ADVFN UK - be aware!

[Black Jack]

As a new and very novice investor, I was about to ask about alternatives to ADVFN.
From trillionaire's comment I guess they are the best ?
Appreciate if anybody to suggest competent alternatives.
Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

would say the easiest thing to do would be to google ‘alternatives to ADVFN’. It’s the same with all recommendations; you’ll end with biased point of views. One person may say that a particular company is great but another may say they are terrible; it will all be down to personal experience.
Some of the other companies that I have come across by purely googling your questions are detailed below;
Selftrade, TradeKing, Yahoo
I am like yourself a very inexperienced trader so can’t really add much value for you but hopefully it will help you to realise that finding reliable stuff online is quite easy and definitely a quick way of getting what you want, waiting for people to respond to a forum post could take ages…..
Good luck!

 

[zaggacom]

Terrible greedy little company

I subscribed to their site at a cost of £73 a year, but beware they just keep taking your money, every year, without any prior notification, no reminders, and once they have your money they will not refund it even if you advise them you want to cancel.

If you do want to cancel you have to write to them, and send it in the post! they do not accept emails, and there is no option to cancel on the actual website.

Really bad customer service they are only after your money.

Remember this is an online business but you they make really difficult to cancel, doesent this tell you something.

Yours

John

Hi everyone,

I'm quite annoyed with ADVFN. I went for the 30 day free trial, which I forgot to cancel. Anyway, I decided that I was going to stay with them longer, but I wanted to know how to unsubscribe because I couldn't find the information throughout the website. I sent an e-mail asking how to cancel my subscriptionand this is the reply I received:

Thank you for contacting ADVFN Support

To cancel your ADVFN account you need to send your written consent via the postal system. ADVFN do require 30 days notice on all cancellations or downgrades. Please include your Username as part of this letter and address it as follows.

ADVFN PLC
Subs Dept
26 Throgmorton St
London
EC2N 2AN

Sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused.

Regards

Support Team
ADVFN Plc


I think this is ridiculous. Now I definitely decided to unsubscribe. I think this kind of business policy is awful. They've just lost a possible yearly subscription because they are greedy to get a free month when you decide to leave.

Good luck with your trading,

A quite angry Silvia.

 

[iandh2010]

ADVFN - Are they still as bad as ever

I subscribed to their site at a cost of £73 a year, but beware they just keep taking your money, every year, without any prior notification, no reminders, and once they have your money they will not refund it even if you advise them you want to cancel.

If you do want to cancel you have to write to them, and send it in the post! they do not accept emails, and there is no option to cancel on the actual website.

Really bad customer service they are only after your money.

Remember this is an online business but you they make really difficult to cancel, doesent this tell you something.

Yours

John

I was seriously thinking of getting a Level 2 account with ADVFN. the guy there said that I would get a free 1 months trial which I could cancel at any time.
Given that everyone is saying that ADVFN demand a 1 month notice to cancel and that it has to be by recorded delivery then they would definitely get 1 months subscription out of me.

I am not sure just how well Level 2 plus Level 3 Montage would work for me, hence the need for a free trial period to evaluate.

Does anyone here have experience of using Level 2, did it improve your trading success, was it worth the money, i.e. did you make more from your trading using it than not using it.

I know that the above is a tough question due to changing markets etc. but I would appreciate some feedback before I commit to something that I can't get out of for at least 1 month.

I also notice that ADVFN have declined to comment on this thread. Most companies appear to monitor this site and reply in defence when receiving adverse publicity like this thread. Must substantiate all the claims made.........

 

[rartherinv]

I was seriously thinking of getting a Level 2 account with ADVFN. the guy there said that I would get a free 1 months trial which I could cancel at any time.
Given that everyone is saying that ADVFN demand a 1 month notice to cancel and that it has to be by recorded delivery then they would definitely get 1 months subscription out of me.

I am not sure just how well Level 2 plus Level 3 Montage would work for me, hence the need for a free trial period to evaluate.

Does anyone here have experience of using Level 2, did it improve your trading success, was it worth the money, i.e. did you make more from your trading using it than not using it.

I know that the above is a tough question due to changing markets etc. but I would appreciate some feedback before I commit to something that I can't get out of for at least 1 month.

I also notice that ADVFN have declined to comment on this thread. Most companies appear to monitor this site and reply in defence when receiving adverse publicity like this thread. Must substantiate all the claims made.........

I used it about 10 years ago when I was making some bigger small cap trades and I found it useful for spotting buying and selling opportunities as you get an extra layer of information compared to the rest of the retail market (you can get a good hint of when price is about to move by stalking L2 and seeing patterns in market maker or order book behaviour). Alas, I terminated it because it was so expensive relative to my portfolio size (not advfn's fault as they pay fees to LSE for each feed). If you are paying £600 a year to get a small market advantage, your portfolio needs to be worth at least £60k (1% would go towards L2 advantage), or ideally £120k+ (less than 0.5% towards L2). Above a couple hundred grand in your portfolio and I would say it is definitely worth it to get the advantage.

If you are not a very analytical person then it may not be any advantage at all, or if you are very good with analyses and numbers then it could be very advantageous. In the end all you are getting is a bunch of data and you still need to interpret it so it is not guaranteed to make you any higher returns.

 

[iandh2010]

I used it about 10 years ago when I was making some bigger small cap trades and I found it useful for spotting buying and selling opportunities as you get an extra layer of information compared to the rest of the retail market (you can get a good hint of when price is about to move by stalking L2 and seeing patterns in market maker or order book behaviour). Alas, I terminated it because it was so expensive relative to my portfolio size (not advfn's fault as they pay fees to LSE for each feed). If you are paying £600 a year to get a small market advantage, your portfolio needs to be worth at least £60k (1% would go towards L2 advantage), or ideally £120k+ (less than 0.5% towards L2). Above a couple hundred grand in your portfolio and I would say it is definitely worth it to get the advantage.

If you are not a very analytical person then it may not be any advantage at all, or if you are very good with analyses and numbers then it could be very advantageous. In the end all you are getting is a bunch of data and you still need to interpret it so it is not guaranteed to make you any higher returns.

Hi Rartherinv
Many thanks for your insight into ADVFN Level 2.
It would appear to be a lot closer to the market makers order books and I started to understand more about the way that the market works from reading their Level 2 manual, albeit with several confusing typos!

Their guy that responded to my questions about the manual was helpful and I would like to try it out for a month but from what everyone has said, there is no such thing as a free month with ADVFN and I suspect that it would take at least that long to start to recognise the patterns in the order books and they change so rapidly from what I have seen on their videos etc.

Thanks for your comments regarding the required size of portfolio before ADVFN L2 + L3 could be expected to start to deliver a substantial return. My portfolio is nowhere near so big so I think I'll have to pass on this and just keep watching the prices!

 

[veritim]

ADVFN cancellation

I had no problems cancelling membership although I followed the advice of writing recorded delivery