Beware! Direct mutual fund plans are great but they have a dark side, too

I truly appreciate the writer explaining that the direct plans are having dark areas which are potentially very dangerous.

The way certain RIAs like ETMONEY are promoting direct plans is mis-selling. I would very humbly and very request AMFI and SEBI with my folded hands, that a show cause notice be issued to ETMONEY for showcasing future projections on returns and savings. The savings are unrealistic and will never be earned by potential clients. ETMONEY is attempting of misleading the investors by investing through their APP. It is high time AMFI and SEBI should publicly send a notice to ETMONEY, this is restore faith in mutual fund industry that both governing bodies ie SEBI and AMFI are continuously doing a market watch and thus ensuring a fairness prevails in Industry.

I would like to add to point here that in both regular and direct plans TER was supposed to be reduced so what AMCs did is they did reduce in both but in regular plans they just reduced our brokerage by that much or even more( barring one or two AMCs) so they compensated their loss in direct plans by adjusting our brokerage reduction. SEBI was a mute spectator. So SEBI allowed AMCs to recover their losses from us which would keep their profits in tact. Also they allowed all AMCs to increase TER of most of their plans whether direct or regular and not pass on any increase to us meaning they are allowing and in fact helping them to increase and maximise their profits. Is SEBI responsible to safeguard investor's interests or safeguarding AMC's profits?

Also for direct plans I would like to point out that we the distributors only misseprog to SEBI. Also they say that we don't understand mutual funds and suitability of the schemes even after so many years but investors will become experts in no time. Also investors who have invested from sometime will and do understand mutual funds better than us who have been guiding so many of them to achieve their goals. Investors will become better than us in understanding the product.