Have ComputerShare screwed up your EquatePlus account? Call them on 08009231507

I hope this rant is useful to someone...

I have some shares leftover from an old employer. The sharesave account was managed by ComputerShare who are pretty crap. For some reason, ComputerShare have decided to migrate lots of their customers to an equally crap service called EquatePlus.

I only found out about this when trying to log in to ComputerShare to do my annual tax return. It told me to bugger off to EquatePlus. Because sending proactive communications to your users is so hard...

I tried logging in with my old username, but it didn't work. Because why would you bother migrating a user ID across...?

I tried resetting my password using the email address they had on file. But it didn't recognise that.

I'll tell you what it did recognise. The email address from my old employer. The one I left 5 years ago. The one I no longer have access to.

The only helpdesk numbers listed were either international or cost to call. Forget that noise! I'm not paying money to correct someone else's mistake.

After a bit of light investigating, I found that the ASDA Sharesave page listed a generic freephone number for ComputerShare:

0800 923 1507

It welcomed me to the ASDA/Walmart service - I did not have shares with them - but after punching through the various options, a lovely customer service agent asked me which company I worked for. I told them, and they gave me my username and password (after passing suitable security checks).

Apparently, ComputerShare ignores any changes of postal address or email address that you may have made to your account and will default to whatever your contact details were when you were still employed. Why? Because they are crap.

Anyway, after all that, it turns out that my miniscule shareholding has halved in value since I last checked. At least that's one thing I can't really blame on ComputerShare's incompetence!