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“AVOID - this company will rip you off”

written by 354Vargas on 14/06/2014

Interactive Investor has a very clever scheme going to rip off any legacy customers who happen to hold shares through them. In July 2012 they introduced a £20 quarterly fee, but they never send invoices or notify clients of the charges. They just quietly deduct the fees from any cash clients have in the account, and then they carry on accruing debt but not notifying them. They do not send clients postal notification that there are charges accruing, or any emails. Instead, they expect clients to log on to their web site, and even when you log on, their “Overview” screen does not include any line items for charges so you have to proactively search for the charges (Statements page). What’s more, they have a clever trick here – the default view only shows the past month, so you likely would not see the charges there unless you change the settings.. Then, bingo, when they've taken all their client’s cash and the outstanding total charges exceed £100 they finally send a letter. The letter tells you they will sell your shares to recover the money. If, like me, you have a small shareholding, then the costs wipe out your little investment.

I used their online "secure messaging" service to raise the matter, but they also have nice little scheme with this. You have to log in to their online system, to CHECK if they have sent you anything - unlike every other online company, they do not notify you via email that you have any new messages.

Their trading practices appear to fall well short of the Financial Conduct Authority requirements. Over 760 formal complaints were raised with Interactive Investor Plc in the first 6 months of 2013 alone. I also raised a formal complaint which they rejected so I am now going to the Ombudsman and FCA to put a stop to this and hopefully get compensation for others in a similar position. PLEASE COMMENT if you have had similar problems and we can perhaps get a class action against them.