There is no need to shout which is waht you are doing by using all capital letters

I have used selftrade for many years. never had any problems and I think they are cheaper than HL or Barclys so far as I ca see. Dont expect any advice though

I have no experience of using TDW's services on-line. I used to do quite significant telephone trades with them about 10 years ago until I had a terrible experience with them that cost me tens of thousands of pounds. I took legal advice and was assured I had a cast iron case for compensation. However this involved obtaining accurate copies of our telephone conversation recordings - for which they charged around £150. Apart from the fact that it took months for these recordings to arrive, when we listened to the key recording there were long silences and absolutely no record of the key promises made by TDW staff which was the crux of the matter. My legal adviser and myself were convinced the record was most inaccurate but also realised we had little recourse other than to sit on the matter. No compensation of any kind was ever obtained from TDW.
Sworn statements of this case can be provided should there be any question of litigation.

As I indicated above Interactive Brokers cannot be beaten (NOT the same as iii).
Not as good or as cheap, Internaxx are OK for offshore.

Cockney Dave - My problem had absolutely nothing to do with 'insider' trading etc. I had asked for advice about transferring assets to my wife etc to make use of Capital Gains allowance for shares I wanted to sell asap. The TDW advisor assured me that this could be done within 2 days. If I had not received this assurance I would have sold and paid the tax - the profit was around 400%. Detailed instructions were given involving setting up these accounts in the swiftest possible way. These were followed to the letter - including sending all necessary documentation by guaranteed next day delivery. TDW managed to lose them in their post room. By the time the accounts were set up - around 10 days later - the share price in question had dropped from $200 to $80 !!!
I was abroad at the time and blissfully unaware of the abrupt fall. This was in that dot.com/tech boom period when things happened incredibly rapidly.
I raised a high level complaint with TDW and they went into acute denial. In my sad experience they are not to be trusted. They have, or certainly had, a culture that did not have their clients best interests at heart.