Son's child trust fund issues
Discussion
Advice please chaps.
Back in the day, Gordon Brown gave every child £500 when they were born that they couldn't touch until they were 18. I dropped my lad's into a savings account and it didn't do much. Anyway, he turned 18 in December and the company it was with handed it over to another company which has the same name as a large storage container for grain and rhymes with lilo. To date his money has disappeared. The original company say they handed it to the second company. The second company have given him the run around for a few weeks now and say that the money is in his ISA, which he is supposed to be dropping £25/month into. The ISA is showing zero balance and I advised him to cancel the DD and not give this company any money until his CTF turns up. It's only a few hundred quid but he's going to need it at university/holidays/Coke and hookers, whatever.
He's been incredibly patient so far and has everything documented by email. Should he make a formal complaint? The lost interest isn't going to be much, but he might have wanted to pull the money and close the account, certainly something he wants to do now.
Back in the day, Gordon Brown gave every child £500 when they were born that they couldn't touch until they were 18. I dropped my lad's into a savings account and it didn't do much. Anyway, he turned 18 in December and the company it was with handed it over to another company which has the same name as a large storage container for grain and rhymes with lilo. To date his money has disappeared. The original company say they handed it to the second company. The second company have given him the run around for a few weeks now and say that the money is in his ISA, which he is supposed to be dropping £25/month into. The ISA is showing zero balance and I advised him to cancel the DD and not give this company any money until his CTF turns up. It's only a few hundred quid but he's going to need it at university/holidays/Coke and hookers, whatever.
He's been incredibly patient so far and has everything documented by email. Should he make a formal complaint? The lost interest isn't going to be much, but he might have wanted to pull the money and close the account, certainly something he wants to do now.
samdy said:
Yes he should. Hopefully that should resolve it, but if it doesn't then he can take his complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service.
Before doing that I would try to find out if this matter would fall inside the FCA's remit. If so I would be getting back in touch with this outfit (not FCA) and just threaten them with a compliant to the FCA. I understand that it costs any organisation governed by them approx £500 minimum for the FCA to investigate wrongdoing.This is usually enough to get things moving quite quickly. I've only done this once and the matter was resolved quickly when all other comms to the offending outfit had been ignored (this was an insurance matter re: deductions from account for a policy which wasn't created/issued).
samdy said:
The FCA don't investigate consumer complaints.
The correct process is to complain to the regulated firm (in this case the CTF provider) and if they don't uphold it or deal with it within 8 weeks, escalate to the FOS.
My point was that the threat of involving the FCA was enough to get a result. I knew that, in my case, the company involved could ultimately be penalised by the FCA and they knew this.The correct process is to complain to the regulated firm (in this case the CTF provider) and if they don't uphold it or deal with it within 8 weeks, escalate to the FOS.
Therefore it might not be be necessary to go through various stages of complaint with the regulated firm, then the FOS which could end up taking months.
Good Luck OP!
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