Cash ISA transferring - why do some make it so difficult?

Silw

I have been pulling my hair out with a transfer from Virgin to Secure Trust. Absolutely diabolical. As I have quite a lot of money in a cash ISA the delay has cost me upwards of £150. There is something that is making me extremely suspicious that the delays are to the previous providers advantage!. IE my money that was sitting with Virgin for nearly a month post my request to transfer to Secure trust and during this delay was earring the princely sum of 0. 25% interest instead of 5.21% that was offered by Secure Trust. I am NOT going to just accept this and go away. I read from above that one of my ideas to complain to the Financial Ombudsman…..seems fairly pointless from a previous posters experience. I have found out the email addresses of a few of the “ big cheeses” in Virgin so will write an epistle to them and am waiting from a call back from both Virgin and Secure Trust to lodge a complaint. With Mr Bates v The PO ringing in my ears ( poor souls) I am at least going to give my fight a go. Any advice would be appreciated. Doubt my MP would be of any use but I’ll bet you I am “ not the only one” that has experienced  
issues. Clearly from reading above I am not. I applied to transfer to Secure Trust on the 17th December, my ISA with Virgin matured on 24th December. Eventually after having lost count of phone calls and messages sent ( only 1 ever answered) from Virgin and promised call back from Secure Trust not materialising the transfer was completed today 16th January. Hopefully someone will be able to point me in the right direction to get some sort of recompense or at the very least improve the system so that other poor bu..ers don’t have to go through what I have. Thanks

boingy

Silw said:

I have been pulling my hair out with a transfer from Virgin to Secure Trust. Absolutely diabolical. As I have quite a lot of money in a cash ISA the delay has cost me upwards of £150. There is something that is making me extremely suspicious that the delays are to the previous providers advantage!. IE my money that was sitting with Virgin for nearly a month post my request to transfer to Secure trust and during this delay was earring the princely sum of 0. 25% interest instead of 5.21% that was offered by Secure Trust. I am NOT going to just accept this and go away. I read from above that one of my ideas to complain to the Financial Ombudsman…..seems fairly pointless from a previous posters experience. I have found out the email addresses of a few of the “ big cheeses” in Virgin so will write an epistle to them and am waiting from a call back from both Virgin and Secure Trust to lodge a complaint. With Mr Bates v The PO ringing in my ears ( poor souls) I am at least going to give my fight a go. Any advice would be appreciated. Doubt my MP would be of any use but I’ll bet you I am “ not the only one” that has experienced  
issues. Clearly from reading above I am not. I applied to transfer to Secure Trust on the 17th December, my ISA with Virgin matured on 24th December. Eventually after having lost count of phone calls and messages sent ( only 1 ever answered) from Virgin and promised call back from Secure Trust not materialising the transfer was completed today 16th January. Hopefully someone will be able to point me in the right direction to get some sort of recompense or at the very least improve the system so that other poor bu..ers don’t have to go through what I have. Thanks

With ISA transfers it takes two to tango and it could be either the new provider or the old provider causing the delay. It's hard to tell. I just transferred a Cash ISA from Virgin and it showed at the new provider same day and the money was "cleared funds" two days later. Before you get too excited ask Secure Bank when they started paying interest on your transferred funds. They may well backdate the interest to about the time you requested the transfer.

Silw

Thanks Boingy. As I said I am waiting on both the providers to contact me re an official complaint whether I get credited the missing interest or not. Virgin request you correspond through their secure messaging service. Great but out of at least 4 messages I sent I got 1 reply. Wonderful not. Secure Trust promised a call back, nothing so both give terrible service. Most of the issue arose from the fact that their application forms are not the same. Virgin insist on you putting in a street name. secure Trust don’t. We live in the countryside and don’t have a street name. To get the application to accept with Virgin for the 22/23 ISA I had to put down something. Come the transfer I did not put down a street name with Secure Trust as their form does not require a street name. Result the 2 did not match, fantastic. Surely there should be some kind of standard form the providers use if transfers are going to be blocked by something as trivial as this?

eskbanker

Before kicking off, it'll be worth bearing in mind that the maximum timescale allowed for cash ISA transfers is 15 working days, so completion today after maturity on 24 December is about right, given the holidays during that period....

subjecttocontract

24th December - 16th January = 14 business days max'.
The recommended transfer time is 15 days max so I don't think you have anything to complain about..

If you aren't happy about the transfer into a Secure Trust Bank ISA you just wait until you want to move the ISA. You'll find you can't arrange a transfer before maturity because Secure Trust allocate a new account number which adds to transfer delays out.

Silw

subjecttocontract said:

24th December - 16th January = 14 business days max'.
The recommended transfer time is 15 days max so I don't think you have anything to complain about..

If you aren't happy about the transfer into a Secure Trust Bank ISA you just wait until you want to move the ISA. You'll find you can't arrange a transfer before maturity because Secure Trust allocate a new account number which adds to transfer delays out.

Well perhaps what you consider good service and what I do obviously differs. I was not told by Virgin the transfer had been denied. It was denied on 04/01/2024 as advised by Secure Trust. I only got 1 reply from 4 secure messages and the whole mess was due to our address not matching because Virgin insisted on a street name when we don’t have one. Even when I altered the address to match with Secure Trust it did not alter the correspondence address on the Virgin website. Had it not been for the non match of address  the transfer would have taken place on 04/01/2024. This delay has cost me almost £150 so not pleased.Whatever the outcome of the complaint I will not be using the services on Virgin in the future.

subjecttocontract

No, I don't think that we ' obviously' disagree on what represents good service. I was merely pointing out the ISA transfer timing and the fact that your transfer has happened within the agreed time frame. Like many others I have personally suffered long and even longer delays with ISA transfers and know only to well how annoying and frustrating delays can be.

I'd add that based on my past experience I wouldnt use Virgin again either. There are plenty of others on this forum who have transferred ISAs from Virgin and those transfers have happened very quickly. 

Silw

Well praise where praise is due. I spoke with a very efficient person in Virgin complaints dept. They agreed that their service was way below par and my complaint was totally justified. They are not only paying me a generous amount for the huge hassle but also crediting me with the loss of interest caused through the delay. The person agreed that there are errors on their online system and will be speaking with their IT dept. It might well cost a shedload on money to change some of their system so who knows if it will be changed but I feel totally justified in making a complaint which on this occasion has been dealt with both swiftly and generously. 

Teddybearcuddles

GrubbyGirl_2 said:

I did an ISA transfer with Zopa just 1 week after they started allowing ISA transfers so I wasn't expecting it to be a smooth experience as they were new to the game.  In fact it was all done and dusted in days so I was very happy.  I also recently transferred ISAs into Aldemore and Charter Savings banks and all went smoothly

That is reassuring to hear, glad you had a smooth experience. I'm just going through ISA transfer from Barclays to Zopa. Both banks communicated and confirmed in progress, so interesting to see how many days it takes to complete now.