What's the best online share dealing service?

What's the best online share dealing service?

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MitchT

Original Poster:

15,787 posts

208 months

Sunday 4th October 2015
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The OH has a Motley Fool share dealing account but she's not very impressed with it, so she's asked me to find out if there's something cheaper and more intuitive available. She's had the MF account for quite some time but only just started using it, hence only just realising how crap it is.

Just over a week ago she set a limit order to buy some German shares if they fell to a certain price. It wasn't until after setting the order and looking at the balance that she realised the numbers didn't seem to add up. On further investigation she realised that the purchase had been made in Euros. She'd tried to buy as close as she could to £500 worth of shares, but had inadvertently bought close to €500 worth because nothing on the dealing platform indicated that she was conducting the transaction in another currency than pounds. Then she discovered that she couldn't cancel the order on the dealing platform, so she had to call them. They also confirmed that you can't set a limit order to exist indefinitely - it expires when the market closes and you have to set another one, so she decided to buy the shares manually when the market opened the next day, if the price was right. Then she was charged £17.50 for the transaction, which she was expecting but still seems a lot. Finally, she discovered today that they've taken £20 off her. Turns out this is a quarterly charge for having the account. It may be her fault for not reading the Ts&Cs carefully enough, but again, it seems like a complete rip off. The dealing platform looks like is was designed 15 years ago by someone with a very elementary knowledge of HTML and made my shake my head when I compared it with the IG Index spread betting platform that I use.

So, is there an online share dealing platform that's intuitive to use, makes it obvious what currency you're dealing in and illustrates the cost in pounds, enables you to do everything you need to, such as cancel pending orders if you need to, and doesn't charge rip off amounts for having the account and conducting transactions? Finally, can the shares she bought through Motley Fool be transferred to another broker or will she have to sell them and re-buy them?

Edited by MitchT on Sunday 4th October 15:08