advice for complaint against Aviva

E

Eoghanowens

Registered User
Messages
19
I am looking for advice to make Aviva Pensions take notice of me/my wife.
Shortened story is my Wife took her pension from her previous employer to avail of 25% lump sum. This was February 22. Eventually the Broker had it in Aviva accounts on Sept 5th, and they emailed my wife to say it had been transferred to her bank with the account number etc., on 20th September. Despite that it has not arrived in the bank and despite numerous calls to Aviva all we are getting is there are backlogs due to Ulster Bank, Covid etc., Every time we ask to escalate this issue and get someone to call back, we get nothing.
The Financial ombudsman rules are 40 working days after a complaint is made.

My question is who I contact in regard to this, A solicitor, Finance Consultant, my broker (who is terrible), Gardai, or somebody else

Thanks in advance,,,
Eoghan
 
SEPA transfer, cheque, or another instrumen?. Get the reference number, date, time receipt confirmation from whoever claims they transferred it to her bank.
 
Eoghanowens said:
I have emailed them last week and nothing, I also called in relation to this complaint and they will get "someone" to call us and nothing again
Click to expand...

They set out their complaints procedure in detail on this page: https://www.aviva.ie/group/complaints-procedure/

Have you followed the steps as set out there, because if not, then you're giving them an excuse for not handling your complaint in a timely manner.
 
Make sure all contact comes from your wife. It's her pension. She could message Aviva Ireland on Twitter - it's easy to sign up if she doesn't have an account. Aviva Ireland Interim CEO is apparently David Swanton - she could write to him at their HQ address. Keep going and good luck.
 
mct1 said:
Make sure all contact comes from your wife. It's her pension. She could message Aviva Ireland on Twitter - it's easy to sign up if she doesn't have an account. Aviva Ireland Interim CEO is apparently David Swanton - she could write to him at their HQ address. Keep going and good luck.
Click to expand...
All contact is through her and her mobile etc., and I am writing to David Swanton but cannot find a proper email address so will post to Aviva direct
And I will keep going even if she gets her money tomorrow
 
Eoghanowens said:
Eventually the Broker had it in Aviva accounts on Sept 5th, and they emailed my wife to say it had been transferred to her bank with the account number etc., on 20th September.
Click to expand...
I don't understand this.
Who is the broker?
A separate entity to Aviva?
What do you mean by "the Broker had it in Aviva accounts on Sept 5th".
Is your issue here with some broker rather than Aviva?
My question is who I contact in regard to this, A solicitor, Finance Consultant, my broker (who is terrible), Gardai, or somebody else
Click to expand...
Again, who exactly is the broker in this chain and why are they involved?
If you/your wife involved this ("terrible") broker then it seems to me that your issue is with them and not Aviva.
What exactly is the broker's role, instructions and latitude in this matter?

I'm absolutely dumbfounded that you have to ask if you should be contacting your broker here.
 
Last edited:
Again, who exactly is the broker in this chain and why are they involved?
They are a Broker firm that took the money from her Pension fund to move to Aviva ARF and delayed so much it took from Feb to Sept and has sent us letters saying it is in Aviva now and claims they have the money and also letters from Aviva stating that they transferred to her bank.

Why are you dumbfounded about having to ask my broker..... I have and get the runaround and pass the blame game/ Why is my issue with the broker when he proved the money is with Aviva.

My question is WHO do I contact to get AVIVA to get their act together, THEY HAVE THE MONEY
 
Assuming that the broker is correct in what they have told your wife, then the most likely possibility is that Aviva may have transferred the 25% tax-free lump sum to the wrong bank account.

In which case, either the broker was given the wrong IBAN, or they made an error in forwarding the IBAN to Aviva, or Aviva made a mistake in inputting it to their system.

It seems ridiculous that Aviva won't even inform your wife whether or not the transfer was made to her IBAN. I can't see how a "yes" or "no" answer to that simple question would be a breach of GDPR.
 
This is the second time I've heard somebody complain about transfer issues with this company. They end up offering a small compensation for each day the funds are not with you but taking forever to sort out the issue.
 
That is exactly what I am thinking, but trying to get the information from Aviva is terrible and every time she phones them its another excuse, they've used COVID, Ulster Bank, which we're not, our bank problem, busy time of year, our broker error, their complaints procedure holding up transfer after ring told it was transferred, she is asking for a manager or complaints dept, or Duty manager to get involved and to ring her back but they are always busy when she rings and promise to ring her back when free. That is going on since Sept 20 thereabouts. The broker gave the right IBan and acc no. He sent us the mail that confirmed they received the right info, so somewhere they are not doing their job and won't respond to our questions, hence I need to raise this to someone higher as it takes 40 working days to go to ombudsman.
 
Might be worth posting a message on their Twitter if you have an account. Sadly companies seem to take a lot more notice of noise on there.
 
Eoghanowens said:
The broker gave the right IBan and acc no
Click to expand...
It's virtually impossible for a financial institution to screw that part up; there are even a couple of online, consumer-oriented verifiers available - e.g. https://www.ibancalculator.com

More institutional incompetence and staff not caring or you're not being told the truth to protect year-end performance bonuses; take your pick.
 
Eoghanowens said:
It was a Sepa, and they won't give any info about the transfer,
Click to expand...
And what did your bank say when you called them? It would not be the first time a transaction was left sitting in a suspense account and forgotten about.
 
You need to exhaust the complaints process with Aviva before the Ombudsman will get involved

issue here is that no one in Aviva is taking ownership of the issue.

Note it is also quite possible that Aviva don't have the money and if incorrect account details were used, it is sitting in a suspense account in your bank awaiting resolution.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top