Making my own enquiries and from talking to others, brokers fees seem to vary from zero to quite a substantial amount. How do you know which financial advisor to go for? Are those who who do not charge anything too good to be true?

Of course there are advisors that don't charge a fee. If advisor is not charging you a fee, it doesn’t mean that he will not be paid. Advisor can receive commission from a lender, charge a fee and receive commission from a lender. Advisor can also offer you to charge a fee, but refund lenders commission to you, but this option is not very common and probably is not worth considering as it will probably be better for you as a customer to accept either of the first two options. Financial Services are trying to say now that it will be better if advisors charged a fee, rather than received commission from a lender, but many advisors believe that this move will cut off a lot of people from professional advice.

I dont agree that financial advisors should get both their commission and a fee from a customer.

I think, its ok as long if its a reasonable fee. Brokers also need to make a living (no i'm not a broker (IMG:style_emoticons/default/rolleyes.gif) ). I was once looking for a mortgage, the guy whose services i was using initially was brilliant. He was very helpful and did a lot of research for me. However, in the end my existing lender offered me a better deal direct. I felt terrible withdrawing my instructions and would not have minded if i was asked to pay a reasonable admin fee or smth for the amount of work already done by the mortgage broker.