment unwanted tampering

pochisoldi

Been with Barclays Smart Investor since Aug 2024.
Have regular orders for three ETFs.
Two of the orders have been processed every month without fail.
The third order seems to get periodically "fiddled with" - instead of buying "iShares UKEqIndxUK H A" it's changed to "iShares UKEqIndxUK D A". No notification. 
The first I know is when I get an email saying that the order has been cancelled because they have "temporarily suspended purchases".
Unless I take action, that third order is doomed to fail each month - I need to cancel the order, make a one off manual order for the current month, and then setup a new regular order.
This first happened in November 2024, and Barclays never came up with an explanation.
Six months later, it's happened again.

The small mercy is that the incorrect purchase never happens - one less action required.

Does anyone know !!!!!! Barclays are doing modifying my order without letting me know?
More importantly, does anyone know how to get Barclays to do something about it  - second time it's happened, been on the phone for 45 minutes registering a second complaint.

Hoenir

Class H is minimum purchase of £100k.  Class D is £100 with minimum reinvestment of £25. 

Most likely the root cause of your issue is your choice of investment. 

dunstonh

Does anyone know !!!!!! Barclays are doing modifying my order without letting me know?
More importantly, does anyone know how to get Barclays to do something about it  - second time it's happened, been on the phone for 45 minutes registering a second complaint.

Probably because you have selected class H but don't qualify to access class H and class D has been used instead.

Both share classes share the same ongoing charge.  So, correct your mistake and it won't happen again.   I'm not sure why you would be complaining to Barclays when it's your mistake.

Have regular orders for three ETFs.

I haven't checked, but my first reaction to you typing iShares UKEqIndxUK D A is that it is not an ETF but a unit trust.  I don't know if they do an ETF version as well but the name suggests Unit Trust.

pochisoldi

dunstonh said:

Does anyone know !!!!!! Barclays are doing modifying my order without letting me know?
More importantly, does anyone know how to get Barclays to do something about it  - second time it's happened, been on the phone for 45 minutes registering a second complaint.

Probably because you have selected class H but don't qualify to access class H and class D has been used instead.

Both share classes share the same ongoing charge.  So, correct your mistake and it won't happen again.   I'm not sure why you would be complaining to Barclays when it's your mistake.

Have regular orders for three ETFs.

I haven't checked, but my first reaction to you typing iShares UKEqIndxUK D A is that it is not an ETF but a unit trust.  I don't know if they do an ETF version as well but the name suggests Unit Trust.

I selected "iShares UKEqIndxUK H A", but Barclays are changing it (without any input from me) to "iShares UKEqIndxUK D A" without telling me, and that purchase is failing. Since moving to Barclays Smart Investor, this has happened in Nov 2024 and Jun 2025.

No notification or explanation and purchases are still "temporarily suspended" for "iShares UKEqIndxUK D A".

Edited 13/06/25 - got the D and H classes swapped around.

pochisoldi

Hoenir said:

Class H is minimum purchase of £100k.  Class D is £100 with minimum reinvestment of £25. 

Most likely the root cause of your issue is your choice of investment. 

How come it's my fault? I'm using a retail platform to make an obviously retail sale (currently £65/month)!

If I shouldn't be able to buy Class H, then why do they let me buy Class H?
If I should be buying Class D, why does the regular order fail when Barclays change the order to Class D?
If Barclays want me to buy Class D instead of Class H, why don't they either tell me to change my order (probably the more sensible approach), or let me know that they have changed the order.

masonic

I hold a couple of these iShares funds (OEICs, not ETFs) for other regions and class D and H are very similar if not identical in terms of fees, so it doesn't really matter which you hold as long as you can hold one of them. Generally a platform will offer one or the other and class H is usually made available because in aggregate the platform holds the minimum.

Are you saying a manual purchase works, but it is just the regular investment order that is (occasionally) failing? It has been known for only a subset of available investments to be available via regular investing service (this was/is true of Interactive Investor for example), but for it to fail, then work for several months, then fail again, sounds more like a glitch with the service than the investment not being supported for regular investment.

pochisoldi

masonic said:

I hold a couple of these iShares funds (OEICs, not ETFs) for other regions and class D and H are very similar if not identical in terms of fees, so it doesn't really matter which you hold as long as you can hold one of them. Generally a platform will offer one or the other and class H is usually made available because in aggregate the platform holds the minimum.

Are you saying a manual purchase works, but it is just the regular investment order that is (occasionally) failing? It has been known for only a subset of available investments to be available via regular investing service (this was/is true of Interactive Investor for example), but for it to fail, then work for several months, then fail again, sounds more like a glitch with the service than the investment not being supported for regular investment.

Which takes me back to the last paragraph of my initial post:
"More importantly, does anyone know how to get Barclays to do something about it  - second time it's happened, been on the phone for 45 minutes registering a second complaint."

I could just wait for Barclays to offer me £25 to go away, and then do the rinse/repeat cycle every 6 months, but every time I do that I have to get past 1st line call handlers who seem to be hard coded to gaslight customers into thinking that it's their fault.

For the record, after some digging/comparison, it looks as if the H and D classes are now identical, but prior to some point around 3 or 4 years ago, "D" was a clean fund, and "H" was the dirty fund when it came to initial charges. (in the same way that L&G had dirty "I" funds and clean "R" funds.

dunstonh

Which takes me back to the last paragraph of my initial post:
"More importantly, does anyone know how to get Barclays to do something about it  - second time it's happened, been on the phone for 45 minutes registering a second complaint."

Can you clarify....
in your first post you say that it was set up to buy Class H but they bought class D.
in your second post you say you selected class D but they are trying class H.

When the failure happens, is the correct treated as a single contribution rather than a regular contribution?  
It could be that class H is only available for single contributions and transfers in.  Class D is the main share class and should be available for any type of contribution.

I don't think you are going to get the answer you are looking for here as it requires someone using the same software and having suffered the same issue.  I suspect that is too small a subset.

For the record, after some digging/comparison, it looks as if the H and D classes are now identical, but prior to some point around 3 or 4 years ago, "D" was a clean fund, and "H" was the dirty fund when it came to initial charges. (in the same way that L&G had dirty "I" funds and clean "R" funds.

IIRC, Class H was a pre RDR discounted share class that included platform commission but not adviser commission.    With RDR, the platform commission was removed and it was aligned with Class D which is the standard clean class.    Class L was the retail (dirty) share class.  There were several other share classes with Blackrock too.   Again, this refers to the Blackrock Unit Trusts and not the ETFs.

wmb194

Change your order to the version that appears to work most reliably. (Your posts are confusing so I’m not sure which you’d choose.)

pochisoldi

To clarify

Jul 2024 regular investment order placed for Class H

Aug 2024-Oct 2024 - Class H bought as scheduled

Nov 2024 - Barclays changed the order without my knowledge from Class H (purchasable) to Class D (not purchasable), and then tries to process regular investment and it fails.

I do a fix (because I want the money invested now, not in 8 weeks hence):
- Delete the broken regular order for Class D
- Manually invest  that month's money in Class H (one off purchase, processed OK),
- Setup a new regular order starting the following month for Class H,

This worked upto and including May 2025.

June 2025 - Barclays changed the order without my knowledge from Class H (purchasable) to Class D (not purchasable), and then tries to process regular investment and it fails.
I repeat the November 2024 fix.

Looking into the future, I expect to get an email in the small hours of the 6th November 2025, telling me that "my" regular order for Class D has been cancelled ("my" as in, my order for Class H, that Barclays changed into Class D).

I reckon that Barclays have made an half arsed attempt to get customers to buy Class D instead of Class H, by every 6 months, tweaking every "Class H" order for "Class D".
They either need to turn off that "scheduled task/cron job" or modify it to ensure that it doesn't convert orders for a "valid" fund into orders for an "invalid" one.
The issue is smuggling that information past the clueless gatekeepers to the people who can do something about it.

masonic

pochisoldi said:

I reckon that Barclays have made an half arsed attempt to get customers to buy Class D instead of Class H, by every 6 months, tweaking every "Class H" order for "Class D".
They either need to turn off that "scheduled task/cron job" or modify it to ensure that it doesn't convert orders for a "valid" fund into orders for an "invalid" one.
The issue is smuggling that information past the clueless gatekeepers to the people who can do something about it.

There's no evidence to support that. All that is known is there were two isolated instances, 6 months apart, where one customer suffered this glitch that resulted in this switcheroo. It may affect some or all other customers placing orders for the fund, or none. It may be based on the amount you are trying to buy or the total amount being bought in aggregate. Very unlikely Barclays would be intentionally pushing people into a unit class they don't support.

Errors like this sometimes do happen. When they do, the customer should be put back into the position they would have been in if the order executed properly, meaning any loss due to unit price movement between the date the order should have executed, and when it was actually successfully executed, should be compensated. Persistent issues might lead one to move to a different investment provider.

Where I've experienced execution issues like this in the past, I've been rather pleased, because if the price moves in my favour during the delay I get to keep the profit, whereas if it moves against me I get to be compensated.