Some £16,000 of the contributions I paid into my Friends Life pension for 20 years appears to have disappeared. In November I filled in the forms to cash in the pension. I opted for a lump sum of £5,483.48 and an annuity of £655. I received the lump sum but discovered that Friends Life was paying a pension of only £31.72 a month. The company admitted it had mistakenly given me an annuity of £331.56, half of what I was entitled to.
After my complaint I received a letter confirming that my annuity was now set up for the correct sum starting from November. Since then I have received nothing. Dealing with Friends Life makes the wannabe annuity holder feel a little like Kafka’s Josef K, (only without the aid of his assistants); it is a world where no one will give out an email address, surnames are given reluctantly, there is a “15-day turnaround” for sorting out my annuity (if only) and complaints take “up to eight weeks” to deal with. PM, London
Friends Life, part of Aviva, blames “incorrectly administered” paperwork for halving your pension income and says that, despite your calls, it had no notion of the error until you wrote in exasperation in February. Even so, it’s another month until it gets round to authorising your rightful monthly payments and made up the sums outstanding since November. Human error is forgivable, but Aviva’s sluggish approach to rectifying it is unacceptable, a fact it appears to acknowledge by granting you £400 compensation for the distress and inconvenience.
If you need help email Anna Tims at your.problems@observer.co.uk or write to Your Problems, The Observer, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU. Include an address and phone number.
