Taking advantage of an old man - Bad Building society.

tifrap_2

This is something that has been eating away at me for a few years now - I just need to share it.

About 6 years ago my (then) 80 year old father began to show signs of dementia - among his early flights of fancy was a recurring subject that used to get him extremely upset, it involved him saying that he was being bullied and robbed by the man at the building society.

We passed it off as a figment of his imagination, until one day he came home in a state of distress and we discovered that he had been to his building society (abbey) with "all his papers" - he also said that he had been to another bank to get some help.

Perplexed we looked Inside his carrier bag and found several bond certificates and account books with abbey. a while later we got a phone call from a young woman in a different building society (brittania) saying that he had visited her, and she was so concerned with his story that she had helped him fill out a form for the banking ombudsman - so we decided to check on his story, and we discovered that one of the large bonds that he had held for over ten years had never paid him any interest, but that the interest had been withdrawn. After contacting Abbey for clarification, they failed to find any record of the money being withdrawn, but insisted that he must have done so.

My father insisted that the building society had advised him to pay the interest money into a 'special account' and that they gave him £20 in cash.

We embarked on a campaign to discover what had happened to the interest (totaling around £3000.00) from abbey, who could offer no solution other than an undated unsigned withdrawal slip (the sort that you get your balance hand written on). The moment that we suggested that there may be some dishonesty on the part of an employee at abbey, they refused to discuss the issue further until they had looked into it.

Several months later they confirmed that they had done no wrong and saw no irregularities.

With my fathers permission, we assembled all of his bank and building society accounts and found that on the bond in question, no interest had ever been paid to him, yet it was shown as not being added to the total value of the bond - it was dissappearing somewhere.

We applied to the Ombudsman and made our case, which in time was decided that; The bond had returned no interest in its ten year duration, but was not mis-sold to him.
The letter that we received took great pains to explain that the issue could only be considered as a case of mis-selling, and that the amount of return on the investment was not subject to the investigation.
It was not a high risk bond, it supposedly had a guaranteed return, a second identical bond had returned over £3000 in interest to my father over the same ten year period.

As the Ombudsman had been involved, abbey were no longer able to discuss the issue, at all.

We were stuffed - someone had benefited from the bond, not my father, and by now he was too incoherent to have a meaningful conversation with, in fact we gained power of attorney shortly after the ombudsmans findings were given.

The strangest thing was that in settling his financial affairs, we discovered that all of his bonds had been cashed, during the dispute, possibly by my father, we will never know, but none of the original certificates had been surrendered - and that the closing balances that appeared in his standard pass books accounted for all but one of the bonds, the no-interest bond.

Abbey would not comment further. nor did they ever offer anything resembling an apology.
The ombudsman advised rather cryptically that we might like to find other forms of redress.

My father died a year and a half ago - made miserable by the whole affair.
His death was difficult, as is every decline through dementia - the issue of the missing interest took a back seat.
Now i fear it is too late to persue this.

Thank you for reading this and letting me get it off my chest.

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I considered whether to name the building society in question, and decided that I should in order to differentiate the wonderful caring service shown by the Brittania, who went out of their way to assist my father when he wasn't even a customer.

I am not sure if it is libelous to mention the South Norwood branch of Abbey as the branch that treated my father so poorly, or the closed ranks of the central complaints office of Abbey, but if it is, I would welcome a dialogue with them, as the chaotic figures and incorrect serial numbers that they supplied us with during our enquiries, were clarified by the ombudsman to something that still would be difficult for them to explain without some admission of guilt.

dacouch

Try writing to Jessica at the Telegraph, she wins lots of battles with the Abbey (She gets lots of complaints about them) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/consumertips/jessicainvestigates/

Takoda

That's a terrible story tifrap. Abbey should be ashamed of themselves. I will never have anything to do with them now.

sagalout1954

Abbey clearly behaved very badly towards your father, if Brittania were concerned it's a shame Abbey weren't, sadly I doubt that's unique. Our neighbour started slipping down the dementia slope and just about EVERYONE the poor woman came into contact with ripped her off!

Sounds like you've tracked all the monies from his bonds, though perhaps NOT what happened to it after he closed them (if anything like my poor neighbour, every man and his dog seems to have had her cash - in spades. She was selling shares, writing cheques, withdrawing cash ALL OVER THE PLACE, family never fully discovered who had most of it).

So for you 'just' the interest from one bond is missing (not unusual to still have all the certificates - we do too, even though the money has been moved/withdrawn). When you say Abbey investigated and found no wrongdoing (well, they would say that wouldn't they), was the investigation by their fraud dept? They have NO record of the interest being withdrawn apart from an undated unsigned withdrawal slip surfacing. So from their side of the fence the interest MUST have been withdrawn - you have no record of it being received but they've decided they must be right and you must be wrong and they don't care WHO might have had it!

Nip to the CAB (also, he was in his 80's - how old are you because Age Concern have access to freebie legal advice [or do you have any on your household insurance], perhaps they can explain the cryptic option of "finding another form of redress" given to you by the Ombudsman).

Good luck.