To say my recent experience in trying to claim my pension funds from Prudential have proved frustrating is an understatement.
My parents had always used Prudential for house and life insurance, they had also taken out policies for Amanda and I which matured on our 16th birthdays. So back in 1994 when I was working in the private sector I was convinced by a fly by night Man From The Pru to take out a personal pension. Which at the time seemed a good idea. On a low wage; £5.50 an hour; I opted to pay the minimum amount of a £5 a month. Three years later I returned to the NHS and started paying superannuation and since back then you couldn’t have two pension pots running at the same time and I couldn’t transfer the private pension funds over to my NHS pension it was frozen. And there it has sat for 27 years slowly amassing small amounts of interest. I my final payout is not much, it might just cover the cost of a couple of holidays, but it is my money.
Six weeks ago I received a pack from the Prudential to let me know that my pension was about to mature and tell me how to make my claim. When I contacted the Prudential by phone I was told I could take my pension any time from then, even though it’s maturity date was 1st December. After discussing it with Paul I decided to make my claim so on 11th November I contacted the Prudential, again by phone, and requested to claim my money. The helpful operator, Hayley, said I could do it all on line and she’d send me the info pack via their secure messaging service via the “MyPru” website. I dutifully followed the link, downloaded the claim form and filled it in. I then attached it to the message as she’d requested and sent it straight back. As I had read a note about problems with attachments not attaching on phones and tablets I made my claim on my desktop computer. If their online claims forms are so unreliable should this option even be available? On 12th November I received a receipt of form message.
Fast forward three weeks. No money had gone into my bank and I hadn’t heard a dicky bird from the Prudential. Not even a reminder to make my claim as it has now reached maturity date. I feel that this tardiness in releasing my funds on the part of a big concern like Prudential is unacceptable so this morning; 3rd December; I decided to phone the Prudential yet again to be told they had no record of my claim. The operator said she’d pass my enquiry to the administration department who would get back to me within 5 working days.
“So I can’t speak to anyone in that department?” I asked.
“No”, came the reply, “they will contact you within 5 working days”.
“OK” said I, “in that case could you put me through to your complaints department please?”
“You want to make a complaint?”
“That’s what I said!”
Sound of rapid typing
“I’ve forwarded your complaint, you’ll hear from them within 5 working days!”
“OK, I won’t hold my breath!”I replied huffily.
“Is there anything else I can help you with today?” she asked.
“Not really, as you’ve not been really helpful so far!” I snapped sarcastically.
So I might hear from them some time in the middle of the next week. Which means by the time the Prudential have told me I will have to claim again and I have checked up that my claim has been received; or, heaven forbid, I have to mess about making the claim by post, at Christmas; it will be well into the new year before I see my money!
After coming off the phone I decided to go onto the MyPru website and send my own message of complaint. Well, there’s no way she was going to put what I wanted to say was there. I know I’ll not get a response anytime soon but I wanted to get my point across. For my part I certainly won’t be using their services in the future and neither will I recommend them to family and friends. I was now looking forward to hearing from them sometime the following week!
Later that afternoon, at the instigation of Paul, I was back on the phone. This time I was put through to a very charming and helpful chap called Tom. The complete opposite to Mrs Snippy Pants that morning. He listened to my issue and actually tried to sort it out. The result was the same but instead of brushing me off he patiently explained to me what could have happened and answered all my questions. He told me he would push the enquiry through as urgent and put a note on the file for someone to give me a follow up call in 48 hours to keep be informed of their progress. My more sceptical side however keeps rearing it’s head, was he just better at calming me down by telling me what I wanted to hear; that someone was bothered, would listen, would empathise, would accept the blame? Who knows but I could physically feel my ruffled feathers beginning to smooth down. We would see come Tuesday afternoon.
Well it appears Tom was only a ruffled feather smoother after all since the afternoon of Tuesday 7th December came and went with no response from Prudential. As I was out all day Wednesday it wasn’t until Thursday 9th December I could do anything. I started by checking my Prudential account messages only to find a notice attached to the policy stating there was a problem with the service. I immediately contacted Prudential again; a full 48 hours after they should have contacted me; to ask just what was going on. I spoke to a pleasant enough woman called Claire who spoke to Tom and then asked all the same questions I’d been asked every time I have spoken to them before assuring me she would look into it and phone me the following afternoon, Friday 10th December. That same day I received a letter from Prudential to inform me that my complaint had been resolved! No it hadn’t! I’m still waiting for my money! I was so angry I shot off a further message of complaint via my account on the myPru website. I dutifully gave Claire until following afternoon as agreed but if they didn’t get their act together I would be taking the matter further and be contacting the financial ombudsman.
True to her word; surprise, surprise; I received a call back from Claire. Still no progress but she would keep me in the loop as she was making my claim a priority and wanted to sort it out herself. And she kept her word. Even though the news wasn’t what I wanted she did keep me informed. It was around this time, 14th December, I decided to take to Twitter. I have found that folks don’t like being publicly criticised on a social media platform and Twitter is one of the best. Once I had found @Pru_UK I had a quick scan through their tweets to find that I am not the only one having these problems. It did not make me feel any less angry at their inability to resolve my issue so I added my tweet to the long list of equally angry customers, if only to register my disgust at the poor service from Prudential. The following day I received a reply to my tweet and sent my contact details to yet another department as requested.
The run up to Christmas was such a busy time; what with shopping and preparing for a visit from our youngest daughter and her family; that on 16th December I missed a call from Claire and didn’t notice she had left a voicemail until the weekend of the 18th. I tried to phone back but by the time I had listened to the message I had missed the office hours. I will never be sure about the timing but on looking up my policy number online I noticed that I could now access my documents again. At last, a good sign, I hoped. After the weekend I eventually managed to contact the Pru and another really helpful agent, Rachael, who worked alongside Claire gave me a full explanation of what had happened.
Apparently although I had fully completed the online document and had attached it as instructed what they had received was a blank document. Somewhere between me attaching it and them opening it it had been wiped clean. OK, I can accept that but why has it taken over five weeks of hassle on my part to sort it out. On receipt of my blank claim the claims handler should have notified one of the agents so they could notify me and ask me to resend a completed form. This hadn’t been done. Rachael did say that they were going to instigate an internal investigation into why this happened and why it has taken so long to sort out but that is something I’ll never hear about. My take on it is that the claims handler omitted to do his job and when I started to rattle the cage they had spotted their mistake and tried to bury it under a mountain of confusion.
So now, after seven weeks, umpteen phone calls, three complaints and one tweet (you could almost set it to music) I have received all the paperwork to complete and submit my claim by post. As I suspected right at the beginning of this farce. I am now waiting until the holiday season is well and truly over, the post is more reliable and folks are back at work.
A little postscript:
On 28th December I received an email asking, since I had made a recent claim for my pension Return Of Funds, for my review of the service. I’ll let you imagine how I answered that!
Another postscript:
On 30th December I received a letter from Prudential along with a cheque for compensation as an apology for the delay and the stress this has caused. The letter stated that my complaint had been upheld since their investigations had shown that I had not been given the correct information during my first call on 11 November; that the forwarded claim form must be printed out and returned by post; and the mistake had gone unnoticed so therefore had never been rectified during subsequent communications.
This is exactly the sort of thing that happened to me with Bulb when I tried to get them to pay the excess in my account with them into my bank account. As we know they are now in special administration hence all the hassle. I haven’t had a statement since July and apparently am now over £400 in credit with them. I have managed to work out that I’m actually about even having used more gas through winter. If I end up in the red they can go whistle for their money.
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