ISA transfer from Virgin Money to Barclays declined (cannot locate account) - how to proceed?

boingy

The sad fact is that both organisations are guaranteed to "not uphold" your complaint and will then invite you to take it to the ombudsman who is mostly toothless, especially in cases where no money has been lost. Vote with your feet.

 

[Deleted User]

eskbanker said:

FOS can't and won't arbitrate in the event of conflicting information being provided by two institutions - their remit is to review escalated complaints made to individual institutions and to ascertain if you've been treated fairly by each one, rather than linking them together and attributing blame.

you mean I need to escalate to FO on one-by-one basis, i.e VM and Barclays separately (because I don't really know who was at fault)?

[Deleted User]

boingy said:

The sad fact is that both organisations are guaranteed to "not uphold" your complaint and will then invite you to take it to the ombudsman who is mostly toothless, especially in cases where no money has been lost. Vote with your feet.

That's sad to learn.. is it your personal experience?

inspectorperez

Sad to read of the continued difficulties with Virgin Money. Even worse to read some of the experiences described on Trustpilot.

It seems that some former customers actually chose to forego the ISA status of their investments just to be able to withdraw their funds from the organisation!

This thought did occur to me last October when I was dealing with maturing ISAs in Virgin Money but eventually took the soft option of reinvesting to avoid BP reaching boiling point. It seems that things haven't improved!

eskbanker

[Deleted User] said:

eskbanker said:

FOS can't and won't arbitrate in the event of conflicting information being provided by two institutions - their remit is to review escalated complaints made to individual institutions and to ascertain if you've been treated fairly by each one, rather than linking them together and attributing blame.

you mean I need to escalate to FO on one-by-one basis, i.e VM and Barclays separately (because I don't really know who was at fault)?

If you've already complained to both institutions separately then you're free to escalate one or both of these complaints to FOS if you've had their final response (or eight weeks have passed) and you're unhappy with the resolution, but I'm just highlighting that FOS aren't forensic investigators with any responsibility to decide who's at fault, and will simply look at how each has dealt with your complaint.  For each complaint, what was the outcome you were seeking (please don't say that you're wanting one or both of them to formally accept liability!)?

[Deleted User]

inspectorperez said:

This thought did occur to me last October when I was dealing with maturing ISAs in Virgin Money but eventually took the soft option of reinvesting to avoid BP reaching boiling point. It seems that things haven't improved!

VM are still bad, unfortunately.

eskbanker said:

Deleted_User said:

eskbanker said:

FOS can't and won't arbitrate in the event of conflicting information being provided by two institutions - their remit is to review escalated complaints made to individual institutions and to ascertain if you've been treated fairly by each one, rather than linking them together and attributing blame.

you mean I need to escalate to FO on one-by-one basis, i.e VM and Barclays separately (because I don't really know who was at fault)?

If you've already complained to both institutions separately then you're free to escalate one or both of these complaints to FOS if you've had their final response (or eight weeks have passed) and you're unhappy with the resolution, but I'm just highlighting that FOS aren't forensic investigators with any responsibility to decide who's at fault, and will simply look at how each has dealt with your complaint.  For each complaint, what was the outcome you were seeking (please don't say that you're wanting one or both of them to formally accept liability!)?

Well, speaking about VM:
I provided them with a letter from Barclays stating my VM ISA account details and that Clydesdale bank was unable to locate it.
VM just responds that they did not receive any transfer requests.
I asked VM to compensate loss of interest (1+ month of £60k sitting at 3% instead of 4%) and my time phoning VM and Barclays as they kept sending me back to other party.
VM is only happy to pay £35 for the time spent on the phone. 

Barclays haven't responded, they are still "investigating" since February.

boingy

Deleted_User said:

boingy said:

The sad fact is that both organisations are guaranteed to "not uphold" your complaint and will then invite you to take it to the ombudsman who is mostly toothless, especially in cases where no money has been lost. Vote with your feet.

That's sad to learn.. is it your personal experience?

Yep. I've made probably 6 or 7 complaints over the years, not to these specific banks but I've seen enough to spot the pattern. Unless you have unarguably lost out financially then the banks will respond politely but firmly with a rejection of the complaint. Sometime they credit your account with a tenner as a goodwill gesture. Then they give you the details of the Ombudsman, safe in the knowledge that most people wont bother to go that route.

I have taken that route twice without success. Both times the Ombudsman was mildly sympathetic but agreed with the bank. 

It doesn't cost you anything except time (and maybe stress!) to go to the FO but you have to answer these questions on the form:

Have you been affected financially or otherwise?

How would you like them to put things right?

It took about three months for the FO to reach a decision.

eskbanker

[Deleted User] said:

eskbanker said:

Deleted_User said:

eskbanker said:

FOS can't and won't arbitrate in the event of conflicting information being provided by two institutions - their remit is to review escalated complaints made to individual institutions and to ascertain if you've been treated fairly by each one, rather than linking them together and attributing blame.

you mean I need to escalate to FO on one-by-one basis, i.e VM and Barclays separately (because I don't really know who was at fault)?

If you've already complained to both institutions separately then you're free to escalate one or both of these complaints to FOS if you've had their final response (or eight weeks have passed) and you're unhappy with the resolution, but I'm just highlighting that FOS aren't forensic investigators with any responsibility to decide who's at fault, and will simply look at how each has dealt with your complaint.  For each complaint, what was the outcome you were seeking (please don't say that you're wanting one or both of them to formally accept liability!)?

Well, speaking about VM:
I provided them with a letter from Barclays stating my VM ISA account details and that Clydesdale bank was unable to locate it.
VM just responds that they did not receive any transfer requests.
I asked VM to compensate loss of interest (1+ month of £60k sitting at 3% instead of 4%) and my time phoning VM and Barclays as they kept sending me back to other party.
VM is only happy to pay £35 for the time spent on the phone. 

Barclays haven't responded, they are still "investigating" since February.

What resolution were you asking for from Barclays?  If it's long past the time for them to respond to your complaint, why haven't you escalated to FOS already?

If you remain keen to get to the bottom of exactly what happened, you could always submit Subject Access Requests to each organisation (make sure you get the correct legal entity), requesting copies of all correspondence and everything else associated with the transfer, e.g. the actual notification from Clydesdale to Barclays saying that the account couldn't be located, which may shed more light on the details....

[Deleted User]

eskbanker said:

[Deleted User] said:

eskbanker said:

Deleted_User said:

eskbanker said:

FOS can't and won't arbitrate in the event of conflicting information being provided by two institutions - their remit is to review escalated complaints made to individual institutions and to ascertain if you've been treated fairly by each one, rather than linking them together and attributing blame.

you mean I need to escalate to FO on one-by-one basis, i.e VM and Barclays separately (because I don't really know who was at fault)?

If you've already complained to both institutions separately then you're free to escalate one or both of these complaints to FOS if you've had their final response (or eight weeks have passed) and you're unhappy with the resolution, but I'm just highlighting that FOS aren't forensic investigators with any responsibility to decide who's at fault, and will simply look at how each has dealt with your complaint.  For each complaint, what was the outcome you were seeking (please don't say that you're wanting one or both of them to formally accept liability!)?

Well, speaking about VM:
I provided them with a letter from Barclays stating my VM ISA account details and that Clydesdale bank was unable to locate it.
VM just responds that they did not receive any transfer requests.
I asked VM to compensate loss of interest (1+ month of £60k sitting at 3% instead of 4%) and my time phoning VM and Barclays as they kept sending me back to other party.
VM is only happy to pay £35 for the time spent on the phone. 

Barclays haven't responded, they are still "investigating" since February.

What resolution were you asking for from Barclays?  If it's long past the time for them to respond to your complaint, why haven't you escalated to FOS already?

If you remain keen to get to the bottom of exactly what happened, you could always submit Subject Access Requests to each organisation (make sure you get the correct legal entity), requesting copies of all correspondence and everything else associated with the transfer, e.g. the actual notification from Clydesdale to Barclays saying that the account couldn't be located, which may shed more light on the details....

I asked Barclays and Virgin Money to compensate for my time spent on phone calls and a loss of interest.
They came back to me just days ago and all they were willing to do was to say "We are sorry".
Regarding the ISA transfer they mentioned that "When Virgin Money acquired Clydesdale Bank, there is a known issue whereby some customer detail hadn't been transferred over to them properly and this is out of our control".
And before that final response I received a letter from Barclays dated 2 Jun (!) regarding my "recent" transfer request saying that Clydesdale Bank responded that the account I had asked to transfer from them to Barclays is closed (not unable to locate), which is true. Very same account details (apart from Roll/Ref number that was 000000000 in the first case and n/a in the last, I didn't provide it to them anyway as there was no such input field on the transfer form).

I also received a final response from Virgin Money where they just repeat that they have no record of the receipt of any transfer request from Barclays on my behalf. "Any issue you had faced with regards to the request was due to the fact that Barclays has not updated their own systems to reflect Clydesdale bank is now Virgin Money with sort code starting 82".

So it's still impossible to tell who did it wrong and the only way to do it is to request all trensfer-related information from both banks.
Could you please tell me how to do it properly as I have never done it before and would be grateful for any advice.

masonic

Deleted_User said:
Could you please tell me how to do it properly as I have never done it before and would be grateful for any advice.

The process is very simple, you can start it here: https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/make-complaint

You would need to make a complaint that is specific to the organisation you are complaining about, i.e. what you think they did wrong, and how that impacted you in terms of inconvenience and any losses suffered.

The Financial Ombudsman Service will be able to get hold of all of the transfer-related information and make a judgement on why the transfer wasn't successfully actioned. They don't need you to do any detective work yourself, so you can restrict each complaint to the relevant facts around the non-transfer of your ISA and what you were told about each bank by the other.