Friends Life unobtainable?

gadgetmind

bigadaj wrote: »

Hopefully won't have to contact them too much.

That's the spirit. Imagine correspondence chess, played using moves conveyed by intercontinental snail mail, where the other player doesn't have any record of previous moves, a chess board, or any knowledge of the rules.

nearlyrich

If you have been calling on an 0870 number it's now disallowed by law to have premium rate numbers for customer services and you can't even have it with a message saying the number has been changed.

dunstonh

Brilliant, my new company pension is with friends life, and the fund choice and charges looked good.

FL is fine. I would say the FP side is better than the AXA Sun life side but they are fine if you use phone or post. You are unlikely to want much contact with them anyway. So, it is probably a non-issue unless you specifically want a company that deals with email communications.

Blue_Parrot

To my surprise, today I received a deeply encrypted email with a zip attachment ( even though everyone knows that all or most viruses are transmitted by opening zip attachments ) which lead to a link (only viable for One Hour) which lead to another email which finally lead to:

A reply from Friends Life. To the complaints left on their website.

I am surprised that they communicate in this way; what's wrong with phoning or writing a letter? From what I've heard, (some/many) people set their email applications up to automatically reject anything with a zip attachment, but anyway, they confirm that the complaint has been logged, that they (say they have) sent a letter on the 13th (not here yet) and that quote 'issues regarding the annual statement have now been resolved' unquote.

It also says 'you may email back....'
Underneath the sign-off, it says in bold 'do not reply to this email'.

So I suppose that's some sort of progress, albeit almost Kafkaesque.

gadgetmind

I had a six month email "discussion" with FL wherein I tried to explain that I wanted to do exactly what one of their own publications said I'd have to do to achieve a certain outcome. I finally got them to agree, but only by quoting their own words and pension legislation to them at length.

They are a funny bunch!

jem16

nearlyrich wrote: »

If you have been calling on an 0870 number it's now disallowed by law to have premium rate numbers for customer services and you can't even have it with a message saying the number has been changed.

Financial services are excluded from the legislation. FCA are looking to introduce something similar.

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showpost.php?p=65774618&postcount=1

Blue_Parrot

Update.

After 10 days I finally received the letter from this lot. There was not a single word of apology or explanation as to why they failed in their legal requirement to send a policy statement since 2011. The letter was the "usual" annual to confirm contributions. (It even says on it, that they are legally obliged to ask for this information every year!)

Meanwhile, since they have now obliged me by letting me see the state of this pension on-line, I immediately spotted that the National Insurance number is incorrect. I would have thought that that was a serious error? I have now filled in their on-line form, twice, asking what paperwork they need from this end to have them change it at their end.

This confirms my years-old theory: the bigger a company gets, the more inefficient it gets. IMO.

gadgetmind

Some large companies are ruthlessly efficient.

The critical factor seems to be if everyone (and I do mean everyone) in the organisation feels invested in - and is rewarded based upon - its success, and equally that they are negatively impacted by failure. And success/failure needs to be over multi-year periods, so no bonuses for just a few good months.

Note that I have met a few individuals within FL who really do seem to care, and can get a grasp on what needs to be done,, but the whole organisation seems to be creaking at the seams and they just don't get the backup they need.

Blue_Parrot

What's your opinion of them having had the wrong NI number all these years and what, if anything, would have been the implications had I not spotted it?

gadgetmind

I'm no expert.

But NI number is used for tracking lost pensions, checking you aren't contributing too much, etc.

Was the number way wrong? Could you have written it incorrectly on the paperwork? Was it right on earlier paperwork?