Towry Law charging clients to quit
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Towry Law has started applying transfer charges for clients leaving the firm but insists that the charges were always written into Edward Jones’ terms and conditions.
Money Marketing revealed last month that disgruntled former Edward Jones clients had set up a petition calling on the Government to force the FSA to take action after they faced delays of up to four months to transfer their funds away from the company.
Treating Customers Shabbily petition organiser John Simpson says Towry Law has now started to apply charges to transfer clients’ mutual funds to another product provider when it has not previously done so.
Towry charges £20 per fund or £57.50 for an Isa transfer.
Simpson claims Towry previously assured clients there would be no charge.
Towry says the transfer charge was always written into the terms and conditions for Edward Jones clients but the firm often did not implement the charge. The company insists that it does not make money out of the charge and says it will be waived for clients who have faced “extreme difficulties” in re-registering assets.
This week, Towry Law ann-ounced that it has cleared the backlog of account transfer requests, although there are still some issues with platform re-registration.
Chief executive Andrew Fisher says: “With hindsight, we certainly could have commun-icated better and reacted more quickly to what was an unanticipated problem that we encountered.”
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Readers' comments (1)
Anonymous | 6 Aug 2010 6:04 am
Yet again more spin from Towry.
It is plain to me that the wording of the terms and conditions is vague in both Edward Jones terms and conditions and Towry's in reference to fees potentially chargeable if a client transfers.
However yet again Towry are blaming Edward Jones for an event when it was Towry's decision. From when Towry bought Edward Jones Ltd late last year to around the end of April this year no £20 fees were deducted from clients accounts. I have actually had a client's assets fully transfer recently who started the process back in February time - no other fees deducted, except £58.75 for ISA closure, even though he had assets on his account where transfer fees could have been charged. All during the client's transfer process it has been Towry who have been fully responsible for the process not Edward Jones because they no longer owned the company.
Question to ask Towry is why did they change their interpretation of the terms and conditions during the time of their ownership? Probably more importantly if they did change their interpretation of the terms and conditions to what extent were clients informed of that change?
Terms and conditions are key to this whole saga.
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