IDealing Avis 45

When the administrator for my iDealing SIPP was acquired by another firm and iDealing could not come to terms with the new owner, they (iD) sold some shares, despite being asked not to, switched the shares they didn't sell into certificated form and sent the certificates to the new administrator, along with those of all the other clients in the same boat. It has taken nearly a year to sort out. I would have switched my SIPP to another provider anyway, and thank God I had already transferred all my other four accounts already. iDealing refused to communicate with any of the parties involved, including the FCA.

Classic internet broker, they were very early into this field and I have been with them for many years. I read the reviews on SIPPs, but that stuff was always an admin nightmare, with the provider more at risk than the user. It is great to be able to deal on SETTs, which is not commonly available. The onsite dealers know their stuff and I deal happily with the backoffice via email with no problems.

For a modicum of balance, first the good bits (1) it's a very cheap platform (2) the dealing staff you can actually talk to on the phone seem like decent people

Second the bad bits -pretty much everything else is awful, leading you to question how on earth a firm that treats its customers like idealing can still be in business.

It used to be possible to talk to someone other than the dealing staff on the phone, but no longer. If you ring the number on the website the dealing desk employee is either unable or unwilling to provide a number to talk to anyone in the admin team. Everything has to be done via email which may or may not be answered. It appears that if idealing decide that they don't want to answer a question or deal with a complaint they just ignore it. If you do get a response it is often short, unhelpful, or doesn't deal with the question. When I asked whether they were planning on paying interest on some quite sizeable cash balances within my account they just ignored the question, which along with the inability to talk to anyone hastened my decision to part company. They have made absolutely zero effort to find out why I was unhappy or to retain my business and it's perhaps not surprising that their accounts (filed at Companies House) show revenues declining year on year from £2.4m in 2019 to £1.5m in 2022.

A simple pension transfer took well over 5 months and turned into a stressful experience. Idealing's requirements to transfer an account are opaque and the relevant forms are not on their website, they won't email those forms but rather post in snail mail, they won't transfer funds electronically but post manual cheques for which they charge you £25 a cheque. They have a £50k limit on cheques too so if the cash value is more than that, or dividends are received after the initial transfer, they will send several manual cheques (of course charging a £25 fee for each). They also initially refused to provide a valuation directly to the new provider.

Despite having dealt with me on the phone and via email for over a decade they decided during the transfer process that they would only deal with the trustees of the SIPP and I presume that is why they have just ignored all my emails since.

I guess the lesson in life is you get what you pay for although, ironically, I will actually be better off paying someone else's much higher fees but getting interest on the cash balances.

I would urge anyone considering using idealing to think long and hard in light of the litany of terrible reviews here - none of which surprise me in the least after my own experience.

idealing.com did not communicate by mail, email or telephone, when I applied for a sipp transfer to another sipp provider and trading platform. The transfer took over 7 months. I had to report them to the FSA, the Pension Ombudsman and the Financial Ombudsman and would advise any other clients having problems to do the same. By not corresponding with clients they idealing delays any sipp transfer to other sipp platforms. Avoid idealing.com at all costs. This company is a disgrace.

This company simply ignores emails. iDealing recently executed a SIPP trade for which I received an email confirmation, despite me not having instructed this trade. I queried this confirmation and have received no response. It may be that iDealing was instructed to execute this trade by a trustee or did so for some other reason but I see no reason they cannot respond to my query. I'm giving the company the statutory 8 weeks to respond before I escalate to the FSA. I find it staggering that the FSA allows this level of unprofessionalism to continue. I will never do business with this company again, moreover I will not deal with Mr Bowman or any of his current or future enterprises.

I had a SIPP with idealing for 20 years linked successively to 3 or 4 SIPP management companies. The last one being CPPL who went into liquidation in February 2022. On previous occasions I simply chose a new management company and the transfer was seamless. Not so this time! On 5 February 2023 my SIPP account vanished off the idealing site. I had lost control of my lifetimes pension savings and it was worth £900k. idealing refused to answer any questions and maintained that my SIPP account was not mine but owned by the SIPP manager, the nominee that had gone into liquidation. Idealing Admin told me that my SIPP holding was now registered by them in the name of the CPPL liquidator. Further that as I was not the owner of the account they would not enter into any further communication with me.
On 8th March 2023, after 31 days, I have been unable to get back control of my account, primarily because idealing have decided to turn my CREST holdings into paper certificates and send them to the CPPL liquidator. My new SIPP administrator Westerby and the liquidator of CPPL, Evelyn & Partners, have been unable or unwilling to explain why I and other clients are in this position. I have complained to idealing the FCA the FSCS and all the above to no effect. As all my SIPP account details were removed by idealing I do not have any way of knowing what my holdings were worth on 5th February 2023. I will probably never be able to find out how much idealing are charging me for closing my account and then sending all the paper share certificates to Evelyn & Partners. It looks like it will be at least two full months before I can make any SIPP trades and of course I cannot draw any pension. This situation could conceivably be repeated at any share dealing company where the holding is inside an SIPP wrapper, the legal structure must be the same. But and this is a big BUT idealing Admin have been very unhelpful and it was idealing that decided to close my 20 year old SIPP account without any notice to me. The following is how idealing describe ownership in their SIPP section, 'Fees for the holding of assets (securities or cash) held in our name or in the name of one of our nominees, on behalf of you, the beneficial owner'
The nominee being the idealing SIPP administrator but idealing is acknowledging that I am the beneficial owner.
My message to everyone investing in a stocks and shares SIPP is be aware of what has happening to me. If you wake up one morning and find your pension has vanished you are going to find that there is absolutely no help from the FCA and that the group of proffesionals that you thought were being paid to look after you are not going reinstate your lost pension account in much less than 3 months.

Despite its modern name this outfit ignores emails at will and seems to believe it's not accountable for so doing. I've been engaged with an Ombudsman case for over six months and during that period iDealing hasn't responded to questions from that source!
Avoid!

Been with these a long time, as their prices were reasonable. Service has long been a problem, however. Support staff are arrogant. Transaction reporting is poor, only going back a year. They don't provide all transaction notes, They also regularly round down dividend payments. Also now finding out that to withdraw cash, you either have to take a cheque, (£25 I believe), or 'Faster Payments' - 3 working days, and £3.25 per £5000 transaction. Barclays allow Faster payments up to £100,000, so how they justify this I don't know, they won't respond to my emails (no telephone support). AVOID

Until recently, I was a customer of iDealing for 20 years.
Overall my experience was a positive one (it needed to be for me to stay for so long).
They offer a simple and easy to use stock trading platform with ISA account option.
The only reason I decided to leave iDealing was because I wanted to be able to do online same-day bank transfers in/out of my account which other trading platforms offer.
iDealing have a form & post system to withdraw money from your account, so if this is something that doesn't bother you, it may be a good option for you.

The worst and most stressful experience ever.

After attempting to find out reasons as to why iDealing were not providing a mix and match facility following Shell takeover of BG-Group back in 2016 and instead forcing all customers to accept cash, IDealing gave notice to close my account within 14 days and if I didn't transfer the shares to a new provider, they were to liquidate £250k+ worth of shares! Unbelievable.

This company should be closed down permanently. Unprofessional and disgusting behaviour.

I am fairly new to idealing. I was approached by someone via instagram.I have set up account, transfered funds via Luno. I have made profit but was advise that i have to pay $850 in order to get my profit. can anyone advise if this sounds correct?

Regularly use this site . Platform is excellent being fast and easy to use. The occasional phone call is dealt with efficiently and courteously. Dealing charges are very reasonable and dividends are paid promptly into accounts. I have experienced no problems over many years. Excellent value for money. Would recommend.

Very helpful today, talked me through a fairly complex process and called me back quickly. Couldn’t have asked for more, excellent.

Easy to use and solid website for trading

The idealing website may not be as whizzy as some larger entities, and does lack the charting and analysis of the markets unless you pay extra, but they are genuinely low cost, professional, reliable, and friendly service, with an easy to use live trading platform. When you are trading the trade prices are excellent with small margins through direct access to the LSE pricing.

The only gripes are regarding SIPPs where they have tried to use a low cost provider for the SIPP administration called Options Pensions (previously Carey) and they (Options Pensions) have proved to be pretty poor on execution and service.

On 25/11 we woke up to find the services offered were being curtailed within days; and positions would be liquidated. No constrcutive help was offered. Anyone else caught out?

The service has gone from BAD to WORSE
Almost impossible to log in and reporting to them makes no difference.Waiting to leave.

Simple platform I've used since almost inception of the company. Unfortunately I've experienced three outages at critical trading times, the latest today left my trading exposure unmanaged for an afternoon at the end of the week. Either they get their infrastructure sorted for surges and power outages or I'm leaving

Cheap but very, very slooow! Order execution via RSP Gateway (very low charges) can take up to 1 minute. After that time the prices can change significantly so you need to issues another order. Orders that go via EURONEXT execute faster but can still take about 5-10 seconds (so not immediately like on Binck or DeGiro). The trading platform Dashboard often hangs for minutes when refreshing it. The Dashboard shows incorrect information for day profit and margin as it doesn't stream positions in your wallet which are related to the profit and margin. So after you closed all positions it still shows some profit and margin info until you refresh the page (which tends to hang from time to time). This can be very confusing for a day-trader. From time to time (like once a two months) the website is having issues and trading is not possible for 3-4 hours. Closing an account is expensive: 120 EUR. I would not recommend it. I am using now the free Flatex platform.

I’m actually just in the process of leaving iDealing.com, after my dad set me up on it quite a few years ago when I was 18. I’m moving to a managed investment option, rather than because I’ve had any issues using the iDealing platform or interacting with the team - in fact, quite the opposite! If you’re looking for the flashiest app and streamlined services, maybe iDealing isn’t for you, but it you want an easy to use platform and always friendly and quick to respond support, you’ve come to the right place!

I have had an idealing ISA since 2001 or 2002.
Pros: great clean simple functional interface. Low charges. Efficient on phone. Prompt credit of divs & coupons. Direct multi-market access.
Cons: They are a minnow.
Overall, I recommend.