Interactive Investor Share Dealing Is Not A Good Stock Trading Website

When working out which online trading websites the stock trading to recommend to the people who contact me online, I trawl through endless review sites to see what other people in the business think of certain websites and trading platforms. But often I find that these reviews are not the best place to find the best information about what are and are not good trading websites for both novice and experienced traders to use. Or rather, these review websites can be helpful but only if you look below the line in the comments section and to the user reviews. These other people who are actually using these websites each day, and who have paid money to join up with these websites and trade with them. These reviews by real people tell you which online brokerage firms truly listen to the customer base and really provide excellent service and trading opportunities to their customers.

An excellent example of this was a recent review I found for interactive investor share dealing, a company which seems to mainly operate out of the UK. The editor of the review site, which shall remain nameless, gave this broker a possible four stars out of five rating it one of the best brokerage firms on their site. However, when you look at the user rating from the user reviews interactive investor share dealing only gets two stars out of the possible five. Therefore, you can see that though on paper this brokerage firm may seem like a good deal when you actually have to use their trading software it is a much more difficult brokerage firm to deal with and there were complaints of bad customer service and are very difficult to use website trading platform.

Charges

One of the reasons the editors the review site rated this brokerage firm highly is because it is one of the cheapest sites to use in the UK. To purchase UK stocks, ETF’s, and investment trusts there is a low £10 flat fee per deal. Though this may seem slightly high for US traders it is actually on the low side for UK trading. To purchase EU stocks or to purchase to US stocks it costs investors £15 per deal and if you wish to use the telephone for your transactions for quick trades it is an extra £10 per trade. These are all low charges in terms of UK trade dealing online. There are also no regular user fees.The site features an online trading platform for stocks ETF’s and investment trusts and their portfolio builder allows you to make transactions for as little as £1.50 which is ridiculously low for UK trading site and the trading platform is set up for what they term ”little and often” share dealing. This should ring alarm bells to anyone who has read any of my other advice. Always look for long-term investments. Do not try and play the game, do not try and beat the market. Do your research and investing the best companies you can for the long-term. In his defense, the editor does say in his review that the user interface is far from user-friendly and that the site is fairly slow during times of high market activity and he does mark the site down for these problems.

Bad Reviews

But then you look at what action we users said about using interactive investor share dealing. One person called interactive investor terrible deal, particularly after they introduced quarterly charge want active accounts. The reviewer does say that maybe this is understandable considering the low charges that the brokerage firm was taking, but says that the implementation of these charges was very poor with no consultation discussion and a feedback. Simply that the charges were imposed. When the user contacted interactive investor they were very difficult to deal with. A further reviewer again had issues with contacting interactive investor about these additional charges saying that they were unwilling to listen and very unhelpful. Each of these reviewers only gave interactive investor one star.A further reviewer was slightly more forgiving towards investor share dealing, suggesting that recent problems had caused quite a deterioration in the site. He suggested that after a spit with its parent company this small offshoot was now having difficulties handling the IT and had been involved, hence the issues with the slow website and the bad usability. He said that they were good before they split with their parent company but had gone remarkably downhill since and the imposition of the new charges seem to be the nail in the coffin for this online brokerage firm in the UK.When choosing an online brokerage firm, I always suggest to read reviews by real customers, current customers that are using the site and that have used that firm for multiple years. This is the only way to get a real representation of what the firm is like and the services they offer. Do not listen to any authorities or specific review sites about which online brokerage firms to use. Always do your research, as you would with any company and you will learn which is the best company for you.