Compensation from pension provider, accept first offer?

shicky

Hello everyone,

I'll try to keep this short. I left company A and moved to company B in terms of my job, I later received a letter from company A's pension provider informing me that I needed to transfer out my pension or risk losing it in 4months.

I spent about 6weeks researching the best options and ended up going with company B's pension provider. I then completed the necessary forms and sent them the required docs. All was fine but a bit slow until I sent them the final set of documents. I sent it recorded and had a signature so knew it arrived a day after I sent it. However, upon ringing to check, they claimed the final set of documents were never sent.

I tried hard to get a quick turn around as we were around 2-3weeks before the proposed deadline. In the meantime I contacted company A pension provider and informed them of the problems, they said it was an soft deadline and would automatically slide if the issues were resolved...phew.

After much trouble, I got everything submitted to company B pension provider and received confirmation before the deadline.
At this point I raised a complaint due to the 'missing' letter and a stressful week involving 5 customer service calls where I was promised email copies of documents I never received. Their initial investigation has finished, they admitted they completely screwed up and had the letter all along and apologised for customer service handling. They have offered £200 in compensation.

To put it bluntly, this company has been horrible to deal with and in short do not seem very good. I'm wondering if anyone with better experience has negotiated compensation amounts and the right line to take with it? As it's their first offer, I'm assuming it can be increased but I'm unsure if this is a smart thing to do? Should I just be grateful for what I'm getting and take it?

Thanks for any guidance you can provide

[Deleted User]

I suppose one question is are you grateful for the £200 offer,my approach if i wasn't happy would be to suggest that i was looking for compensation more like £500 they can only say no,they may even say yes

dunstonh

They have offered £200 in compensation.

That is reasonable in the scale of compensation for clerical issues.

If you dont ask you dont get but it is in the ball park of what you would expect.

mania112

Company B's pension provider is Aviva wasn't it... come on, you can tell us!

xylophone

It was an (annoying and frustrating) clerical error.

You have incurred costs in postage etc, telephone calls and time.

The matter has now been resolved without cost to your pension.

Does the £200 cover the costs you have incurred with something over for inconvenience?

agarnett

mania112 wrote: »

Company B's pension provider is Aviva wasn't it... come on, you can tell us!

Yes I'd also bet on that! They can't seem to help trying to oil the wheels with the odd hundred quid here, and two hundred there! What a way to run a railway!

shicky

Hey everyone,

thank you very much for taking the time to reply. Based on the feedback here I think it's best to save myself the hassle and take the compensation offered currently which is more than fair.

In short I've seen a few people mention they negiotated compensation amounts and received much greater figures. I think I was just being greedy, attempting to get more and didn't want to be foolish accepting below the level I should be getting. It sounds like I'm being greedy and should be grateful for what I'm getting!

I won't be revealing company names I'm afraid!

mania112

i've recently had a similar issue with Aviva where they lost original pension transfer application forms.

So i had the embarrassing task of asking the client to sign some more. Before he'd returned them to me, the pension had been transferred (meaning Aviva had found the docs after all).

They didn't tell me any of this and I only found out by logging into my account on their website