Alexander Forbes poor service!!

My pension funds are with Alexander Forbes. I was retrenched in 2018. I app**** on the 04 November 2022, to start receiving a monthly income from these funds. That was the beginning of my nightmare. I requested to be sent my pension funds statement together with the forms i am supposed to complete.

The forms were sent in bits and dribs, the statement came in December 2022, after lots of follow up emails sent. I eventually sent emails to their Complaints Department, each time i received, from different people, the same reply " your request has been forwarded to the relevant department". Eventually i complained about these incompentency, then my Communications were allocated to Chastry Moorkey, to assist me further. That was already towards the end of November.

I told her how disgusted i was about this company's poor service. She promised to follow up and keep me posted, of which she did not. I had to keep on calling her and sending emails and eventually wanted to withdraw my funds and move them to another company. But because i was still desperate to receive these monthly funds, to pay bills because i am not working, i did not. She said that after completing the monthly income form, that i will receive the funds on the 15th December 2022. On the 12th December she sent me another form and said i did not complete the forms fully. I completed that form. She then said i will receive the funds on the 20th December 2022.

On the 20th December 2022, she send another form to complete and said this is needed by finance but does not affect this due date. I did not receive the funds on that day. Then she sends an email saying they are busy updating and logging "whatever"??? on the system and will be finalised by the 22nd Dec 2022 and thereafter the funds will reflect within 3 days, depending on which bank I use.

On the 30th December 2022, i receive R1762.60 a monthly income, based on the calculations they used, which i was not informed from which total/amount they will be working on, to get to this amount (i chose 3%,)

I immediately sent her an email and called to say lets increase to 17%, because this amount is too little, there's nothing i can do about it. They were knocking off early at 12h00 on the 30th December 2022, the money got into my bank account at 11h00 that day, leaving me with no option to escalate the query because their office was closing for New year. However, i called her at 11h30, and she confirmed that she has received my email and will send it to the relevant people, as a matter of urgency!! Did not hear from her again!!

On the 03rd January 2023, i had to call her again in the morning, 09h30, to follow up on the matter. She said she has sent me an email, but I did not receive anything from her. She even said she will speak to that "relevant department" and will call me back. I waited, no call. I called again at 14h34. She said she is still waiting because this process that takes a 24hr turnaround time, which is new to me and she did not even inform me of this feedback!

This is not the first time this kind of thing happens with me and this company. i first battled to get my one third payout with them in May 2022, i only received it in July 2022, after complaining and escalating it to so called managers. I am an unhappy client and will definitely move my funds to another company!! I tired with these kind of poor service. I had to spent festive season without money, no food, bills not paid!!