Nine months ago my friend had a letter from the investment company Royal London saying that she was the likely beneficiary of a pension taken out by her husband a long time ago. He died in 2015. The policy was an old workplace pension containing more than £12,000, although she had not been aware of its existence until this letter.

The company asked her to confirm her details so she sent a number of documents, including her husband’s death certificate and a council tax bill to prove her address. I am an accountant and provided a note to certify that my friend is who she says she is.

Over the next few months there was some back and forth as the company asked for more information. As I am used to handling paperwork like this, my friend asked me to help her fill in the forms, which we sent off.

But then rather than writing to her, Royal London sent me a letter saying it had everything it needed to process her request, but that it could take 12 weeks for her to get a cheque in the post. My friend wrote to the company to ask it to send any letters to her instead.

She was furious when Royal London then asked her to send all the information again. Even more upsetting was that it said it needed a letter of authority from her husband before it could process her request.

My friend is 78 and not in the best of health and would like this money as soon as possible.
Name and address supplied

Katherine Denham writes

Given that Royal London had first contacted your friend because her husband had died, it was inexcusable for it to later ask for his authority to carry out her request.

Your friend’s husband had sadly died before 75, which is when his pension needed to be claimed by. Over the years, Royal London made several attempts to contact him at an old address but didn’t hear back. It then tried to track him down and last year found out that he had died.

As your friend was his next of kin, Royal London wrote to her asking for some information so it could establish whether she had a right to the money. She provided her address, but this didn’t match the old one that Royal London had on file for her husband, which was hardly surprising given that the pension had been set up decades ago. The company then asked her to provide his address from 1982, and she was able to confirm this, despite having moved out of the property in 1988.

Royal London then wanted her to fill in yet another form before it could pay her. She was understandably getting fed up with all the paperwork and you kindly completed it on her behalf. In one document you had ticked a box saying that you were her financial adviser and enclosed a cover letter with your address on it, which prompted Royal London to start sending letters to you.

Yet your friend wasn’t happy with this and wrote to Royal London saying that she wanted the letters and the cheque to be sent to her address instead. This is really where things went wrong because her letter was then allocated to a department that was unaware of the history of her husband’s account and asked for his authority before it could process her request. This was unacceptable, especially when she had made it clear in her letter that she was a widow.

Royal London said its team should have realised that the letter had been wrongly allocated and passed it on to the bereavement team. It said it has given feedback to prevent this happening again.

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Royal London said: “The service experienced is well below the standard we set ourselves, and we’re sorry the claim was not handled in line with her, or our, expectations. We have offered compensation and settled the claim as a matter of urgency.”

Your friend now has the pension fund of £13,980, which includes interest, plus £300 compensation. You said: “Thank you again for your very prompt attention. She is pleased with the outcome.”

Where’s my precious £47 vinyl, Evri?

In May I ordered a vinyl record of my sister-in-law’s favourite band, which was a present for her birthday later that month. I paid £47 plus £7 for delivery and the retailer, Allotment Productions, said it would arrive within a few days. I put my workplace as the delivery address.

The retailer hired Evri to deliver the parcel, but I had an email notification on a Saturday saying that no one was at the office to accept it. Evri said it would try to deliver the parcel on the next working day.

By the end of the following Tuesday there had been no further attempts to deliver the parcel so I used Evri’s chat service to ask for an update. It was a struggle to speak to a human but I was eventually told that my parcel was now on its way.

I contacted Evri multiple times over the next week, but by the end of the following Monday, nine days after Evri’s first attempt at delivery, my parcel still hadn’t materialised. I then told the seller what had happened and asked it to chase Evri.

I have lost all patience at this point. I had to disappoint my sister-in-law because I haven’t been able to give her the present she had asked for and which I had ordered in good time ahead of her birthday.

I have spent a great deal of time and energy speaking to Evri to get this resolved, only for it to keep sending me round in circles.
Jenny, Birmingham

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Katherine Denham writes

While it wasn’t the retailer’s fault that your parcel had gone awol, it is obliged to make sure that you get the item you paid for, so it should have been your first port of call when the parcel didn’t arrive.

That said, it was very poor of Evri to mess you around like this and it has since admitted that your parcel has been lost. I spoke to Allotment Productions, which didn’t want to comment, but thankfully has now sent you a replacement item directly to your sister-in-law via special delivery.

Evri said: “Our couriers work to a high standard and tirelessly deliver parcels on time. We are very sorry that in this instance we have fallen short of those standards and have made a gesture of goodwill payment by way of an apology.”

Evri has given you £25 compensation, which you were happy with, and your sister-in-law finally has her birthday present.

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If you have a money problem you would like Katherine Denham to investigate email yourmoneymatters@thetimes.co.uk. Please include a phone number