We had a lot of hassle from Prudentail and lloyds TSB last year, it took from September to end November to get an endowment claim surrendered. Both companies are at fault, but our initial complaint was against the Pru for stress and distress caused by their inability to handle cusotmers porperly. its too long to go into here, but one of the hold ups was because they were waiting for a form to arrive from Lloyds TSB. There was some confusion by ourselves and LLoyds as to which form was required, and during my phone calls to Prudential I was getting told that the form could be faxed out to them then it was faxed and after 14 days of not hearing anything I called them up and they decided tha tthey didn't accpet faxed copies, but neve rbothered to tell us this, or contact us at any time, I was always having to ring them, and when I did if they didn't know the answer to my questions they claimed they couldn't understand me.
Anyway we complained to the Ombudsman Who I feel IMO is against LLoyds TSB) and we weren't happy with his initial rulin that "Prudentail didnt take an ordinate amount of time to deal with the case" so we asked him to re=asses it an dhe got back to us today and said that Prudential was under the impression that the delayed document was the Disclaimer, (because we had stated on their form that the oney should be paid to us)however the actual document that was the letter of request (there was £120 arrears ont eh mortgage from 2 years ago which meant that Lloyds wouldn't wauthorise payment to us)he says that Prudential weren't made aware that they were waiting for a letter of request, even though I distinctly remember telling Prudential that Lloyds had sent us a form, and why they wanted the money to go to them and not us!
IYSWIM