Previous Employer stole my pension contributions

Langtang

KevCan86 said:

Hello all,

Can you really just send someone a letter and if there is no response go ahead steal their money, surely at minimum several letters, a call, a visit from a representative would be necessary. If that's the case I'll just write to my car lease company and say if i don't hear back in 1 week then the car is legally mine and no more payments will be made, thanks. Obviously that is ridiculous but  basically the same thing in my opinion.

Obviously that is ridiculous, but can you imagine the lease company doing what you did and either ignoring your letter or claiming that they don't remember seeing it/didn't understand it?

No, I imagine that they'd write back to you in double quick time, as that money is vitally important to them.

elouise01582

When I left working for HSBC for 1 year I had been a member of their money purchase occupational pension which had mainly employer contributions.  These were valued at £6,500 and I was written too shortly after leaving with an explanation that I needed to transfer the monies elsewhere or they would just refund me my own contributions - around £1,200.  The deadline was around 6 months after I left.  I communicated with them so they knew I was investigating the transfer out option and transferred the monies out around 7 months after I left.  It was reading the letter that was so important and communicating my intentions to my ex-employer.  I was around 44 at the time so realised how important it was.  Back in my 20s I had worked somewhere for 9 months and took the refund of my contributions which I was taxed on for that privilege - only around £300 worth but I learned right then it was the wrong thing to do. Your ex-employer has done nothing wrong and has acted within the scheme rules - just put it down to experience and learn from it.  They can indeed just send you a letter - perfectly legal to do that.

Marcon

KevCan86 said:

Thrugelmir said:

KevCan86 said:

I still think it was a bit of a shady practice but as you all say they were legally correct. 

Nothing shady. As was totally written in black and white. Not least a 3 month time window in which you could have taken action. 

Well I agree that they followed their rules and it seems that I didn't read these at the time, which has worked out nicely for them and no doubt will have happened to some other people in my situation netting such employers some nice cash back.

Lesson learned on my part and i'll move on wiser from it, but I will say just because something is written in black and white doesn't make it a good system. 

It does if you read it - and happily most people are now cottoning on to the need to do so. You will have received a clearly worded letter, which you didn't bother to read. 

KevCan86

Marcon said:

It does if you read it - and happily most people are now cottoning on to the need to do so. You will have received a clearly worded letter, which you didn't bother to read. 

My point was the fate of something as important a pension pot shouldn't depend on  something as fallible as the process of sending a time limited standard letter. There are a million reasons why a letter could be lost, missed, not sent, misunderstood, accidently binned, sent to old address, being unwell or overseas ect ect. Clearly it's a bad process favouring the employers who will have been refunded every time someone didn't take action within the time period.

cloud_dog

Personal responsibility I'm afraid, there is no getting around it.