The Share Centre | www.share.com Reviews 1,147

Complaint No 12042. For the past 30 years I have held 644 shares with the Share Centre and my fees have been paid on an annual basis by deducting the amount due from my yearly bonus. This method of payment has worked perfectly throughout these years with not a single issue. When I received an email stating that the Share Centre had sold one of my shares to pay a £12 fee (and to add insult to injury charged me £7.50 for the privilege), I was completely devastated. For 30 years I have kept those shares through the highs and lows of the stock market as my little nest egg. There was no mention in any communication that this method of annual fee payment was being withdrawn and therefore I felt satisfied that no action was needed by me. After lodging a complaint and speaking to Alex, I requested an escalation of the complaint. The Share Centre then sent me an email stating that a decision had been made not to uphold my complaint. Subsequent to this email I have requested copy(s) of all the communications sent out to customers regarding notification of a change to the annual payment of fees via debiting of customers’ annual share bonus. I have received no reply; is this because they have closed this complaint? I’m under no illusion that the Share Centre have no interest in me, or my complaint, but ignoring my request is simply unacceptable.

FURTHER TO THIS REVIEW AND THE REPLY SHOWN BELOW FROM THE SHARE CENTRE, I HAVE ALSO SENT TWO VERY POLITE EMAILS TO THE SHARE CENTRE REQUESTING COPIES OF COMMUNICATIONS SENT OUT RE CHANGES TO THE ANNUAL DEBIT FEE PAYMENT ARRANGEMENT. SIMPLE REQUEST - NO REPLY OR CONTACT !

Can anyone help me please?
The Share Centre have changed their computer server and cannot forward me the document I requested regarding the new fee pay arrangements as apparently access to this information is no longer possible. Please see reply that I received today.

“Unfortunately due to an upgrade late 2020 to our outsourced archive document provider, it is not possible to attach the covering email/letter which would have detailed the outstanding fee amount. These mailings are held on another platform Nexdox which has not fully uploaded all customer mailings. Therefore, it is unfortunate that I cannot provide evidence of the admin fee information you’re your account.”

If anyone has a copy of the Share Centre document explaining the fee payment changes, I would really appreciate a copy being shared on this platform (fyi I have never requested details of outstanding fees, merely the document(s) relating to the fee payment changes in relation to customers who paid their fees on a yearly basis via debit of their annual bonus). Thank you.

Used to be decent ,gone downhill massively , trying to leave them for three months now , they wont accept transfer requests to my new broker, Broker doesn't know why , nor do i .
Cannot get thru on phone ......
Can't wait to lave them, disgraceful

Having tried to be a loyal customer to Share Centre and through to its move to Interactive Investor why should I care if they do not care.

The IT system is a shambles, customer service nil. And here I am on afternoon two trying to transfer my funds to another customer and I have now been hanging onto the phone for half an hour and YOU CANNOT EVEN BE BOTHERED to answer a simple email question.

Thomas Robertson of Corporate Actions are you aware of what your “TEAM” is doing? Trashing your company

Having experienced yet more frustration with the move to ii this morning, I have come here to vent my frustration - however, looking at the reviews below mine, I see that plenty of us are having the same issues. I have been a Share Centre customer for many years and everything was ticket-boo, then out of nowhere comes the move to Interactive Investor and all the loyalty and trust that has been built up over the years has evaporated in a few short months.

Confusing instructions, no answer to phone calls, lengthy (ie. weeks) wait for responses to emails etc etc the list goes on.

I would actually prefer to move my accounts to HL but I am seriously concerned that all my investments will dissapear without trace, never to be seen again.

I guess that says it all.

Unfortunately, I can only confirm how poor this company is. They have looked after my shares for many years without any issues. However, in Dec 20 they decided that they need to sell some shares to cover charges. The shares they sold where ex dividend, which would have covered the charges.
So request share certificates, Costs £25, cash cheque within 5 days and wait 20 day to request from registrars. Now have to wait another 10 Days to get MY shares. Robbers!

Having been a loyal customer for many years, share centre have left me out of their merger plans. I am an overseas resident with a pension in drawdown, and I have now emailed Share Centre and ii 6 times, over an 8 month period, trying to clarify my position, yet received no answer. According to the limited information available to me, ii will not accept me as a customer as ther T&Cs state clearly that I must be UK resident to open an account. Curtis Banks on the other hand state that I can transfer to them "free of charge", yet they also state that they will only accept my business if I go through an IFA - which of course costs money! It seems that I am being left behind by the ii / share centre merger and have no option other than to move my pension elsewhere.

Trying to set up a withdraw and close my account with them for weeks. Need to set up new bank account to do so. Emailed documents over, no response. Call them to chase. On hold for 20 minutes (expensive when you live abroad) and they can't help. Instead they ask to send paper documents (including bank account info) in the post (internationally) as this is 'safer' than corresponding over email. Not sure I agree with that. Feel like they're dragging things out on purpose for no reason.

Like some others who have reviewed here, I have been waiting a long time to transfer my ISA to another broker. In my case - two and a half months. Ringing the company results in a long wait on the phone and not much action. Their customer service people are doing their best, but basically the Share Centre is totally under resourced for the task of transferring their business to Interactive Investor or to other brokers and closing down. The transfer team is unable to answer the phone most of the day. Covid of course does not help. I would also imagine that the morale among existing Share Centre staff must be pretty low given their imminent redundancy. In all a perfect recipe for chaos!

Not enough thought was given to the task of implementing the transfer and in particular how such a huge task was going to be accomplished during an epidemic. Share Centre could have predicted that a significant number of small investors like me would want to jump ship given the increase in charges from the new owners.

So now all we can do is wait. Share Centre will remain operating to deal with customers who have requested a transfer out. But my guess is the service won’t be that great given it will basically be just a skeleton operation run by temporary staff.

None of this reflects well on Interactive Investor, which could have helped smooth the transfer more than they have.

I would wholly recommend your company, a very courteous and knowledgeable team.

I have been trying to reinvest my children’s share trust with AJ Bell for three months now they have transferred my son but will not release my daughters even though the situation is identical for both.
The new fees in there account were so expensive they were investing just to pay the share centre. They said the fees were going to be no more than they were before new company structure but read the small print (only for a ltd.time) then the fees were huge.
Still trying to transfer my daughters money and getting no where. This has been an horrendous company to deal with.

Prompt, helpful, clear and efficient service

On the 14 December I checked my holdings with computershare I had purchased 68 Aston Martin Lagonda shares earlier in 2020 year my portfolio showed only 3shares instead of 68 my phone call to the share center received the following verbal response Aston martin Lagonda consolidated share on a 20/1 ratio "why was i not informed" we sent you a letter. they have never communicated in any other form other than by email yet on this occasion they choose printed letter, would i be correct in assuming that by loosing all these letters a significant number of shareholders in AM L were denied voting rights.. then they state complaints can take 8 weeks to be investigated.
their response was as follows, verbatim::

Complaint No. 11647

I am contacting you with regards to the complaint raised under the above reference, and your dissatisfaction that you did not receive the Aston Martin consolidation notification.

First of all, please allow me to apologise for any inconvenience or confusion you have experienced as a result of this offer and our methods of communication. In this case I fully appreciate that given the current pandemic communications via postal service are expected to be delayed however, the letters were certainly sent out on 20 November 2020; however, we are unable to clarify why you did not receive it. We are not responsible for documents lost in the post.

We are aware of the issues which can arise due to our reliance on sending corporate action communications via Royal Mail and we are looking into how we can start to transmit corporate action information digitally. However, development is still in the early stages, so in the meantime we still have to use Royal Mail for most of our correspondence.

Please note that you have since received a fractional payout of £6.78 in place of the 8 remaining shares that were not possible to consolidate under the scheme terms. This balance was credited to your account on 23 December 2020.

Finally I can confirm that in our same pre warning letter of the consolidation we do advise shareholders that the meeting will take place on the 4 December 2020. Our shareholder rights department do not send out voting instructions by post however, You are able to view all up and coming shareholder meetings and voting options when logging into your online account at redacted web address:: share*com

Based on the above we will not be upholding your complaint in this instance.

This email should be considered our final response to your complaint. You have the right to refer your complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service, free of charge but you must do so within six months of the date of this email. If you do not refer your complaint in time, the Ombudsman will not have our permission to consider your complaint and so will only be able to do so in very limited circumstances. For example, if the Ombudsman believes that the delay was as a result of exceptional circumstances. Full details of this service can be found in the booklet “Your complaint and the Ombudsman”, a copy of which can be accessed via the following link:

website address for financial ombudsman redacted::: .

my response to Abi
Dear Abi

The arrogance of the company attitude is stunning I as a customer deserve better and not to be fobbed off by you blaming another organisation for your companies ineptitude Royal mail seemed to be able to deliver the letter you sent acknowledging my complaint.

If you spent more time doing the job properly rather than seeking puerile accolades about “the quality of the call with our agent” which was by the way crap seeing as though you asked.

It is important to remember that without customers you don’t have a business and without a business you Abi don’t have a job.

No effort was made to offer any recognition regarding your company failings “its always someone else’s fault”

You can ignore this email or respond whichever way it goes onto trust pilot

Regards
M*** B*****

Sent Child Trust Fund request to transfer my balance to my Nationwide current account with all necessary documentation well in advance of my 18th Birthday. Then several weeks later, after my 18th Birthday theSharecentre sent me a letter telling me they have transferred my money to one of their own ISAs! Just got off the phone to one of their agents who had to be told to check their files after which he confirmed receipt of the withdrawal request but that they would need proof of identity. I then told him to check the file again after which he confirmed they had proof of identity. He then concluded by stating that someone might get around to processing the withdrawal at some stage. I need to find an ombudsman or someone to get theSharecentre to release my money to me.

The staff and service has always been second to none. Very efficient and professional. I do not hesitate to recommend The Share Centre to everyone.

On the transfer of my fund to the Share Company I was told my dividends would be reinvested. This never happened and I now find out I have to pay them fees to reinvest my dividends. They are not interested in any customer service whatsoever, so they are a rubbish company.

Fed up of waiting for MY cash after selling some shares as i needed the cash to reinvest elsewhere, What happened to instant transfers. O YEA still trying to leave despite telling them over a month ago.
!!! DO NOT GET INVOLVED WITH THEM !!!

Take a transfer out in cash. It seems to work.

Choose another broker these are very sneaky IMO. One year they email you to inform you of fees due. The next they give you no notice of the fees yet tell nothing I had no letter or email nothing. They then take the yearly £12 fee by selling my shares then charging me £7.50 to get £12. All this would of been resolved by an email but of course it is more profitable to them to say nothing and make £7.50 per client + £12 yearly fee. That charge is +60% what makes this business different to a thief stealing. Use another broker.

Very poor service when requesting a transfer out. Requested transfer in late September, it's now mid December, and it's still not happened. When you chase it they promise to escalate it but nothing happens. How on Earth they didn't see this coming with the merge with ii, I have no idea. This is in addition to when a company IPO'd in September and I wanted to trade, it wasn't on their system and it took them *two days* to add it - losing a great buying opportunity.

OK,an update to my revious review 3 December.As with,it seems,many customers,I was not happy with the terms of the transfer and decided to transfer my account to another broker.This was 3 months ago. After 3 months and my previous post on this page,the shares were finally transfered last week.The problem is that my cash account (over 4K) has now disapeared into a " Black hole".e ails and phone calls give conflicting answears.No body seems to be able to say if this was transferred to my nominated bank,or the new broker.After much questioning and in this age of technology,it appears that the transfer was made by cheque,and for anybody over a certain age,this was a process from many years ago to transfer money,banks in this day and age do not even issue cheque books to customers.Share centre excuse," oh it must be a problem with royal mail",good recovery remark,but 7 working days for first class mail,very unlikely.
I am now in the process of raising a complaint with the FCA regarding this case,in my view of robbery.It seems that as with other posters,other than the posts obviosly posted by staff full of praise,that Share centre has a big problem.Excuses that they are under pressure with the the number of customers leaving and the heavy workload,due to the merger speaks for itself.Is this pressure being caused by the staff doing a runner as well ?. I look forwrd to the usual copy/paste reply.Just do your job that I and all your customers pay account fees for.