Charles Stanley Direct Avis 

A good and quick response to some questions about setting up an account.

Fees, charges, fees and more charges only. I disputed these disproportionate, unfair and unreasonable fees with them for them to have termerdity to say they were clear, fair and transparent when this is simply not the case. Additionally they messed up a transfer after I decided these fees were ridiculous to Hargreaves Lansdown. Indeed, HL complained to CSD themselves. It says everything when another pension provider complains to Charles Stanley Direct .I can recommend HL. Avoid CSD. I have left this in the hands of the Ombudsman. I have no faith in any further internal investigation.

Quick, helpful and explained without jargon.

MY QUERY WAS ESCALATED & WAS RESOLVED WITHIN A REQASONABLE AMOUNT OF TIME

the help given by Zac and Steve over the two days was very goodas a 79 year old person with limited knowledge on internet they explained procedures in terms that even Icould understand. they showed a lot off patiencein dealing with my questions and were most helpful thank them for a job well done yours N CARSE

A wide choice of products and an easy to navigate site with a friendly customer support team

I moved to them six months ago and they have been great, everything works, fund purchases have all been executed at a rapid speed and all the information is on the account without needing to call

CSD also offer large cashback to transfer to them and I will make a tidy profit from this and the transfer is easy to do online, their fee structure has recently changed so makes it more competitive for larger portfolios as its capped at £50 per month

Not had a great experience with this company. I've used them for a few years for a stocks and shares ISA but for what I believe is now the fourth time I've had problems paying in by debit card. The online payment fails but my bank account will show a pending transaction for several days meaning I can't just try again. Really frustrated and have now started a transfer to another platform. Contacted Charles Stanley Direct by secure message a week ago and no reply. I can't recommend them.

Invested in their JISA. What a mistake. I suggest that anyone looking to invest looks VERY carefully at all the fees involved.

My kids' savings were bleeding away so I found another provider with much lower fees and much easier to understand (and a nicer platform and better service i might add).

I initiated a transfer and guess what, more fees. They got new one last time but I'll never use them again.

This company took 5 months to transfer my pension, an obvious fail, but guess what? On review, it was someone else's fault. There is nowadays an epidemic of folk evading responsibility. If you take the money, you own the problems. Man up.

Having requested a number of transfers from my stocks and shares isa with Charles Stanley to a number of different Cash Isa,s, I suffered unreasonable delays in both sales and transfers, but to top it all they actually transferred the wrong amounts to different Cash isa beneficiarys, a big banking financial error in my books. The various contacts with customer services suggested a slight disregard for the customers needs. I had intended to retain my remaining stocks and shares Isa with Charles Stanley but I am now re considering my options.

I use several platforms. One benefit over a large competitor (HL) is lack advertising sent by post. Costs are reasonable for a small portfolio, and unlike in the case of that large competitor, it becomes just 0.25% of the value of the excess after your aggregated account are worth more than £250,000 - a competitor demands each account reaches that value before excess value is reduced to 0.25%. Portfolio valuations occur around 7am on the following day: competitors offer valuations earlier. There is relatively little investment news compared with that on the HL and AJ Bell sites. There are guides to investing and tax, but you need to search the site for a while to locate them.

My biggest complaint is difficulties logging onto the site, or being logged out for no reason when making a transaction. The site is frequently down for maintenance too. There is an app, but it does not function on my tablet - only on my phone.

Wanted to deal in Amedo Air Four Plus AA4 which is listed on the London Stock Exchange. Phoned and they say they do not deal in that share. Woman was unhelpful. Why the hell not? When I opened the account I was not made aware Charles Stanley Direct only deal in some shares. A J Bell allows trades online with no problems. Suggest you use a proper brokers like A J Bell.

Unhelpful, rude, arrogant and talk only about fees rather than focussing on providing service to their customers. Would not facilitate a reasonable way to close account or use any common sense so continued to accrue significant fees. Avoid at all costs.

A few things to watch:
- Monies paid into accounts on the platform take several days to arrive. That is time you are out of the market with no doubt CSD benefitting from the interest in the meanwhile.
- nasty transfer out charges (£40 for JISAs for example, £10 per holding in a SIPP)
- high share trading fees plus an additional monthly charge to hold shares.

There are much cheaper options out there which don't nickel and dime customers in this slightly underhand way.

The website and app are acceptable. Service is fine.

My reason for 3 stars is I've discovered their iOS app, and presumably the Android app, share data with Facebook without the users permission or even knowledge.

I unable to tell what data is being shared, it could be account details or it may be marketing info.

But either way no data should be shared with Facebook, there's no good reason for their app to do so.

I've contacted them to report this possible breach of GDPR privacy regulations.

Always a great service with Shelley at Charles Stanley. Always goes out of the way to answer all my questions and acts promptly on instruction. Very re-assuring, professional and trustworthy company to work with.

I have handled two JISA's using CSD. I have used their website to trade and once to exchange secure messages - no problems have been experienced. I have never phoned.

Annual charge of 0.35% is average and acceptable for small value portfolios.

I have had my share account with Charles Stanley Direct for many years now. Of all the share accounts they are by far the best in terms of their responsive (and human!) customer service, price point, website and automatically generated reports. In particular Charissa Garratley went above and beyond to resolve a very tricky issue for me. Outstanding.