the times | Saturday May 28 2022 69Money
I
have been paying into my pen-
sion since my twenties and it is
now worth £159,000. I am 61 and
since reaching retirement age I
have had nothing but problems
with my pension provider, Aviva.
Despite a series of calls to ask what
my retirement options were I did not
receive the information I needed
until after my retirement date. I then
had trouble establishing the charging
structure of the pension fund. First I
was told the fee was 0.75 per cent a
year and later 1 per cent.
In February last year I asked to
move my pension to Interactive In-
vestor, but this was delayed when
Aviva said my pension didn’t exist.
It was finally transferred to Inter-
active Investor on June 4 but as I had
a heart procedure in June, I didn’t get
around to investing until July.
Aviva said it would compensate me
for the delay by assessing the loss in-
curred — during those two months I
had missed out on the upward move-
ment in the market.
Now Aviva is saying there is no evi-
dence of any loss. I suggested it could
look at the past performance of my
new portfolio but it dismissed the idea.
This dispute is not good for my
heart condition, but I worry that a big
pension provider can renege on pro-
mises made without being held to ac-
count. Hopefully you can help to re-
solve the issue.
Name and address suppliedTroubleshooter says
It took four months from your pen-
sion transfer request for the money tobe received by your new provider. An
online pension transfer takes about
two weeks, but this one was done on
paper, which made it slower.
Still, there’s slower and there’s a
four-month wait. In your case delays
were caused first by human error
from Aviva’s team, as the person deal-
ing with your transfer couldn’t find
your policy. Your financial adviser
then failed to provide all the informa-
tion needed to process the transfer,
and then Aviva didn’t forward the pa-
perwork to the correct internal team.
Once I intervened Aviva changed
its tune on compensation and said:
“We have investigated this case andare planning to ensure that the cus-
tomer does not lose out financially
because of the delays.”
But this wasn’t simple as you dis-
agreed on how to calculate the com-
pensation. Aviva judged that the
transfer took two months too long,
and calculated how much your funds
would have gone up in that period.
As your £159,000 pension portfolio
would have increased by just over
3 per cent, Aviva offered you £5,012
for the losses you incurred.
However, you weren’t happy with
this and said it should be closer to
£21,000. As you took your pension as
cash to reinvest in different shares
with Interactive Investor, you argued
that the losses should be based on the
new pension, not the old one. Based
on this, your portfolio would have
grown almost 14 per cent.
Aviva said your loss calculation
couldn’t be used because there is no
way of knowing if you would have
chosen the same investments twoShocked by Scottish Power rates
In November 2021 I signed up for
a new fixed two-year tariff with
Scottish Power and I was very
pleased that my monthly
payments were almost the same
as before.
But in April this year I received
an email telling me that my
monthly direct debit payment
would increase by £46 to £189 a
month. It also said I was in debt
on my account to the sum of
£289.
I replied reminding them that
this is a fixed-price contract, not
a variable deal, but I received a
reply saying I still owed them
money.
I then took a closer look at my
electricity bills and noticed that
the unit rate on my new tariff
had increased by 36 per cent
compared with my previous
tariff. It looked as if when they
set up the new tariff with the
higher unit rates they failed to
increase my monthly direct debit
payments to reflect this.
Scottish Power misled me into
moving to a new tariff with a lowdirect debit knowing full well
that it would have to increase my
monthly payments as the year
progressed because they would
never be sufficient to meet the
increased unit rates.
If it had been made clear to me
that the new unit prices were so
much higher I might well have
looked for a different energy
supplier.
It seems impossible to
communicate with anyone at
Scottish Power to get an
explanation.
Christopher BrownTroubleshooter says
So many people are confused
about their energy bills at the
moment and I can’t help thinking
some suppliers aren’t making
them clear enough. Judging by
the number of emails I receive
about Scottish Power it seems to
be one of the worst offenders.
When deciding whether to
switch to a fixed deal, it’s always
important to compare the unit
rates, which is the cost of eachkilowatt-hour of energy you use.
Unfortunately many people like
you are finding this out after they
have locked themselves in.
When I got involved Scottish
Power contacted you directly to
apologise for the confusion. It
explained that while the unit rate
on your new tariff was more
expensive than the previous one,
the system did not increase your
monthly payment in November.
This was because you were in
credit on your account and so the
system didn’t think you were
using as much energy as it had
estimated. It miscalculated your
monthly payments by setting
them too low.
However, when you submitted
a meter reading, your account
was reassessed and the system
identified the need to increase
the direct debit to cover your
estimated usage.
You said you were happy with
this explanation and said you
have also learnt that you need to
scrutinise the payments carefully
when signing up to a new tariff.‘Pension delay is bad for my heart’
Katherine
Denham
Times Money
Mentor
Troubleshooter
months earlier, unless you had out-
lined in writing how you planned to
invest your pension money before
the transfer took place.
This is a good tip for anyone wor-
ried their pension transfer may be de-
layed: email your pension provider to
say where you intend to invest the
money so there is a paper trail.
Aviva was actually being more gen-
erous than the methodology used by
the Financial Ombudsman Service
(FOS), which would have taken into
account the month-long delay in
your buying shares. This FOS calcu-
lation would have given you just £751.
You eventually agreed to accept
£5,012 from Aviva and it also gave you
£500 compensation for the delays in
providing you with a loss calculation.
I hope you use the money to enjoy
your retirement.Money Mentor
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