In May the financial company ReAssure wrote to say that I needed to make a decision about my pension before I turned 75 in June. This pension is worth about £40,000 and it said I could either transfer it to another company, take it as a lump sum or use it to buy an annuity, giving me an income for life.
I decided to take the lot in one go and planned to use the money to help my daughter to buy a house. The rules of my policy say that I can claim my 25 per cent tax-free cash only before I reach 75.
I called ReAssure but the agent said they could not speak to me about my pension because it was not in my name. I asked who’s name it was in, but they would not tell me. They said they would send me an email explaining how to proceed, but I never got one.
Before my birthday, I called ReAssure several times using the phone number on my letter, but was repeatedly told that it could not speak to me. I have also sent messages through the company’s website and made a complaint, but it has now been four months and I still don’t have my pension and have not spoken to anyone who can help me get it.
I just want ReAssure to pull its finger out and pay my pension. I had a cancer operation last year and this is not the sort of thing you want to be dealing with while in recovery.
Ray, London
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Katherine Denham writes
I was sorry to hear about your cancer diagnosis and pleased when you were then given the all-clear, which is fantastic news. Still, this stress with your pension firm was something you could do without.
When you take money from a pension, usually a quarter is tax-free, as long as the total tax-free cash from all your pension pots doesn’t exceed £268,275. Some policies, like yours, have rules that let you take this tax-free lump sum only before 75 and I could see why you were worried about missing this generous tax perk.
How bizarre for ReAssure to ask you to make a decision about your pension, only to then say it couldn’t discuss this pension with you. It turned out that the letter you received contained the phone number for the company’s general helpline, when actually you should have been given a number for a specialist team.
Your pension assets are held in a trust by a third-party company, with you as the beneficiary and ReAssure as the administrator. It’s common for pensions to be held in this way to keep client money separate, and the trustees have to ensure that the scheme is managed in the best interest of its members. But you obviously have a right to get information about your pension and to withdraw it if you want.
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When I questioned Phoenix, which owns ReAssure, it explained that the general inquiries team did not have the specialist knowledge to interpret the trustee structure correctly. It then made things worse by not passing you on to the team that could actually help.
Thankfully with my intervention the company jumped into action, but I’m afraid it wasn’t the news you were hoping for because it turned out that you weren’t entitled to a 25 per cent tax-free sum after all. This is because you had already taken it 17 years ago when your policy went into drawdown.
When you start taking a pension, one of the options is to take 25 per cent of the whole pot tax-free from the start. The upside of doing this is that it doesn’t tend to trigger the money purchase annual allowance, which means that you will not get tax relief on pension contributions of more than £10,000 a year. Another option is to withdraw your pension in stages so that a quarter of each withdrawal is tax-free, which generally means that you pay less tax overall.
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You chose the former option back in 2008 and said you must have got this pension confused with another pot you hold with ReAssure. Sadly this means that any money you withdraw from this pension will be added to your other income during the tax year and be subject to tax at your normal rate.
Phoenix said: “We sincerely regret the delays and distress our customer has experienced in accessing his pension benefits. The delays were caused by confusion over how his policy was managed and who could access information. Unfortunately, the trustee-held nature of his pension added further complexity, which contributed to the time taken to resolve this matter.”
Thankfully you haven’t lost out financially from the delay and have been able to sell your investments, giving you £43,210. ReAssure has also paid you £400 compensation.
You said: “It has taken so long for ReAssure to sort this out that my daughter had to borrow more money from her lender to buy her home. But if you had not contacted the company then I’m sure I would still be waiting, so thank you.”
Six-month wait for £400 Temu refund
In April, I bought a set of garden railings from the online retailer Temu. I paid £400.38 for three sets, plus £52.64 for postage. According to the advert, these were designed to keep pets off flower beds and I thought they would be tall enough to deter my dog. But after I put up a short stretch of railings, my dog was able to jump over without much difficulty, so they were completely useless to me.
I returned them in May. Each carton had its own tracking number and they arrived at Temu’s warehouse three days later. Six months later and I have still not received a refund.
I have chased Temu numerous times by email and each time it says its warehouse has not yet received and inspected the packages. So although it acknowledges that the packages have been returned, it cannot find them. I sent the items back in good faith, so I would say that this is Temu’s problem and not mine.
Temu’s terms and conditions say that the postage costs should be refunded if the goods are unsatisfactory, so I am owed a total of £453.02. This may not seem a lot but, as a pensioner, it is a loss I could well do without.
Andrew, London
Katherine Denham writes
You followed Temu’s return instructions and had proof that you had done your bit to send these items back, so it wasn’t your fault that the company had lost them. According to consumer law, a refund must be sent “without undue delay” and I don’t think anyone could argue that your six-month wait was reasonable.
Once a company has confirmed that a customer is entitled to a refund, it must be paid within 14 days, but you never got any such confirmation. Temu told me that its system incorrectly showed the return parcels as undelivered, which it blamed on “an oversight”. The fact that this had happened to all three packages seemed strange, but the good news is that with my involvement, Temu refunded your £453.02 within days.
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Temu said: “We sincerely apologise for the inconvenience and hope to have the opportunity to serve the customer again in the future. Temu is committed to providing a simple, hassle-free shopping experience while understanding that not every purchase will always meet expectations.”
I asked if it would give you compensation and it offered you a £10 Temu voucher. I thought this was measly but I couldn’t get it to offer you any more, which was disappointing given the many months you had spent trying to resolve this.
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