I noticed that at least one message was deleted from my notification history and that some of the notifications around why they had to stop GME/AMC trading don’t really make sense since other platforms didn’t halt trading. I recently watched a video that backs up what I was thinking. I personally don’t day trade and only use trading 212 to add into my buy and hold ETFs in my ISA once a month but this lake of transparency is extremely worrying to me.
Sorry to jump into your conversation, but I think that we need to discuss the term “lack of transparency” while explaining how everything is actually expected to work on our end.
As my colleague suggested - the in-app notification has an expiration. This is quite standard - we don’t want your account to be flooded with tons of old/presumably irrelevant messages, right? Regardless, the same information is always listed (and not removed) from:
Just use the search functionality. You’ll find tons of information about GME, and all details around it.
As of the video that you’re referring to - the main issue, as it seems, are the referrals & the waitlist. Here is a simple workaround, which guarantees that both the referral and the referrer will get the free share.
On a side note: we’re looking for a way to attribute the referral links with the waitlist, so we can ease even further the process.
The youtuber didn’t claim it was a bug, he implied it was “evidence that was deleted”.
At first I thought he is getting some things completely wrong, but watching the whole video I see he is intentionally representing everything in a way that would make Trading 212 look bad.
Been a lot of this, for all brokerages, recently thanks to the GME saga. A lot of people who have a platform are broadcasting their “thoughts” as if they are fact, yet are significantly misinformed on the intricacies and mechanics of various things in the market.
For me, the main issue I had when watching the video was the way you implied malice in places. Criticism and discussion of the pros/cons for brokers is great, especially when you’re comparing free brokers, it is great to have (at least) two really good choices in the UK - both with their advantages and disadvantages. But there has been a surge in videos about 212 recently and most are full of clickbait and baseless claims - only serving to drive referrals to a broker that is still giving out free shares to the creator.
I thought your video on the whole was good and you’ve gained yourself a subscriber! but there were a few parts where in my opinion where it crossed the line from “this is how I see things” to making a baseless claim.
The part where you said (when referring to the disappearing notification) “that’s slightly concerning because somebody within T212 actually had to go and do some work to go and remove all these messages from people’s history so that they couldn’t go back and see”. In my view, this really doesn’t fit with what you’ve said above and just promotes all the conspiracy bollocks we’ve seen in the forum and on social media surrounding all brokerages since the GME saga.
As someone who works in finance, surely you can see that most of these conspiracy theories (e.g. hedge fund + retail broker collusion or back room deals to shut down trading or outright accusations of market manipulation) are fundamentally flawed and it is claims such as yours that someone from T212 actually went in and removed messages from people’s accounts, implying some sort of cover-up or malpractice, that add to them.
But that’s just my view, felt I should explain myself given my previous message above may come off a little harsh
Sure, we don’t mind the criticism. We encourage it in fact. For the sake of the transparency, and also to avoid misinterpretation by your audience, we believe that we have to elaborate further on some of the topics to clear up the concerns you raised in the video.
The part with the notifications was already covered I believe. The in-app notifications are aimed to provide timely updates to our clients before they’ll have to reach our customer care team or search in our HelpCentre & Community. It is expected that those notifications expire - the expiration date is set manually by a member of our team upon sending those. It makes no sense to store that many messages in your account while you have it all listed in the official sources of communication, i.e. HelpCentre and Community;
Regardless, the matter concerning notifications is just a tiny part of the video. We have covered pretty much all aspects of the email we’ve sent you, and I’ll share the points we made:
There are no cash flow or liquidity issues or concerns whatsoever. Trading 212 has been profitable for many years and has no debt. The introduction of a waitlist relates only to scaling up our capacity which is also mentioned in the form itself. We’ve also specifically provided the reason for the waitlist itself with posts on Twitter and our community post. It is painful for the whole team that we are temporarily unable to on-board all clients wishing to open an account. Yet, we strongly feel that it also wouldn’t be fair for existing clients not to have access to the great service they deserve, due to scaling issues;
In the video, you mentioned that scaling up should be fairly easy to do. We have been heavily investing in new infrastructure, but unfortunately, it isn’t just down to adding new hardware. To meet the exponentially growing demand for our service, our IT team has been tirelessly working on implementing a ton of upgrades and optimisations throughout the pandemic. Despite that, the recent events caused even higher spikes in both influx of new users and unprecedented activity by existing users, bringing the demand to levels outpacing our scaling abilities.
The whole matter is not related to the “Invite a friend” promotion. If this was the case, then we were going just to pause the referral programme. All facts above are pointing out the contrary, I believe.
The GameStop halt was caused by events that were outside our scope of control, as the halt was introduced by our intermediary. We were not restricting orders until we were indicated that our intermediary was not able to process them. After our intermediary proceeded to lift the trading restriction, we immediately opened the stock for trading on our side as well. This is precisely the reason we sent out a notification informing clients that they were now able to place orders with the company, however, that they should be aware of the market conditions and that they might severely affect their trading experience;
The restrictions were lifted on Friday 29th, and since then there haven’t been any. However, in the video, you mention that we have introduced new restrictions on the 1st of February, which is not true;
In regards to why we had to set a higher minimum for pending orders, as mentioned in this Community post and in our Help Centre. In the video, you imply that the higher minimums also apply to market orders placed outside trading hours, which is not true. Market orders are not affected in any way;
As for your point on content creators not being able to automatically receive free shares for the customers they’ve referred to the waiting list. As you know, in most cases people using your referral link to download the app are automatically enrolled in the referral program without any additional processes. In the rare cases when the automatic attribution between a link usage and an install fails to work, there is a workaround - check this;
To preserve the smooth process, we are working on associating the link usage to the submission of an email to the waitlist, which would again automatically enroll the user in the referral program.
As for concerns that this video might lead to the discontinuation of your unlimited referral link, we’d like to reassure you that we never interfere with any content creator for the reason that they are providing constructive feedback. Up until now, there hasn’t been аn instance of a referral link suspension due to the nature of the content itself. However, we do not tolerate or condone the spread of misinformation and the deliberate misrepresentation of facts in a way that is construed toward sensationalism and could harm individuals or companies.
Fair play to @Sasha for posting here, he didn’t have to do that and, in fairness, most of his videos seem better than some of the rubbish out there.
One suggestion from me: in future, why not post here or approach T212 more directly before posting such videos?
That way, you give T212 an opportunity to reply and clarify any concerns, and it’ll result in fairer, more balanced videos, which should, in turn, grow your audience.
I assume the expire period probably looks something like this, and they probably don’t think too much about the duration of the expiry, and just set two different expiry periods for each.
Thanks for the response, I did clearly get the impression from your video that you were trying to be objective and I watched a few of your other recent videos and found also that you try to be as balanced and fair as possible when discussing things.
However, I do think there is a huge difference between what you said in your video i.e. “someone from T212 has gone in and done some work to remove the notifications” vs what you are saying now re. simply a shorter expiry window and so I am a bit confused as how you can stand by your incorrect statement?
I know this is now just debating semantics and the overall point is that Tony has cleared up all the confusions / misleading claims but do you see how what you said in the video implies that someone from T212 actively removed a notification, therefore feeding cover-up theories vs what you say now which is just that whichever member of staff did the notification chose a different expiry for the notification to automatically disappear?
Point is the general impression of what you said in the video was blatantly a suggestion that T212 staff had actively tried to remove/hide information but what you are now saying gives a completely different impression, which means a totally different interpretation by your audience.
And if we wanted to suggest reasons for why this shorter expiry window may have been chosen, perhaps the staff that sent out the new notification deemed that one announcing normal service has resumed is less important 2-3 days later than a notification announcing a degradation of normal service. That certainly seems sensible to me but of course could just be pure chance that the staff chose a different expiry.
I’d argue that impartiality’s important. Imagine how you’d feel if it was your business and you weren’t offered an opportunity to reply to similar claims. Surely offering up both sides of a story is relevant and of note to your audience? Some day, hopefully governments will get their arses in gear and start regulating online content in the same as traditional broadcasters.
@Sasha It’s great that you joined the discussion.
However, I think people here are smart enough to sense the difference between trashing and “I simply state things as I see them”.
You have made a number of baseless claims in the video, let alone publicly implying that a financial institution like T212 has a “cash flow problem” that they are not disclosing with their clients is pretty terrifying I would say, especially if it isn’t true. I don’t think your audience deserves that.
(in that regard you repeat a few times that T212 saved “several million pounds” by not allowing people to sign up)
@Sasha Regardless if it’s made via a rhetorical question or statement, your review provides inaccurate information to the audience. I have listed several facts here. Feel free to correct me whenever you find that I’m wrong.
If you go through some of the posts, you’ll see enough evidence that whenever there was an issue with our service, people shared the criticism freely.
We clearly stated that we’ll resume the onboarding process and I also mentioned that people will be able to use the referral programme too. The same information is present in the post which you have screenshotted in your video. We also pointed out the reasons - I have added all links in my reply above. So those millions of pounds that you’re referring to are not locked in the drawer. If we wanted to save those funds, as your video suggests, then we were going to shut down the referral programme.
P.S. I think that you’re focusing on the notifications, which was already addressed and I don’t believe it the most important aspect of the conversation. Again, those notifications work like a reminder/heads-up tool and they are meant to expire. Whenever we send a notification, we put an expiration date. Regardless, the posts in the Community/HelpCentre remain listed and unchanged.
You’re pointing out that the notification is the reason for the whole feedback, while those are just part of the above list of facts we disagree upon and yet haven’t been addressed by you, namely:
To be fair, notifications disappearing after a set amount of time is what I would expect from any platform. And I mean expect: as in I would want that to happen as standard.
E-mails though… you can do what you like with them.
I am not trying to push anything. You have shared your thoughts in your video, and now I’m sharing my point of view, supported by facts. Hence the discussion.
I agree with Tony. We’ve been asking for more transparency recently, it’s nice to have responses from staff in this thread about any concerns. He’s not trying to push anything, a business should respond to criticisms.
But yes, I do agree with this point . It was a hard time for the team but we really need crystal clear communication in an email or in a notification.
. It was a hard time for the team but we really need crystal clear communication in an email or in a notification.