Prudential AVC miss-selling – advice needed please.

We believe that we were miss-sold this product as we were never told about any options such as buying past added years.

Its funny that over the years people have complained about being sold FSAVCs then when they became better than AVCs due to rule changes people complained about that. Then other rules changes occur and it happens again. Thankfully most of these get rejected nowadays.

We believe that we were miss-sold this product as we were never told about any options such as buying past added years.

It is not their job to tell you of the other options. It would have been had you bought FSAVCs but not AVCs.

We have complained to Prudential and they have rejected our complaint.

What reason did you give? That would be key for us knowing why.

Or do you think we won’t get anywhere?

I think its unlikely as 1) its an AVC not an FSAVC (one being them acting on your request and the other being set up through advice) and 2) its largely a hindsight complaint. i.e. you are using hindsight to decide which option was best and complaining you didnt have the other.

Grrra, sorry to hear that you are yet another teacher who (in my view) was "sucked" in to the Prudential AVC scheme. I resisted the siren song of the pru sales force and the subtle support they were given by the TPS (for instance, how did the Pru get my home address and employers name?). Luckily, I chose to pay for PAY and AP along side the main TPS scheme and I am glad I did.

In my last dealings with the Pru after yet another mailing I insisted they tell me any advantage they could name for the Pru AVC scheme, after much head scratching and attempts to sideline my question as "advice which I would need to speak to an IFA to have addressed" the question was "escalated", the answer given was that I could pay my contributions direct from pay without having to talk to HMRC (wow!).

A friend of mine who is approaching normal retirement age this year was in tears before Easter when he he reviewed the Pru scheme performance. He will have to continue work for at least another year.

Grrra wrote: »

A representative from the Pru’ called at my school to give a, ‘presentation’. Neither my wife or myself were present. The following day I noticed a poster advertising these AVC’s, following which we asked a rep’ from the Pru’ to call.

So basically you made the contact with the Prudential and you were told what they could do for you.

From both our memory banks we cannot recall him informing us of any other options available to us at the time – the only one was the Pru’s AVC.

If you had contacted the Halifax about their products would you have expected them to tell you that the Abbey or NatWest sold such and such a product?

I'm afraid if you wanted advice on what would be best for you, you should have taken advice from an IFA. The Prudential have done nothing wrong as you contacted them about AVCs and that is what they gave you.