Anyone used mypensionexpert.com

jayjays

Yeah its fair to say my £1725 was definitely the easiest money he had ever made.
I was keen to get to the Gym so the whole conversation only lasted 25mins(tops), had I gone down the Drawdown route it may well have been a very different experience.
He did remind me of all of the options available but for me this was just a formality, my mind was already made up over several weeks previous, mainly by people on here. both through direct suggestions and reading other peoples threads ( thanks again ).

My pension experts standard paperwork seems to supply 4 initial quotes :-Invested Annuity..Lifetime Annuity ..Fixed Term Annuity and Flexi-Acess Drawdown

jayjays

I will say, my provider does have some "eye watering" charges once my 5 years is up, but my plan is to get out and do something different with the balance during the 30 days I am allowed (charge free I believe)

Savvysaveradviser

dunstonh wrote: »

It is funny that they do not make any reference to being independent on the website. It is one of the key differentials in quality.

Did they complete a factfind, budget analysis and cover off the various drawdown options? Or did they limit themselves to effectively do what you wanted them to arrange?

I am wary on the basis that their site is clearly biased to annuities. IFAs should be free of any bias and recommend the options that suitable. My experience is that people that come to be me pre-conceived ideas tend to end up with a different outcome under advice to what they thought was right for them. Usually, because they were not fully aware of all the options available.

Certainly for annuities, using an IFA is no-brainer giving the level of haggling that goes on between providers and the IFA can play on that whereas the online comparison sites tend not to. Plus, time and again it has been said that individuals filling in their own medical form tend to leave off information that IFAs are more likely to obtain. As information can only improve the annuity rate and not reduce it, that is important. Plus, the commission rates often taken by the online sites is around 3%. So, any fee that equates to less than 3% means the outcome should be better.

Dunstonh - why are you so anti this company? Have you visited trust pilot for their reviews? Top in category with over 1,200 5 star reviews? I have used trust pilot myself and their algorithm ensures scam or fake reviews are removed, they actually charge for businesses to use their review service so My Pension Expert are paying money to expose their customer reviews which they are rightly proud of, why are you so against services like this? It’s clear they are IFAs as people who have used their service have expressed. I agree with you on Non advised brokers but this business has so many 5 star reviews and also further searches shows they have won customer service awards for excellence, why are you so defensive of this service is this something you envy?

dunstonh

Dunstonh - why are you so anti this company?

Really? some call it a scam or take it part the really poor grammar and you select my comments?

Have you visited trust pilot for their reviews?

No. Not wasting my time viewing pointless ratings that are easily manipulated. I have seen scams with top ratings on trustpilot.

It!!!8217;s clear they are IFAs as people who have used their service have expressed.

yet the website didnt say so and they clearly have a bias towards annuities. IFAs shouldnt have any bias.

why are you so defensive of this service is this something you envy?

When you go back to work tomorrow, why don't you sort your website out rather than post on here pretending to be a consumer?

jamesd

dunstonh wrote: »

Why are you referring to them as IFAs? Nowhere on their site does it say they are IFAs. Nowhere on their site does it say they do the same thing as an IFA.

"As a company of qualified Independent Financial Advisers"

Of course it might have been changed since your posts.

Their case studies don't seem too bad, though I agree with you about the apparent annuity focus and have my own reservations about not noticing any mention of state pension deferral in the switch to guaranteed income case study.

Malthusian

jamesd wrote: »

"As a company of qualified Independent Financial Advisers"

Of course it might have been changed since your posts.

It hasn't, but that About Us page (https://www.mypensionexpert.com/about/) is orphaned - as far as I can tell you can't navigate to it from within the website. You can only find it by using Google or the URL.

The navigation bar has a section called "Why MyPensionExpert?" (https://www.mypensionexpert.com/why-choose-our-annuity-rates/) which I took to be their "about us" page. It does not mention that they are IFAs. So like DunstonH I concluded that the company wasn't IFA because what is to all intents and purposes their "about us" page doesn't claim they are an IFA.

According to archive.org, the About Us page was linked from the front page in September 2017. Since that date, the website has been re-designed and the About Us page is no longer part of the navigation menu.

It is quite possible that the https://www.mypensionexpert.com/about/ page is no longer accurate, and that since September 2017 mypensionexpert.com has moved from "independent" to "restricted" status. Which is why it was de-linked - although it should have been removed from the website entirely. (Actually scratch that, because the anonymous representative of the company above is still claiming they are IFAs.)

Savvysaveradviser

No. Not wasting my time viewing pointless ratings that are easily manipulated. I have seen scams with top ratings on trustpilot.

No you haven!!!8217;t.

It!!!8217;s clear they are IFAs as people who have used their service have expressed

Check the FCA register, there are multiple IFAs registered for this firm and have you seen who the chairman is??

When you go back to work tomorrow, why don't you sort your website out rather than post on here pretending to be a consumer?

Wow, with over 10,000 posts how do you find time to do any work, you must be very good at your job. I have no affiliation to this company but sick of seeing people trying to bring down companies that are achieving good customer outcomes.

dunstonh

No you haven!!!8217;t.

Yes, I have and they have been posted on threads on this board too. If you think that Trustpilot is reliable then you are sorely mistaken. There will be genuine reviews (although often you question the value of them if the person got what they asked for and didn't get what they really needed). You will also see self-promoting reviews and downright fraudulent reviews.

Check the FCA register, there are multiple IFAs registered for this firm and have you seen who the chairman is??

Since when does the FCA show whether they are independent or restricted? Please point us to the section that says they are independent.

Wow, with over 10,000 posts how do you find time to do any work, you must be very good at your job.

Yes I am.

I have no affiliation to this company but sick of seeing people trying to bring down companies that are achieving good customer outcomes.

Yes, I am sure we all believe you signed up to a pretty obscure thread in a quieter section of the website for that reason. Why are you not posting on all the threads that criticise companies then?

jamesd

Malthusian wrote: »

It hasn't, but that About Us page (https://www.mypensionexpert.com/about/) is orphaned - as far as I can tell you can't navigate to it from within the website. You can only find it by using Google or the URL.

Click on Why MyPensionExpert? on the navigation bar to get to here. Near the bottom of the page is "To find out more about My Pension Expert click here to read the about us page." The word here is a link to the about page I gave earlier with the text "a company of qualified Independent Financial Advisers".

An alternative is to click on Annuity Calculator in the navigation bar to get to here with the text "Your Annuity quotations will be provided by our leading Independent Financial Advisers"

mum_of_joey

My experience of them has not been good though I'm not saying that they're a scam - I am sure that they're not. But the particular chap I spoke to was very pushy, and, though he was efficient about sending stuff, I just felt 'browbeaten' and refused to sign the permission for him to contact my pension company before I had a chance to breathe. He said that it was just a formality, and kept trying to persuade me (but didn't) but his further attitude didn't sit well with me.

I contacted him today to say that a good friend had offered to pay for me to make use of his own pension person, as I am not well-off (the Mypensionexpert chap was charging 5% on £22,500) but of course, my friend only meant his own chap, not someone he had no knowledge of.

The reply from the Mypensionexpert chap was: 'I find it very strange that your friend will only pay for you to use his own pension person', implying, I suppose. that my friend was somehow up to no good. I was very cross at that and replied that there was nothing sinister about it at all, as why should my friend pay good money to use someone he's never heard of, with no known track record, when he has a perfectly good chap who has been dealing with his pensions for years? No response from that, of course, as he saw his 5% going down the drain.

Also, though I suppose I shouldn't expect a pension expert to be an expert on everything else financial, when I mentioned that my benefits might be affected by this pension, he said that he knew nothing about the effect of pensions on benefits, saying, 'Well, I've watched 'Can't Pay? We'll Take It Away!' on telly, so you'll have to find that out yourself.' Not even a hint of using his 5% commission to find out for me. Personally, I would have thought that the two are fairly closely linked, so that he SHOULD be aware of how benefits are affected, but perhaps I expect too much. I will contact the DWP myself.

So, not the best impression on me. The figures I was sent by him were the net figure after he had taken out his commission. When I said that I thought that the commission was quite high, he said, 'But it's already taken out of those figures!' I couldn't seem to get across to him that it doesn't matter how much he hides this commission, it's still money that I won't get. I have since seen that I'm not obliged to use a pension advisor on pensions under £30,000 (such as mine). He never told me that - I read it on one of these pages on this forum.

So, just my experience - probably not crooks, but I really didn't think much to them.