Muchaboutmoney
05 Aug 2018
Another Letter of Intent Signed By Premier Bristow Helicopters have just reported and their statement sure does make interesting reading. ‘This quarter I would like to announce that we signed a letter of intent with Premier Sea Lion for a long-term contract that covers the full lifecycle of the field and this begins in fiscal 2021 and it’s a 20-year or up to a 20-year contract’ If this isn’t going ahead I’ll eat my hat. It’s just a matter of time now. This time next year Rodney…
J_Westlock
02 Aug 2018
Bring back the old discussion format now! Yep guess that proves it. You’re a genius.
AlBrad
02 Aug 2018
Bring back the old discussion format now! WellWadded: Like many I did , over many years , enjoy the easy style of the old discussion board which prompted me to open a Trading A/c several months ago, with the view of transferring a greater percentage of my Portfolio across over time. I have now closed that A/c There you go, @J_Westlock, a freebie user who (eventually) signed up for an actual trading account. And then closed it due to the dogs dinner that ii made of the site in their recent downgrade. Less of the smart Alec remarks now, thank you.
WellWadded
02 Aug 2018
Bring back the old discussion format now! Like many I did , over many years , enjoy the easy style of the old discussion board which prompted me to open a Trading A/c several months ago, with the view of transferring a greater percentage of my Portfolio across over time. I have now closed that A/c which thankfully represented less than 0.5% of my overall active portfolio, as I no longer find this current format in any way appealing. I have no idea, nor that interested, if monthly new subscribers out number us shrinking old timers, but its a tough ask to run any Company with a disgruntled customer base and rely principally on price attraction.
ianexile
02 Aug 2018
Bring back the old discussion format now! yes - first and last time
J_Westlock
02 Aug 2018
Bring back the old discussion format now! But you just did…
ianexile
02 Aug 2018
Bring back the old discussion format now! Absolutely spot on. I will never use it. So user unfriendly
AlBrad
31 Jul 2018
Bring back the old discussion format now! J_Westlock: I suspect most of the departed are freebie-users Yes, but a certain proportion of incoming users will undoubtedly also sign up for a trading account if everything is in one place - community, research info and ability to trade - it is the shop-front to entice people in. They seem to have forgotten this. They have completely lost the integrated look and feel they had before. Agree there are few places that matched the previous ii facilities - even more reason for them to not have got rid of it and replace it with this!
J_Westlock
31 Jul 2018
Bring back the old discussion format now! Yep agreed. As before though, I suspect most of the departed are freebie-users who will move to another freebie offering for their VPs/RNS alerts etc. For sure, some would have moved their portfolio or more likely made a decision not to invest anymore via ii… the problem remains though… you move from ii to where… AJ Bell? CSDirect? iWeb? Plenty of alternatives out there for sure… but none offering all the functionality in one place that ii used to have… and that I;m pretty sure is what ii Management would also have though about. I agree that ii had a well used Discussion Board but again… many users just used that for free… and had their real portfolios elsewhere. If ii have got their calcs right then they will be offering a reduced functionality system - as good as most out there - (that’s cheaper to maintain for ii) at a very competitive price, have probably 60% less freebie users and 2% less ‘real’ users (say). Personally, for my real portfolio/s I want the cheapest offerings (to me ongoing) that have the markets I want to trade on. For anything else like RNS alerts, VP (if I wanted to use it)… I would just go to any other freebie platform of the many out there. I predict in a few years time there won’t be many (if any) offering such things for free.
AlBrad
31 Jul 2018
Bring back the old discussion format now! J_Westlock: I suspect ii did their sums and worked out how many users pa convert from free-usage (VP functionality etc) to having a trading account (where they are effectively locked in) versus the costs of them carrying on/upgrading their old platform indefinitely. Perhaps. I wonder if they’ve re-run those same sums now that a large majority of the user base has seemingly departed? I’d wager they are going to lose a lot more money than they spent maintaining the old system. A thriving online community is one of the things which attracts people to your online offering. Ditch it at your peril, IMO.
AlBrad
31 Jul 2018
Bring back the old discussion format now! johnnie-fp: No need, Perl continues to be a fantastic language for munging text, it just doesn’t have a marketing budget to keep it in the mainstream Yes, but the number of Perl developers is decreasing over time as it is no longer mainstream, and the talent is becoming more sparse and expensive to hire. I doubt anybody these days would start any new project using Perl, so in ii’s case, I understand the desire to phase it out, but just not in the cack-handed manner in which they have gone about it.
J_Westlock
31 Jul 2018
Bring back the old discussion format now! johnnie-fp: … they just didn’t want to do it in house anymore. That’s what ii effectively said… and probably why some of their IT staff will be leaving. ii aren’t the only ones who are moving to ‘cheap and cheerful’ platforms with base level functionality: several already did this. I suspect ii did their sums and worked out how many users pa convert from free-usage (VP functionality etc) to having a trading account (where they are effectively locked in) versus the costs of them carrying on/upgrading their old platform indefinitely. Whilst Brokers are allowed to charge excessive fees for allowing you to migrate a portfolio then all you can do is open another account or three. It might be annoying but ii’s fee structure is still one of the best for the markets it offers.
johnnie-fp
31 Jul 2018
Bring back the old discussion format now! AlBrad: ey should have kept the Perl coding initially, whilst migrating to a MySQL database back-end. That would have removed the ongoing Oracle expense. No need, Perl continues to be a fantastic language for munging text, it just doesn’t have a marketing budget to keep it in the mainstream. Plus the average Perl developer tends to be far better than the average Java|C#|PHP dev. (but drop Oracle by all means) I hope I’m not showing a bias here.
DL1955
31 Jul 2018
Bring back the old discussion format now! And now the refresh at the top of the page does not work !!
AlBrad
31 Jul 2018
Bring back the old discussion format now! @johnnie-fp, yes it was coded in Perl with an Oracle back-end. They most likely had a support subscription with Oracle, which doesn’t come cheap. IMO they should have kept the Perl coding initially, whilst migrating to a MySQL database back-end. That would have removed the ongoing Oracle expense. Then gradually migrate the coding to something more modern whilst retaining the aspects of the old site that everyone was used to. ONLY THEN start adding enhancements, and weeding out less used functions. They would have kept ALL users on-side with this approach.
