Pension money disappeared in the ether - what do do?

[pensiontransfernightmare]

I am having an ongoing pension nightmare. Previously held a personal pension with Virgin Money, smaller employer pension with Scottish Widows. (Am now self-emplyoed). Decided to move both pensions into a single fund with Fidelity in December 2023. Scottish Widows (small 10k) transfer went through in days.

Virgin a much bigger lump of money, almost £100k. Total nightmare, they needed signed discharge forms (fine, get they need to protect me) which I signed and sent back, they acknowledged receipt on 28 January 2024. More delays. Repeated emails, phone calls. Claim they transferred money to Fidelity on 26 April. Fidelity saying they cannot trace it.

So we are now 2 months on, there is almost £100k floating around somewhere that can't be linked to me, and neither institution seem to be that concerned. Have raised a complaint with the ombudsman but what else should I be doing?

This is still ongoing and unresolved. Fidelity yesterday credited £58k to my account, there is £41k still missing. I am already dealing with the financial ombudsman over the shit service from Virgin and looks like I might be doing similar with Fidelity.

That's appalling! Might be time to try one of the press people- Anna Tims consumer champion at the Guardian is one

I have progress now but had to involve the press to do so. Last Friday I emailed Fidelity with a totally stroppy email saying they had until close of business to sort it out. I also emailed Sally Hamilton at the Mail / This is Money asking for help. Lo and behold by Monday I had an email from a named "complaints specialist" saying they were on it, Wednesday the money was in my account along with an email saying they were investigating how much I had lost out on by this money being AWOL for 3 months and would get back to me within 5 working days.

Which was really all I was asking for all along - someone to take it seriously and tell me how long it was going to take to fix. Also heard back from the Ombusdman re my Virgin complaint, they found that one of the major factors in all of this was Virgin ignoring the instructions from Fidelity to send a transfer with a specific reference, and the Ombudsman asked them to pay me another £150 in compensation for their failure.

Would recommend the Ombudsman service to anyone - I found them really easy to deal with and as long as you lay out your case in bulletpoints and have exhausted any internal complaints procedure they are very efficient.

Hopefully a final update for anyone interested.

Since I contacted the press I have been dealing with someone at Fidelity who could not be more helpful. They are a dedicated complaints resolution person, not a customer services person. They have sent emails when they said they would, and kept me informed. The sum transferred from Virgin was put into my account straight away, along with the £1k incentive for transferring which they were offering when the transfer started all those months ago. The Fidelity person is currently working out how much I have lost out on by not having any funds invested since the beginning of May, and will report back to me on this tomorrow.

In addition, they have offered me £1k as a "goodwill payment" to compensate for their failings and uselessness in dealing with things at an earlier stage. I think they are desperate to avoid me going to the Ombudsman as they are well aware I have already gone through the Ombudsman process with Virgin - and been proved right. I am happy with this resolution but it's pretty shit that you have to get the press involved to get people to take you seriously.

DH smartly said the other day that Hargreaves Lansdown have some good rates at the moment... I almost throttled him.

Hi @pensiontransfernightmare thanks for sharing the update, and I'm pleased to hear you finally got a good resolution.

It's good to see that you can make progress with the ombudsman etc, and going to the press.

I think virgin are generally terrible at most things.

Thank you. I am coming to that conclusion, shower of utter incompetents. I am hoping that if the Nationwide acquisition goes through, they get shaken up a bit.

Fidelity have put me back in the position I would have been if it had all gone through smoothly, and a bit more (to stop me going to the ombudsman I think). The whole process though was time consuming and super frustrating, and most people in customer service in both brands couldn't care less.