Who to send letter of complaint to?

melb

Please could you help. My OH is in the throes of deciding what to do with his pension (in terms of annuities etc) and feels he has been given bad advice firstly when he signed up for the pension and secondly as to his options about what to do with the money accrued therein. we have typed the letter but don't really want it to go into a generic pool of correspondence. this is a big well-known company - how do we go about finding names of people high up who we can send the letter to? Also, who should the letter go to anyway? Customer Services, the Pensions Dept? I've tried googling the company name but just get loads of sales pitch! thanks for any help

RichyRich

Which company?

Directors' names can be found quite easily via Companies House or creative Googling. Registered Office can be found here.

The more info you can give the more people can help.

Cheers
Rich

melb

It's the Prudential. I didn't know if it would be de rigeur to mention the name but having done a search on this forum since my post it seems fine to do so! Thanks for replying

RichyRich

Prudential plc
Head and Registered Office: Laurence Pountney Hill, London EC4R 0HH

Sir David Clementi - Chairman
Mark Tucker - Group Chief Executive
Philip Broadley - Group Finance Director

Gleaned from this page.

Good luck!

dunstonh

feels he has been given bad advice firstly when he signed up for the pension

What reason? If a retirement income need existed and a pension was sold then its going to be hard to show that as bad advice.

as to his options about what to do with the money accrued therein.

If it was sold by a prudential tied rep then it is outside of their remit. With tied agents it is documented that you choose the fund(s).

Also, who should the letter go to anyway? Customer Services

If it is a complaint, it should go to their customer relations dept. The complaints process is defined by the FSA and sending it anywhere else is a waste of time.

Was the pension sold by a Prudential tied rep? bought direct or sold by an IFA, accountant or solicitor? This is important as Pru may not be the right place to write to.

RichyRich

Assuming it was bought directly from the Pru, useful addresses are listed here.

dunstonh

The Craigforth, Stirling address at the top of that list is the one to use if it was bought from a Pru rep.

wearside_2

RichyRich wrote: »

Prudential plc
Head and Registered Office: Laurence Pountney Hill, London EC4R 0HH

Sir David Clementi - Chairman
Mark Tucker - Group Chief Executive
Philip Broadley - Group Finance Director

Gleaned from this page.

Good luck!

I would try and find out the home address of the Chairman David Clementi. https://www.194.com would be a good place to start. There is a D C Clementi listed in London! I had a similar problem with the Royal London Insurance and sent a Recorded Delivery letter to their Group Chairman T.D Melville-Ross, at his home address. It was delivered on a Wednesday, I received an acknowledgement on the Saturday and a satisfactory reply and compensation the following week!

melb

Thanks very much for all the useful replies - especially dunstonh who seems to take great care and trouble, having read other threads in this forum just out of interest. My OH will be back soon and I shall ask him for exact detils but from what I understand the 'mis-selling' part comes out of the fact that apparently he signed up to a situation whereby if he wanted to take his pension out of the Pru (he's aged 60 now) and invest it elsewhere he would have to pay them nearly £7,000 if he did this before the age of 75 (presumably to compensate them for the loss of fees on managing his pension fund - is this normal?). The other thing is that he was contacted by the Pru just before his 60th birthday (last August) and asked what he wanted to do with his pension (I'm presuming he'd put down 60 as his earliest expected retirement age - some hope now with 2 kids of 12 and 8!) and he rang the tel no which was an Indian call centre and he had great difficulty in understanding but it was agreed he would take the money out and put in into a cash account still with the Pru until he had contacted an IFA to see what to do with it. He took quite a while to find an IFA he was happy with and now they are saying because he didn't make a decision within 6 weeks he either leaves it with them or pays the £6.800 to invest it elsewhere. It was the IFA who suggested he might have been mis-sold the pension in the first place and he is supposed to be chasing the Pru on my OH's behalf and he said the Pru would contact us direct. As we have heard nothing in several weeks we have decided to contact the Pru ourselves. Phew! .......

melb

My Oh has just arrived home. His original pension was with the Scottish Amicable. He was in a company pension scheme originally (Apparently a very good one, it later transpired) but took voluntary redundancy and unfortunately the vultures started landing (sorry to sound cynical). Scottish Amicable was one of about 3 options he was offered and apparently he went with them because they were giving bonuses on new pension deals or something. Scottish Amicable were then taken over by Prudential at some point - I remember his saying this afftected him advwersely at the time but I can't remember why.

EdInvestor

Is this a "Section 32 buyout bond" pension? If so who sold it to your OH and when?

What is the money invested in at the moment? Is it in cash? Is it (or was it) perhaps in the With profits fund? Was it moved from the WP fund into cash when he turned 60? If so there should be no penalty applicable now.

What advice has the IFA given about converting the fund into a retirement income?