Should Trading212 now change their Front page?

Thatā€™s what people are saying above and in other threads.

However the semantics doesnā€™t matter here.

If it literally costs T212 zero pence for buying and selling foreign shares from IB then they are just making it up.

So if they have gone we can still be commission free but take money from foreign buys and sells by inventing a FX fee as commission thatā€™s cheeky as ā– ā– ā– ā– .

If they are actually passing on some/all of the cost that IB charges them thatā€™s slightly different as itā€™s costing the business up until now by taking the hit.

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@David @Rumen @Y.M @PeterA @George @AlexK @Tony.V @B.E @L.D @Martin

Are T212 able to confirm if they are charged a FX fee by IBKR for buying and selling foreign shares? And what percentage? 0.15?

If you arenā€™t charged and you have invented this FX fee, will you still be advertising as commission free?

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Cavan, donā€™t want to sound arrogant but that is not true.

Even with your definition:

T212 will take percentage (0.15%) of your trade value at very regular intervals (each transaction, buy, sell and CAs). This is a fee and commission!

Commissions are not for example taking a percentage of oneā€™s account value at a regular interval say monthly, quarterly or yearly. That is called account management fee, custody fee, TER or even a service fee!!

Itā€™s on our own yes! But this is 2021 and people will want to almost exclusively even, invest in popular and meme stocks, which just happen to be US stocks, (which is not a T212 target customer market) and hence are forced to pay this FX fee multiple times!

Take yourself in this case, you are balls deep in Tesla, youā€™ll have to pay the FX fee soon. Even if TSLA splits or issues dividends or you sell or buy more!

Truth is hard to believe sometimes, but it is indeed free of cost for them them to place FX trades with IBKR.

NOPE! That is no longer the case, they are not what they used to be and say they are. As the OP correctly pointed out, they are no longer commission free, fee free or limit free.

And big brokers, I know, have long left commissions in the past. I am not just talking about Robinhood or Webull etc. Think Charles Schwab, TD Ameritrade, e*Trade, FirsTrade and so many more.

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Thatā€™s a good question Phil, this is going to be the litmus test for T212 and their transparency.

Although I already know the answer, i.e. they are not charged by IB for FX, but I would love to hear their statement.

By regular intervals I meant at a set date. Transactions are not regular as transactions are not fixed to a date and time (but I guess pies kinda make that the case but you get my point :joy:)

I assumed an account management fee was just a fancy was of saying commission without bluntly saying youā€™re taking commission. Maybe Iā€™m wrong.

Yeah Iā€™m not happy about it either, I wish there was a better alternative. But from my rough math this change will bring millions in revenue (really hard to determine though).

If it is the case then Iā€™m pretty disappointed. I donā€™t see fx fees as a fair way of charging customers.

Still donā€™t agree on this point, but each to their own Iā€™m not a lawyer

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If they arenā€™t gonna remove the fee, and thereā€™s so many people getting frustated (which is understandable) @Team212 should need to adress this.

Either reduce the fee
Remove the fee
Or somehow get the community involved in this desicion so theres a balance
Or generaly any other things that unclude listening to the customer base

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I would be amazed if one staff member steps up to answer that.

Unfortunately for the past couple months they have started ignoring @ especially when itā€™s not in their favour to reply.

I have a Bloomberg thread of doom waiting for @David to reply again. Thatā€™s been going on for absolutely ages.

I have the silver leverage thread still waiting for a staff reply. That cost me big.

I have the CBBT thread that is still waiting for an answer that I started bumping with Kermit the frogs until someone started flagging them.

Even something such as simple asking them to apply some validation to the inputs they just disappear, rather than actually answer the q. Bloody annoying.

I must have about fifty threads with unanswered questions.

Iā€™m definitely on their pain in the neck list. I can imagine @David going not this guy again.:roll_eyes: Please stop @ me. :sweat_smile:

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I mean competitors who have always charged fees I.e the pink broker still use the term ā€œcommission freeā€ despite having always charged FX fees and even charging a per month for some accounts

I think yeah the website needs updating to strip out ā€œno feeā€, that isnā€™t accurate. But I think the ā€œno commissionsā€ is fair personally. Firstly because competitors use this description and secondly because the FX fee is not universal (i.e. a UK customer who only buys UK stocks will never even know it exists, same for someone with a USD account buying US stocksā€¦)

But tbh I donā€™t see the point in us getting upset about wording on a website, we arenā€™t new customers, if you really want to spend your time going at T212 for that then imo itā€™s a waste - would be better spent getting answers and solutions on issues that actually affect us

Edit: to clarify on my last pointā€¦ there are a fair few things wrong with the platform, I donā€™t see the benefit from getting upset about the wording on a website, especially when that wording is consistent with their main competitor(s). Our efforts would be better spent getting traction on features we want added, pushing for removal or updates on status of restrictions, improving price feed etc. than arguing over website graphic semantics.

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@phildawson Haha I see where you are coming from. The frustration you have is called for, Iā€™m sorry you had to go through it. My assumption is T212 team, after the explosive growth, just couldnā€™t cope with the queries and messages anymore, hence they stopped altogether to tender to the community. Except for urgent matters.

I had some translation errors and bug reports etc, I just decided to not bother then at all. Before I was quite active in that regard. Itā€™s been more than a month and new users are not being onboarded, a friend of mine is stuck on verification since months.

Letā€™s just say the game has become bigger than they can or were able to deal and play. I hope it becomes better for future users. :blush:

Your right, we arenā€™t new customers and ONLY because we visit this forum do we actually know whatā€™s truly going on.
But what about new customers that visit the website or regular customers who donā€™t visit this forum.
They know NOTHING about this until T212 (usually very belatedly and last minute) send them an in-app notification or a cryptic email saying thereā€™s an update to the TOS that they are not very likely to go through to find out what the exact changes are.

Take this notification for example:


Nowhere does it say the currency conversion applies only to American stocks. There is no link to the forum notification or any more information on general about the change.
The whole way T212 have started this year has been downright ridiculous.

Not JUST the conversion fee but the rest such as

  • Removal of the chat function and very late replies to support tickets or closed with no help at all or completely irrelevant answers.
  • Limiting stocks often with no notice. Not even an in-app notification.
    -The change to limit orders to at least Ā£100/$100 or a specific quantity of a stock.
    -The fees on funding your account, yes, great if you have a UK bank account but what about people in Europe?

All of this has just been since January, honestlyā€¦ What next?
And all of the T212 fanboys who keep jumping on every thread such as @Scrooge_McCodf who are quick to jump to the defence of the company but have nothing of substance to actually add to the conversation.

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None of these will happen. The reason is that the vast majority of customers will continue to use their accounts and accept the fee.

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From my point of view T212 have morally broken their word and ethos. Their advertising campaign and promotions drew people in on a totally fee-free trading platform. Now that they have a huge user base they are changing tact.

This wouldnā€™t be so bad if they were doing so to keep the service afloat, but they said they were doing well and profitable.

It also wouldnā€™t be so bad if the FX fee was charged once on deposit of the said currency, or they gave us options to mitigate the effects of multiple FX charges on trades, but they seem intent on charging us as many times as they can.

The advertising does need to change, the definition of commission and feeā€™s is neither here nor there, or something to quibble over, its a matter of transparency and trust which they are happy to hide within the small print if they donā€™t change the way they promote this.

This doesnā€™t bode well for me advising any more of my friends or family to join as I donā€™t know what else may change in the future and I donā€™t want to be the bad guy who introduced them to a service which hasnā€™t proven it can be trusted.

Thats my opinion anyway.

Edit: I still like the service, I will still use the service for now, but as I grow and learn as an investor I will be looking at competitors now, where as before T212 gave me no cause to.

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You didnā€™t read what I said it seems.

Firstly, why on earth would T212 need to specify that the currency conversion fee only applies when you convert currency - anyone can work that out. We donā€™t need to waste our time picking at semantics and wording like that.

My whole point was that do we really need to have a whole thread for arguing over whether T212 need to redesign a graph on their website or not? In my view we donā€™t.

Weā€™d be better continuing to apply pressure on the other issues you mentioned and the ones Phil and I mentioned above, issues that actually affect us. Website graphic designs do not affect us. These issues include:

  • no update on OTC buy restrictions
  • no update on poor LSE price feed
  • no trailing stop
  • no update on multi currency accounts (is it even being considered / worked on?)
  • no timeline for extended hours trading
    ā€¦ and Iā€™m sure the list goes on, the more we kick off about every tiny little thing, like website wording, the less of a chance we actually get a positive response on anything at all imo
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Assuming you mean we have nothing to add to the conversation because weā€™re not agreeing with you.

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No, I read.
Yes those features are all needed for the current users, in fact, they should already have been in place,

I meanā€¦ no trailing stop lossā€¦ Thatā€™s a simple coding issue T212 could probably do in a few weeks.

T212 have literally stopped responding on these forums. They give titbits of info and then disappear for days on end leaving us all hanging, arguing with each other when it should be T212 that should be on top of things here. They should have more staff on the forums, I mean this isnā€™t the Trading 212 Reddit community, this is the OFFICIAL T212 Forum and yet, here we are, days gone by with no more information and were all left with unanswered questions.
So yes, Iā€™m talking about the website ā€œgraphicā€/wording, itā€™s a full on barefaced lie to NEW onboarded customers, itā€™s about how slow and lazy Trading 212 have become that they can no longer respond to genuine customer queries or even change simple wording on their website to let customers make an informed decision before they sign up for their NEW April ISA.

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Lads. Itā€™s Saturday night, is this tit for tat productive?

Just ignore each other thereā€™s a lot more going on in the world

Yes I agreešŸ‘. Whether an fx fee is commission or not is irrelevant (as ā€˜debatedā€™ by other posts). Trade212 need to change their advertising as it is misleading.

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I really get your opinion, and on my side, I would be very happy to pay the FX fee but at least would like to have UPDATES on these features.

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Probably a fee on ISA accounts like on their competitors?! :wink:

But if they do that, donā€™t be sad, they are going to add fantastic new features. :tada: :confetti_ball:

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Itā€™s called: Counterpart risk.

It shows that Trading 212 is already on the same league as the other high street brokers and banks.

Imagine if Robinhood pull something like thatā€¦ With the GME et al, it was on media and on Congress and SEC investigations