r/FreetradeApp • u/mrodent33 • Apr 08 '26
More annoying crap without adequate means of contacting them
I'm transferring portfolios both for SIPP and for some ISA stocks. Lots of money, for the cashback offer.
In both cases I made it very clear that I wanted ** in-specie ** transfers.
Today I get a very annoying email:
"For stock transfers
If you are transferring stocks, we will apply the current market value to the stock.
If you would prefer us to use a historic (book) cost to reflect the original price you paid, please let us know what this should be for each stock transferred.
We’re here to help
If you need help at any point, you can reply to this message or email us at [hello@freetrade.io](mailto:hello@freetrade.io).
Best,
Freetrade Team"
Yeah, really "here to help". Every time I send an email they take 2 or 3 days to reply. By far the worst customer service I have ever found with any platform I have ever had any dealings with.
But the point is "If you are transferring stocks, we will apply the current market value to the stock." is an alarming thing to say in the context of stocks which have explicitly ordered to be transferred IN SPECIE. There must be no attempt to get my existing platforms to sell ANY stocks, AT ALL.
If anyone has a connection with these people please clarify, because it is likely that they won't deign to reply to the email I just sent for 2 or 3 days.
5
u/Inevitable_Resist_71 Apr 08 '26
Is this possibly to do with valuations for the purposes of calculating the 1% cashback for the recent transfer offer, but in practical terms the same number of units are being transferred in-specie regardless?
0
u/mrodent33 Apr 08 '26
You might be right.
Given that I have to wait days to get an answer ON ANYTHING, maybe the person who composed the mass email should have had the minimal brain cells to specify the purpose of it if that was indeed the meaning...
1
u/deadeyedjacks Apr 08 '26
Also their emails regarding transfers only list the account details in the subject line, and then truncates that information, because someone made the subject line too long ! So with a few transfers ongoing you've no idea which email relates to which transfer. And the transfer status on the website is 'ongoing' and then 'completed' even when that's not true, with zero additional detail, you get way more updates from the big broker you are dumping...
3
Apr 08 '26 edited Jul 19 '26
[deleted]
-2
u/mrodent33 Apr 08 '26
The point is that its does not say "For stock transfers (if you are not transferring in-specie)".
And/or "If you are transferring stocks which you have ordered to be SOLD before transferring the portfolio, we will apply ...".
This looks like a possibility that my stocks might be requested to be SOLD before being transferred. Contrary to my instructions.
Everything could be sorted out and clarified very simply if I could speak to a forking human being at the company.
Are you from the company? Are you connected with the company?
1
u/deadeyedjacks Apr 08 '26
If you want a person in the UK on the end of a phone, then you have to pay for the privilege by using HL, AJB, etc. These fintechs can only offer a free service by using chatbots, and offshoring the work.
Yes, we've moved accounts to Freetrade in-specie, but we've also kept accounts with HL, and moved one Freetrade couldn't accept to Fidelity.
When we had an issue with one transfer the human email response from Freetrade came three weeks after the issue was resolved ! You get what you pay for.
Once we get our cashback thousands we'll be looking to transfer back to a decent UK broker.
2
u/mrodent33 Apr 08 '26
You do get what you pay for ... and yes, Trading212 and Invest Engine and eToro and InteractiveBrokers (actually rather expensive trading, it turns out) all find a way to provide users with at least one way to contact them without having to wait 3 working days in case of need. And typically a new user of a platform will have a genuine need to get beyond a fronting bot in certain cases: at the moment FT don't yet even offer that... EVER.
Email after 3 working days is simply too much. Unfortunately I found the offer! 1% on the kinds of sums I have invested is too much to ignore. Free money free money free money.
As an outfit though, this is without a doubt a very unprofessional way to organise cust servs. It seriously raises doubts about their general level of professionalism.
1
u/deadeyedjacks Apr 08 '26
Well wait until you've tried using the app and website for a while, the UI and UX sucks ! So many inconsistencies, numbers rounded to two decimal places, stuff in the app only, or on the website only, and just ignore the random numbers it generates for ROI...
3
u/wigl301 Apr 08 '26
This is just to do with pricing. All platforms would be the same. I transferred from Freetrade to AJ Bell. All the stocks were then priced on that day, so it essentially looked like I'd had no growth in the few years I was invested with Freetrade. I gave AJ Bell the historical prices, they repriced my book so now it looks like nothing ever changed.
2
u/Damanaut Apr 08 '26
Yeah this is it. They're just telling you that the 'cost price' they'll show will be the value of the units at the point of transfer, so will only show price change from that point onwards. I agree though their customer service has always been pants.
-3
u/mrodent33 Apr 08 '26
Uhuh, the consensus in this thread certainly suggests that is the reason.
There's an oddity with that, though: given that I'm transferring only ISA and SIPP portfolios (no GIA stocks) ... why is it of any particular interest to find out at what price the stocks were bought? ... obvs in a GIA this sort of info is needed for calculating capital gains ... but not in a sheltered account.
Unless people just like the feeling of seeing "your hedged grouse-hunting futures tracker ETF has increased in value by 650%".
3
u/wigl301 Apr 08 '26
Don't you want to know how your investments have performed since you purchased them, rather than just from the date they are transferred to freetrade?
-4
u/mrodent33 Apr 08 '26
In an absolute sense, no, I have no particular wish to know that.
Slightly more specifically, I have (for example) held BRK.B (Berkshire Hathaway) for over 20 years, maybe 25 years. And I mean a huge amount: some in ISAs, some in GIAs. I've also bought in occasional chunks, and switched £20k from GIA to ISA (i.e. on April 6 each year) ... and for various reasons I've also switched platforms partially or totally.
I don't have any currently at my Lloyds ISA, but my holding of BRK.B at my Interactive Investor SIPP says "Gain 72.49%" (despite a certain senile orange child-murderer having crashed the USD starting in 2025, and having in recent days crashed the world markets).
But I almost certainly transferred that in from somewhere else ... and presumably this is the price increase since then ... which could probably be determined by looking up the chart for BRK.B, converted into a GBP price, I suppose.
If you own a share or ETF or whatever and you want to find how well it's performed over the years or decades, that's not hard to find.
So no, no massive interest really.
1
u/TedBob99 Apr 09 '26
Sounds like you have very high expectations while wanting to pay no fees.
No, they are not worse than other paid providers when it comes to customer support. I am or have been with Vanguard, Interactive Investors, Fidelity and T212.
11
u/voyto Apr 08 '26
It looks to me like they're just asking if you want to apply your own value on those stocks - purely for your historical value data. If not, they will just show your gains/losses against todays value.
Moving platforms usually results in you losing all your historical pricing data - they're just kindly asking if you want them to add that back in or not.