Investors Chronicle Reviews

I have been a subscriber for over 15 years and I think it is a excellent publication. My ambition is to become an ISA millionaire and, thanks mainly to IC, that is a real possibility. I cannot believe how bad most of the other reviews are and thought that I would add mine in the interest of balance.

Date of experience: April 26, 2024

They force you to call to cancel. The only reason a company does this is in 2024 is to make it deliberately make it hard to for you to cancel in the hope you don't get around to it. In other words, they deliberately provide poor customer service.

Date of experience: April 25, 2024

After several years receiving the online, paper and Alpha, I've cancelled my subscription. The products aren't the problem, it's trying to get a receipt every quarter that's the issue! Why you have to contact them every quarter to request a copy of the receipt is beyond me. But then they say they'll request a copy and it never arrives, not even to the SPAM/Junk folder. At £87 a quarter I expect much better.

Date of experience: February 02, 2024

Fantastic publication with superb content. I have only just discovered them as I’m a newbie investor.

Only negative is I can’t seem to read any digital content pre-2015 (and some of 2015, too - pre-Warren Buffett issue). Is this due to my subscription type or is it an error? Who knows? However, I won’t downgrade my rating as I appreciate archives going that far back for no extra cost, but I had to put it out there.

Regarding other reviews on here, I subscribe to digital only, so I can’t comment on aftercare just yet. Judging by other feedback maybe I shouldn’t have bought this. Should I sell? No, no, I like it. I’ll hold.

Date of experience: March 20, 2020

ONE story is good until another is told.
I have subscribed to i/c since 2001.
They send me mails on daily basis, which I can stop via their website.
The odd occasion I have spoken to them, they have been friendly, helpful and efficient.
Like any other research facility they should be used in conjunction with others.
The fact I have been using them for more 15 years speaks volumes and they are still helping me invest profitably.

Date of experience: May 30, 2018

I must speak up for Investors Chronicle. Some of these negative reviews have obviously been written by inexperienced investors. I have been a subscriber for at least 20 years and I think the quality of the articles and contributors has never been better. Of course Phil Oakley was a big loss, but they have always had a turnaround in staff and the newbies seem very experienced and knowlegible. BUT I do have a problem with late delivery of the magazine which they seem unwilling to address.

Date of experience: January 11, 2022

People should be aware that changing email address is not possible for an investors chronicle account. So if you use the portfolio tracking tool and change your email then you will have to re-enter holdings into a new account and all your transaction history will be lost. This is not the case on other tracking tools that I have used and totally unsatisfactory and amateurish.

Date of experience: November 23, 2023

Trying to subscribe all weekend , takes you all the way through, you spend ages inputting required data including direct debit info for it then to pop up with , this financial Times site is currently down we expect it to be back up soon....
Doesn't bode well !!!

Date of experience: July 16, 2023

Its a great read, very in depth and thoughtful. However the customer service is truly terrible. I got fed up waiting for someone to answer the so called customer service and have been waiting over week for an answer to an email. Will proabably cancel now, which is a shame but at the moment i am paying for product i cant access.

Date of experience: July 12, 2019

I have recently restarted my subscription, a triumph of hope over experience, and did a search on a small company I know I had read an article on recently. The search returned 1173 items of which hardly any related to the company concerned and did not include the article I was looking for. Why is the search facility so useless?

Date of experience: November 27, 2023

Simon Thompson is a writer for IC. he does many good in depth articles and share recommendations. although i have not counted them, my guess is around 100 at the moment.
i do not begrudge him leave, but he has had around 2 of the last 3 months off, leaving his followers without guidance. IC or Simon do not provide satisfactory advice during these holidays and the FT Chief executive and the IC editor do not respond to any of the many emails questioning this. i believe they have been delivered

Date of experience: December 09, 2022

I have been subscribing for several years and find the website search engine atrocious. The rag is ok although there are conflicting writer views when it comes to passive, active, trusts, OEIC's. Little consistency of view as to whether global tracker with bond / alts ETF's is any better than an equivalent Investment Trust asset allocation over the long term etc.

Date of experience: May 01, 2022

Iv'e been buying IC for 35 years and was an alpha subscriber, but the magazine has totally lost its way now and Ive reluctantly cancelled. The editor has suddenly left and so has analyst Phil Oakley - these were the reasons for subscribing to the premium alpha. The companies coverage/results and basic analysis that we all buy the magazine for has stopped, that started around last August I think. It's been replaced by wishy washy articles about crypto and sorting out the bbc etc. I'd buy Moneyweek if I wanted that! They seem to misunderstand why people buy the thing. Someone needs to get a grip here and get back to the knitting. I'm sad to have cancelled, and would come back if they got their act together.

Date of experience: July 21, 2021

I have subscribed to Investors Chronicle for 20 years. I have had the magazine delivered on a yearly subscription and I have no problem with the service. My problem with the magazine is the alteration in layout and the decline in the product. 3 years ago there were succinct reviews on myriad companies with a box giving related figures and opinions of the reviewer. You always had to follow this up with one's own research but it had a function. This has been abandoned in favour of vague waffly articles about 'themes' which are also extremely repetitive, how often do I want to read about the risks of Crypto currencies? in the main a complete waste of time. I think it happened about the time they substituted the photos of the writers with dreadful drawings. I have been a successful investor and I always found the chronicle a useful read but to be honest I find so little in it worth reading now I think it is time to part company. Shame it WAS a good magazine yours HFC

Date of experience: June 04, 2021

Make sure you are not signing up for investchronicle.com which I review here. I think this product is DJT's speech writer. Word salad with financial terminology and a few financial stats intertwined for the subject stock. I am not a subscriber, but if the free stuff they publish trolling for subscribers is this bad, how could the paid product be better?
Investorschronicle.co.uk is part of FT, and is not likely to be anything like the imposter (investchronicle.com). I would love to see the FT sue them for infringement on their name and delete all the wasted space on the internet.

Date of experience: July 07, 2020

So many times Investors Chronicle forget to include supplements with the magazine & so many times Customer Services simply will not reply to complaint emails.

In short subscribers do not get what they pay for - YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

Date of experience: March 19, 2021

The magazine is a good read and articles are technically sound and thought provoking for investors. Notwithstanding the Royal mail strike action the customer service is poor. I have rung to cancel my subscription today and there was no attempt to talk me out of it. I have not had a magazine delivery for 8 weeks and have been advised by them that they stopped doing so as Royal mail returned one undelivered. No evidence of that at all can be produced and I have had no other mail issues. Could they have not emailed me to check - apparently not - " we don't do that I'm afraid". They are now going to send me the back issues missed but obviously out of date. The lady I spoke to couldn't have given a monkeys.

Date of experience: January 06, 2023

Rock bottom customer experience. I have tried to order a digital subscription 11 days ago (4 weeks free then rolling quarterly). I have been emailing every few days on the status of getting into the digital product - with other finance magazines it's instant so waiting this long is unheard of. I get an email today - almost two weeks later - saying there was a problem with my payment method. A payment problem is something I would have expected to flag at time of purchase and have the transaction fail. Never have I had to wait two weeks to be told there's a payment problem. No apologies. No clear instructions on how to fix it. Offer is no longer eligible for me because I already placed the order. Unforgivable.

Date of experience: June 23, 2021

Do my eyes deceive me??? On 8th January 2024 Simon Thompson wrote a piece on Highcroft Investments with the following title:

"This high-yielding REIT is delisting – investors should exploit this opportunity"

Does this man really think it is a good idea to buy the shares of a company that is effectively about to disappear from public view, lost to an obscure and illiquid listing on TISE, where regulatory protections for private investors are diminished???

I'd sooner take share tips from a parrot with cocaine addiction.

RESPONSE TO INVESTORS CHRONICLE'S REPLY: I am more than dissatisfied with Simon Thompson's piece - I am disgusted. That he would encourage minority private investors to buy the shares of a company that is delisting is a disgrace. The delisting serves to marginalise private investors given the lesser regulatory protections on the TISE exchange, and the fact there will be no way to trade the stock via popular share dealing platforms. It is appalling, in my opinion, and you should review whether his opinions are in the interests of your readership.

Date of experience: January 08, 2024

Tried a trial subscription for 4 weeks. Received them all,however only 1 out of the four arrived on time. My observation of the magazine is,compared with a few years ago,the publication has travelled downhill and not worth the money. It is also noticeable that many places that used to stock the magazine, have ceased. I assume because it wasn't selling. Avoid!

Date of experience: October 23, 2021