Virgin Money's new pension terms

engagedandopen

Pat38493 said:

I’m a bit confused - are you saying that you have a Stakeholder pension with Virgin Money and they are trying to force you to close and transfer it, or are you saying you are transferring it on purpose and this is in the small print of the agreement?

It's the former, Pat - and they are not maintaining the stakeholder requirement of minimum £20 - it might seem trivial, but it is still the case that they are insisting on a slightly higher minimum pot of £50.  In fact, they have just delayed it again into the New Year.

Qyburn

Albermarle said:

For some reason that I do not understand, some peoples behaviour towards customer facing staff, including more physical attacks on shop workers, has got worse since the Pandemic. 

Let me prefix this, do not think I am justifying any abuse of or discourtesy to staff.

It's definitely the case that call centre service has been going downhill over the last few years. Not just cheapskate outfits, for example I had to phone Lloyds, Virgin and American Express with the last week or so. In all cases the process you have to follow before even speaking to a person is enough to drive you up the wall what with fighting block headed voice recognition systems, IVRs that don't seem to list what you're looking for, and long long explanations of how their web site is the best way to do everything except what you're calling about.

engagedandopen

Then there're the occasions when it seems as though the agent in a particular department you've waited to be transferred to just can't be bothered to answer the call and then they cut you off.

Marcon

engagedandopen said:

Pat38493 said:

I’m a bit confused - are you saying that you have a Stakeholder pension with Virgin Money and they are trying to force you to close and transfer it, or are you saying you are transferring it on purpose and this is in the small print of the agreement?

It's the former, Pat - and they are not maintaining the stakeholder requirement of minimum £20 - it might seem trivial, but it is still the case that they are insisting on a slightly higher minimum pot of £50.  In fact, they have just delayed it again into the New Year.

It's not trivial to anyone who can't afford more than the stakeholder minimum payments. It's one reason why I think they still have a place, however much others deride them.

When stakeholder legislation was first introduced, there was a requirement that any stakeholder provider who wished to stop providing a stakeholder scheme could pass it to another stakeholder provider (who couldn't refuse it). It caused a fair amount of merriment in the industry, since we could see providers cheerfully saddling a rival with a heap of non-profitable business they didn't want.

I presume that somewhere along the line that has been overridden - I don't know because I've never needed to know - but it might be interesting to ask your current stakeholder provider to clarify the legislation on which they are seeking to rely in order to close your stakeholder pension, rather than transfer it to another stakeholder provider.

engagedandopen

That's affirming, Marcon.  I probably have mentioned it to them along with other things; the overall customer service response has been pretty uninformed and error-prone from Virgin Money.  Like, I tried to change my retirement date - it still says "your retirement age is ." on their app and online service.  First, they said they'd done it.  Then a statement arrived indicating they hadn't.  Then they apologised, said they'd done it and sent a small amount of compensation.  Then, several months later again a document randomly arrived saying it had been changed - this is now about a year later.

I'm still adopting a skeptical, wait-and-see approach with a tiny amount in there - 0.75% is no longer competitive (even Standard Life now have a pension with a default charge of 0.55%) and (like NatWest Invest) they keep promising drawdown and investment pathways will be added, but they have a minimum protected age of 55 and are now owned by Nationwide.

dunstonh

I'm still adopting a skeptical, wait-and-see approach with a tiny amount in there - 0.75% is no longer competitive (even Standard Life now have a pension with a default charge of 0.55%)

Plenty of people with Standard Life pensions are on 0.3x% p.a   

izawa

Closing accounts based on abusing staff is fine. This should never be tolerated, everyone deserves respect. we pay taxes so giving respect should be of prime importance

engagedandopen

izawa said:

Closing accounts based on abusing staff is fine. This should never be tolerated, everyone deserves respect. we pay taxes so giving respect should be of prime importance

You can't just close a pension pot account, izawa.

engagedandopen

dunstonh said:

I'm still adopting a skeptical, wait-and-see approach with a tiny amount in there - 0.75% is no longer competitive (even Standard Life now have a pension with a default charge of 0.55%)

Plenty of people with Standard Life pensions are on 0.3x% p.a   

I meant their new, cut-down personal pension dunstonh.

dunstonh

engagedandopen said:

dunstonh said:

I'm still adopting a skeptical, wait-and-see approach with a tiny amount in there - 0.75% is no longer competitive (even Standard Life now have a pension with a default charge of 0.55%)

Plenty of people with Standard Life pensions are on 0.3x% p.a   

I meant their new, cut-down personal pension dunstonh.

Ahh.
That will be the Phoenix Standard Life plan rather than the Abrdn Standard Life plans that went before.
The new one doesnt look attractive.