Hey guys it's sasha today we need to talk about free trade, because free trade has changed and not in a good way. I have used free trade and talked about free trade on my channel since they were much much smaller and i have had a lot of good things to say about them. If you go and look up free trade reviews right here on youtube, you'll see my review right up there. That has a lot of good things to say about free trade as well as their limitations.

If you want to know how to get started, look up free trade for beginners and there i am explaining how to get started with the platform. If you're wondering what the best investing app in uk is, you can look that up on youtube too and yeah. I'm there as well - and i also say a lot of good things about free trade in that video anyway. Today won't be one of those videos, because today i have something pretty bad to say about free trade, something they deserved, that people should know, and recently free trade passed the 1 million customer mark, and they have been very proud of that achievement.

They've gone from a small also ran platform that nobody's heard of to one of the big guns really genuinely in the uk and while trading 212 is currently banned from taking on new accounts. Free trade has been hoovering up customers throughout the year and to do that, free trade have used the classic free share method, let customers advertise to their friends and family, and if one of your customers then refers another both of those people get a free share and Then get a whole load of influences on board, including youtubers like myself, and let them do the same thing dish out them free shares to people joining and to the youtuber for referring them, and that has clearly worked a treat, because now, free trade has that one Million customer number and they have attracted those customers with offers of free shares worth up to 200 pounds. You might have noticed more recently that the messaging has had a subtle change of tone. It now says, instead of just the up to 200, it says that you can get a free share worth between three pounds and 200 pounds and in the last two weeks, free trade has decided to shaft their customers completely and start lying to them.

Instead and last week, i began getting some messages from people uh higher than i ex normally get number of messages who were saying that they signed up to free trade using an affiliate link and their free share was just over three pounds and they were saying it's Great that it's still free, but it seems kind of on the low side and yeah free trade have been giving out a range of shares over time and a lot of people wouldn't actually get shares at the lower end of the spectrum. That would be expected and the average of these shares over time hasn't been all that great. I have personally collected many thousands of these shares and my average has been seven pound fifteen. If you exclude a promotion that free trade ran at the end of august and beginning of september, where they raised the minimum share price to, i think it was ten dollars.

The average was six pounds 90 for me since i started and yeah that does sound a bit low when the ad says that it is up to 200, but there was a fighting chance of getting those high ones. You could sometimes get some of the bigger numbers. I would get a few shares in the 25 to 40 pound range per month and then even summon the 80 or maybe even 100 pound mark that did happen, but over time the number of these occurrences, the number of times you'd get those higher price shares has Been dropping and according to free trade, i get the exact same distribution of shares as any normal customer, so this should have been dropping for them too, but it's been quite gradual, but then, last week free trade decided to go and shake things up and i went And changed the way that free shares are being distributed, but they didn't let their customers know they didn't tell anyone. They didn't update the promotion.

It still says the exact same thing. It says that you can go and get a free share from three pounds to 200 pounds, except here is a fact for you. If you are considering applying for free trade, then feel free to go and use my link in the description below. If you really want to your chances of getting a share of over four pounds, is pretty much zero or extremely close to zero.

In fact, your chance of getting anything over five pounds pretty much is zero. After i got these messages, i went and looked at the numbers because you see i get quite a few of these free shares, so i can make some statistical analysis. I received 250 free shares from free trade since i began getting those messages and so 250 people who used my link also received their free shares and not a single one of the 250 shares that i received was over five pounds, not one. In fact.

Only a tiny, tiny handful were over four pounds. The average share price that i got in these two weeks is three pounds 43, and this is a problem because you cannot advertise a promotion saying you can get shares from three pounds to 200 pounds where there is no reasonable expectation of actually getting a share over Five pounds if there is not any kind of like sensible percentage of people who might possibly get a share of over five pounds, because if you are doing it, unfortunately you are a pathetic liar. I went and spoke to a bunch of other uk creators and between us. We have a sample of somewhere in the region of maybe 12 to 1500 free shares in this time period and everybody else got the exact same thing, nothing over five pounds, and i have a massive massive problem with this, because i have all of these other videos Out there, where i now feel i am misleading my customers.

I have videos where i talk about this promotion and i say what the terms are, and people will then use that information, because they trust me to make the decision to sign up to free trade, and it now appears that that information is incorrect, but free trade Won't go and say anything about it: free trade is lying to customers and they're, forcing their creators who trusted in the information that free trade gave them to also lie to their viewers, and i am not okay with this, because customers think that they can get a Free share worth up to 200 pounds, you see, it says it in the promotion and free trade are simply lying because under advertising standards, rules and the fca handbook. This is illegal. If you are advertising that there is a range, but do not give any expectation of how that range is distributed, and i specifically asked free trade and they refused to give me any data, customers should have a fighting chance. Something that most normal people would say is sensible or reasonable of getting a share somewhere in the range above five pounds and here's the thing i studied maths at university.

So i understand how you know, statistics and distributions work, but you really don't have to know much. Math to understand that when there are several hundred over a thousand free shares in a sample - and there are zero shares above five pounds in that sample - then it is quite unlikely uh. It is a very low chance that anyone is ever going to be able to qualify for a share of over five pounds. Certainly, within this time period - and you would expect you know if you're a customer and you're applying for a promotion that says from three to two hundred you'd probably say hey, maybe there should be at least eight.

You know a one percent chance that i might be able to get something over five pounds. Would you say that that would be a reasonable expectation? I i would say that it would be uh, so this really doesn't smell. Good 95 of all the shares being given out here are between three and four pounds at the lower end of that range. If free trade is giving these at random, as they say and as they should um, then given the sample, the mathematical possibility of getting anything over five pounds is a tiny fraction of a percent and getting anything even remotely close to 200 is basically as good as Zero, i spoke to free trade before making this video.

I spoke to them several days ago and gave the time and said this is not okay and i am not okay being their pawn and part of this and misleading my viewers. I said that changing the rules of promotion without notifying customers is not appropriate. It is not legal and it is not okay, and i can clearly see in the data in the last two weeks that they have changed the rules of this promotion. But they didn't tell anyone - and i said that i am happy for them to cut me out of the affiliate program if they dislike the direct approach that i'm using and they dislike this video.

Maybe they will, i don't know, we'll see what happens, but i urge free trade in that conversation to either come out and say that the policy has changed, say that the promotion is now different or fix the issue because, as it stands, they are not doing either And yesterday, free trade decided to go and dish out another load of free shares. Several days after i had that conversation and nothing's changed. The numbers are the same. So here we are doing this video and their official response, and i confirmed this on the call with the person.

The official response was that the promotion states that free shares range from three pounds to 200 pounds so because just over three pounds falls into that range. They feel that's completely okay and fair, and that is honest with their customers and it's a real shame, because free trade used to be all about transparency. Their ceo was openly mocking trading 212 when those guys went and did their bait and switch earlier. This year, free trade has always made a massive point out of being honest and upfront, but here we are having free trade delight to their customers and cheap out and giving out three shares.

Oh three pound shares only uh, that's one month's worth of iso fees that they're going to collect from the customer signing up for isis to acquire those customers. This is pretty pathetic, and the advertising standards isn't a big fan of this sort of thing. You might be surprised to hear first off the advertising standards clearly state that in the case of promotional marketing, there are very few circumstances when changing the tnc's of a promotion might be considered acceptable, and i would say that suddenly out of the blue only giving out Three pound shares and a promotion where you're telling customers that they might be able to get up to 200 is a you know: material change. Perhaps free trade should go and read the advertising standards code, section 8 that talks about promotional marketing.

You know like you would learn a thing or two if you bothered to actually do your homework, because in the vast majority, if the vast majority customers are receiving three pound shares, but only a tiny, tiny minority measured in a fraction of a percent - and that is The best argument that you can have here, given the data i have have a chance of getting anything above anything any of the high value shares. Then those high value shares, stop being gifts and they become prizes, and there is a big distinction: hey if you're watching this from free trade offices, it's not very difficult, go and read rule 8.19. I'm going to help you out here. It says if a promotion offers a gift to a significant proportion and a price to a minority.

Special care needs to be is needed to avoid confusing the two. The promotion must, for example, state clearly the consumers qualify for the gift, but have merely an opportunity to win the prize if a promotion includes in a list of prizes, a gift which consumers have qualified. The promoter must distinguish clearly between the two. Can you read yeah? So perhaps a one-liner that says that customers can get anything from three pounds to 200.

Pounds is, i would say, misleading at best, but here's another thing. The fca also happens to care about this. You will be glad to know because this is a financial promotion. According to the fca handbook and yeah, there's different handbooks for different circumstances and there's one for retail investment products too, and seriously go and read that handbook.

Perhaps i don't know if you can't go and hire a competent legal person who understands how to read because it states right there, a firm must ensure that a communication or a financial promotion is fair, clear and not misleading. Look, it even has a massive big fat title above that that states the words fair, clear and not misleading, which part of that did you not understand when you made that change last week, if you're a customer - and you see an offer, a marketing offer that says That you can get a free share from three pounds to 200 pounds. Do you think that perhaps it should be? I don't know at least a one percent chance that you could get a share above five pounds, because i can tell you now. The fca doesn't look too kindly on companies that lie in their ads and here's the thing as per usual.

I will be the only one talking about this, because free trade pay a whole lot of money to us. People on youtube. I personally have earned over 24 000 pounds from free shares from free trade and i'm fully aware that by making this video i'll probably say, bye bye to my free shares from free trade in the future, because they probably won't appreciate somebody standing up for the customer. So i can tell you now: i am not doing this video for the money and i'm not here to refer people to somebody else, as some people in some other communities have a legend.

I just don't care, i just don't like companies that lie to their customers and do bad things to their customers on purpose, and this is a prime case of exactly this lying to your customers. So i really hope that you either change that promotion as you should to something that isn't misleading or maybe go and fix that code that issues the free shares because, as it stands, you are no better than the people that you used to publicly laugh at. You have just joined the crowd now that you're a big platform making all that money, you've forgotten what you stood for in the first place.