Wednesday 2 September 2009

I hate Aviva

I've got a couple of pension policies that I'm drawing from Aviva (Norwich Union in the good old days). One is at a fixed annual rate and the other is RPI linked.

Today I received a letter from Aviva that said:

Your payments are changing because the gross amount from policy number xxxxxx has been reduced and this will affect how much we pay you.

Do I need to do anything?

No, I've written this letter for your information only. You don't need to take any action. Your payments will be made in the normal way.

Unbelievable. Wouldn't I like to know by just how much this pension has been reduced? Of course I would. Why didn't they tell me? How do they know that I don't have to take any action on spending? I phoned Aviva ("You may be charged from calls from this mobile") and after being kept on hold by the operative I was told that they had no record of the letter. They'll get back to me tomorrow. Hopefully.

I guess the RPI reduction will be quite small and I may well have earned enough this morning to cover the annual reduction. But for goodness sake - writing to folk saying that their pension is to be cut surely requires telling them by how much, does it not?

2 comments:

David Farrer said...

Comments made on previous template:

Colin Finlay
When Aviva (or at least part of it) was the Perth - based General Accident, it is rumoured that the company's early driving force , an English gent by the name of Francis Norie-Miller, placed an advertisement in the San Francisco Examiner (owned by his acquaintance WR Hearst)to the effect that GA, unlike many of the domestic insurance firms, would pay all valid claims resulting from the Great SF fire of 1906. 
 
Of course, few people knew that GA had underwritten virtually nothing in the SF area but premiums rose exponentially due to Norie-Miller's marketing coup.

8 September 2009, 07:13:17 GMT+01:00
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james higham
By all normal standards, now long gone, that would be not only dishonest but illegal. It's numbing just how arbitrary and plain wrong the actions by such people are getting.

5 September 2009, 17:13:05 GMT+01:00
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David Farrer
UPDATE 
 
The letter was sent in error!

3 September 2009, 20:20:59 GMT+01:00
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David Farrer
Could be. (The con, not the cynicism!)

3 September 2009, 06:13:35 GMT+01:00
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Rab C. Nesbitt
It's probably a con to get folk to phone the 'helpline' which will be xxpence a minute. 
 
Or am I just a wee bit cynical?

2 September 2009, 22:34:16 GMT+01:00

Dappy said...

You are being really cynical, if you check on the internet, and you obviously have access, you'll realise that non of Aviva's numbers are premium rate, so we don't make any money off them.

The reason that it said this number may be chargeable number from a mobile phone is because mobile companies charge for numbers that would be free on a landline. Try phoning from a landline next time