Prudential Pensions delaying payouts

Bogdan53

I have started a facebook group specifically for complaints about the very slow payment times and misleading and contradictory information from Prudential.

(Link removed by Forum Team) 

There are so many examples of their appalling behaviour that I would like to expose this on behalf of the group. The results overwhelmingly reveal extremely poor customer service, not answering or delaying phone calls, rudeness, delaying payouts for years, misleading advice and mislaying customer records. Many people are in extreme distress waiting years for payment having saved all their life. 

I think wider exposure of this unacceptable behaviour from what used to be a reputable company may prompt some action.

Nebulous2

There was a thread somewhere about Prudential problems and delays, specifically for LGPS AVCs. Several of us, including me, got compensation. I think a transfer to a new system was part of the problem, but some people got repeated compensation payments.  

Baldytyke88

Around 8 years ago I was awarded a small amount for delays, I didn't complain, I just received it.

dunstonh

I think I have transferred around a dozen Pru pensions over the last year and recent ones have been quick.

I think wider exposure of this unacceptable behaviour from what used to be a reputable company may prompt some action.

IIRC, they outsourced the servicing when it moved to Lancing.   Servicing has never matched the level of the Holborn days.

Roger175

Having recently done a transfer of an old scheme away from Prudential, I can confirm they are a shower of s**t. The on-line account has never worked properly and always gave me a totally wrong valuation (it showed two of my policies merged and managed to consistently miss circa £16k off the value), very long que to get to speak to anyone, contradictory advice from the customer service team, some of whom talked total nonsense, no ability to email anything, they insist of posting everything and then every single piece of information missed the deadline (at which point they would email it! - you couldn't make it up!) and generally just a complete and utter mess.

I'm so glad to be rid of them and to have moved on.

I would warn anyone needing access to their pension to instigate a transfer ASAP.  

PS I'll take a look at the FB group and add my comments.

OldBeanz

Complain, complain, complain - the wife did very well out of them but they were useless. They do not have the resources to answer the complaints and are prepared to pay out rather than recruit and train staff to handle the work. Weird business model but for about £200 of lost opportunities we ended up with £2k over about 6 or 7 different payments.

Farside71

Servicing was outsourced to Capita 15 or so years ago and obviously immediately took a bit of a downturn but they weren't too bad. They just never were able to get around to all the old systems decommissioning they promised.  About 6 years ago the contract was switched to Diligenta and they are absolutely awful and are migrating policies onto their dreadful in house system.  Even more servicing has been outsourced now to them, including annuities.  That is exactly why there has been so many issues with certain types of pensions, mainly company and AVCs. Retirement account has been offshored to India, not sure if it has been outsourced as well by now. 

The Lancing outsourcing was for mail, both incoming and outgoing and that's why they change correspondence addresses to Lancing. Think they've gone through a couple of mailing partners 

Farside71

OldBeanz said:

Complain, complain, complain - the wife did very well out of them but they were useless. They do not have the resources to answer the complaints and are prepared to pay out rather than recruit and train staff to handle the work. Weird business model but for about £200 of lost opportunities we ended up with £2k over about 6 or 7 different payments.

When they are behind with work and can't deal with just the requests coming in, they just tend to let the complaints queue grow because they know they have a bit longer to deal with the requests even through it then costs them even more to deal with processing the complaints and paying compensation. Absolute shambles of an organisation