NS&I not providing a valuation of accounts after 4 months of requesting it.

Brynsam

oscaritomiranda said:

I requested a valuation of my ex-partners accounts for probate purposes 4 months ago. After hours on the phone being on hold or speaking to advisors who could not provide any useful information I am losing the will to live. I have filed a complaint with them (it has not been looked at it either) and just recently with the Financial Ombudsman. There is obviously an issue with my request but no one is able to tell me what it is so I can act on it. I also understand the coronavirus pandemic has increase the response times, but 4 months is beyond excessive.
Has anyone else gone through the same predicament with NS&I? Can anyone offer any advice?

Did you complete NS&I's bereavement form? If so, I'm not sure which category you believe you fall into in terms of people entitled to submit the form - as an ex-partner you might not actually fall into any of them, which could be causing the problem (although why NS&I couldn't tell you that is beyond me):

A relative or other person should claim according to this order of priority:

1. Widow/Widower or surviving civil partner

2. Children }
3. Parent(s)
4. Brother/Sister
5. Other relative or entitled person

Taken from https://www.nsandi.com/files/asset/pdf/death-claims-form.pdf

lisyloo

Brynsam said:

oscaritomiranda said:

I requested a valuation of my ex-partners accounts for probate purposes 4 months ago. After hours on the phone being on hold or speaking to advisors who could not provide any useful information I am losing the will to live. I have filed a complaint with them (it has not been looked at it either) and just recently with the Financial Ombudsman. There is obviously an issue with my request but no one is able to tell me what it is so I can act on it. I also understand the coronavirus pandemic has increase the response times, but 4 months is beyond excessive.
Has anyone else gone through the same predicament with NS&I? Can anyone offer any advice?

 (although why NS&I couldn't tell you that is beyond me):

I suspect this is because the call center people are not the same as the back office people and can only deal with simple queries.
we wanted to know if we needed probate and nsi do not have hard and fast rules on this.
i got some advice on what was likely but no straight answer from the call center and no offer to contact the back office - only wait for the official answer.
in the end we did go ahead with probate but before they gave us a straight answer.

DairyQueen

lisyloo said:

DairyQueen said:

Nightmare dealing with NS&I on deceased estates at the moment. We have been waiting for almost 5 weeks for them to release the funds in late mum-in-law's account and no end in sight.

Sorry for your loss
 Would you be kind enough to keep us updated on that please

Thankyou and will update.

Now almost six weeks since probate form sent. Lloyds released funds in two weeks. We are ready to distribute the estate - NS&I is the spanner in the works.

DairyQueen

Postscript to my last post and update as promised...

NS&I paid-out today. So, just about 6 weeks.