Scottish widows pension transfer nightmare

Marcon

Deleted_User said:

Might be worth contacting a newspaper.

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2022/sep/29/scottish-widows-has-been-so-heartless-after-my-wife-died-of-cancer

What on earth for? The situations aren't remotely comparable. 

Markp1984 said:

Thanks for all the replies. It's hard to understand what's happening at SW, Vanguard have actually tried to call them 4 times to my knowledge on my behalf, without success too. 
On Saturday I filled in the complaint form, nothing back yet, but hopefully something will happen later this week.
I've totally lost faith and trust in the company, I just want someone to speak to, I'm sure it's an easy fix. 

To say 'nothing back yet' when it's only Tuesday afternoon, and you didn't submit your complaint until Saturday, is wholly unrealistic and you are setting yourself up for disappointment. Try and get this in proportion; it's annoying, but that's all. It's a massive overreaction to do otherwise.

michaels

Last time I tried to use the complaint form it wouldn't post despite trying in mutiple browsers - I guess if you can now submit a complaint that is a win.... 

Markp1984

michaels said:

Last time I tried to use the complaint form it wouldn't post despite trying in mutiple browsers - I guess if you can now submit a complaint that is a win.... 

This is the link I used
https://adviser.scottishwidows.co.uk/forms/complaints.html
Worked fine for me (android, chrome), and gave a confirmation on screen when I'd sent it. Hope it now works for you too. 

[Deleted User]

Marcon said:

Deleted_User said:

Might be worth contacting a newspaper.

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2022/sep/29/scottish-widows-has-been-so-heartless-after-my-wife-died-of-cancer

What on earth for? The situations aren't remotely comparable. 

End of August was 2 months ago. If a pension provider is non-responsive for 2 months while people have no access to their funds and are forced to stay out of the market, its a major problem. Would bother me. Big time. And if it’s happening to multiple people then its very much newsworthy.

xylophone

I am coming to believe that many financial providers  have come to the point of simply saying "like it or lump it" to their customers - government agencies are not much better?

With regard to commercial entities, the usual response is "vote with your feet"......but what happens when the customers try to do just that?

The usual answer  to incompetence and delay....."technical/computer/systems problems.....how can the customer win?

And as for the government.....sadly, there's nowhere else to go.....

Markp1984

Still nothing, not even the acknowledgement within 5 working days of my complaint.
17 days since my first email, still unreplied to.
As I've read online more about this I can see how many hundreds /thousands of people are really struggling with issues with this company, their reviews are appalling compared to other large providers like aj bell, Vanguard and fidelity.
I've documented all my contact(or attempts at contact) with them, ready for the ombudsman, hoping with a bit of luck maybe they'll sort it out before it comes to that. 

dunstonh

As I've read online more about this I can see how many hundreds /thousands of people are really struggling with issues with this company, their reviews are appalling compared to other large providers like aj bell, Vanguard and fidelity.

AJ Bell, Vanguard and Fidelity are very small compared to SW.    For example, SW has 6 million customers and hundreds, if not thousands, of different types of policies.  AJ Bell has 440,000 customers, and you can count its product range on one hand.
 
Modern platform software makes service a heck of a lot easier than legacy contract servicing.  However, size has little to do with it.  Aviva and Standard Life, for example, have excellent records on transfers.   Most Aviva & SL pensions are transferred out within 3 days of the request being received.

The big problem here is that Lloyds has starved SW of money.  It hasn't spent money on new products.  Its individual pension products are old-fashioned and comparable with those around 2005.   Lloyds doesn't appear to have much faith in SW either as its new branch based robo-guidance investment option didn't use the SW branding or staff.    Aviva and Std Life, for example, both invested heavily into platform software and kept their legacy systems updated (Aviva is not as strong with more recent purchases, such as AXA Sun Life and Friends Provident policies but that is understandable and improving).

Lloyds hasn't had a good track record with insurance companies it has bought.  Hill Samuel & Clerical Medical were killed off and SW has gone downhill.   It's original own brand, Black Horse Life, used to be quite good on service, but that went downhill when they moved it out of Chatham up to Scotland to be handled by Scottish Widows.

SW have some new systems going on at the moment (not sure if it's changing in-house systems or moving to third party) and it appears to be that which is creating the current problem.

Markp1984

They have now acknowledged( just a receipt) my complaint with a letter.
I'm hoping they'll get on to the next stage of looking at what I've written soon, at least it is something.