Aberdeen Reviews 184

Looks like ABRDN has changed the IT platform for the Standard Life SIPP "client" account.

Access has been disabled for nearly a week. At first a generic site "failed to load" message. Days later a brief "Under maintenance" message. Yet the IFA login was getting a meaningful message all along.

Today the client access is back. But the site is very slow loading pages. So slow I gave up waiting.

I would have been sacked if my online booking systems had performed like this. But that was in the late 1980s. There's no excuse for this in today's online world.

Imagine if this had been an airline or banking site?

I pay enough in monthly "Platform" charges and I expect 24x7 access. Or at least for 99.9% of the time!

Total lack of customer care. Total lack of interest in customer care. Complained to them about that. Received some compensation, eventually. Received more compensation because they could not be bothered to handle the compaint in a timely manner. Cannot be bothered with the Ombudsman, too much like hard work. Left for a new financial advisor, which cost me money because they had locked me in to their investments, money I will soon recover from better management.

Just as atrocious as their parent company, Standard Life International.
10 working days to respond as standard?? Not Covid anymore, guys!!
When thay do, response is inaccurate as they dont read the mail properly.

It seems I’ve just joined the 92% of people who think this company’s service is a disgrace.
I have shares as a result of a takeover and normally received a dividend cheque. I then had letters telling me.......not asking me......that my dividend will now only be paid directly to a bank and that I have to set up a portal.........
Registration to the portal has been a nightmare and still isn’t complete......refused to accept shareholder reference number. So phone call number 1.......After 38minutes get to speak to ‘Charlie’......who immediately put me on hold for 17minutes.....then I was connected to the customer satisfaction survey......Call 2........different person...same result......this went on for 7 calls......eventually got through to someone who did actually give me a different shareholder number......it worked.....however what a totally miserable person.....if you don’t want the job...don’t do it
So I got registered.....guess what...the activation codes don’t work......more calls....more on hold....more try to activate to the point I now have to wait for yet another letter with a new code.....

So to make it simpler for the company we all have to log on....to a system that doesn’t work, won’t let you register. Wont activate and results in a letter to me to activate an on line system........instead of just sending the cheque.!!!!!
Like others have said......do I trust these....no.....and perhaps that’s why all the brokers are saying sell, sell, sell....

I have been a customer of Aberdeen Standard for many years holding a share fund. abdrn suddenly appeared on the scene a couple of years back and have been refusing to honour an agreement reached with Aberdeen Standard (their predecessor) several years ago and send me all documentation in electronic (PDF form). If Aberdeen Standard could send me electronic documents it why can't abdrn do it? Paper is old fashioned in the 21st century when all my personal documentation is held electronically. Consequently I have received no documentation in the correct format from them since they barged into my account without my agreement.
Since they took over my account abrdn have refused to believe that prior to their entry, I was receiving all documentation electronically. They have I had no such arrangement with Aberdeen Standard. I have proof of the arrangement which was held on the Aberdeen Standard website but it seems they have deliberately destroyed my evidence. They have repeatedly lied about their actions and are doing everything possible to sabotage my account.
I have raised formal complaints on many occasions but abdrn have ignored them and taken no action at all.
Therefore I have now asked them to transfer my fund to another provider and gone through an intensive & lengthy formal process to complete this. The new provider is waiting for the fund. However abrdn are now appearing to use dirty tricks to block and prevent me completing the transfer. In particular they are refusing to tell me why they are blocking the transfer. My repeated requests for a reason why they are refusing to complete the transfer are being ignored. They refused to tell me for a significant amount of time why they were blocki8ng the transfer out of my accountant. Finally after several weeks of keeping it all secret they finally informed me of the reason for the block and the reason is total nonsense.
I have written twice to their CEO asking for disciplinary action to be taken against the dirty tricks they subjected me to. I am still awaiting a response.
It is apparent that abrdn are waging a campaign of harassment against me. I believe Trustpilot should enable reviewers to give zero stars and this is certainly necessary for abrdn.

Just had an email notification from Abrdn inviting me to log in to get information. When log in failed (possibly I didn’t use the right password etc) I clicked forgotten password and filled in my date of birth & email address only to be told to ring the helpline 0371 384 2464 where they played lovely music because they were helping other customers.
They were unable to help me log in so I asked if they could email the information - answer NO they are not able to do that [why?]. So I asked if they could send the information by post - answer YES, but they would make a £12 charge!!!
Why do I trust these people with my money?

What the hell were they thinking handing over their shareholder register to Equiniti, as a shareholder, and an investor, this has told me to get my money moved out asap. To reinvest dividends of 20 pounds, then there is an admin charge of 50 pounds. To sell my small number of shares, 50 pounds, compared to 8 pounds to execute a similar trade elsewhere. Avoid

Aberdeen standard investment company is the best investment company, i receive my funds successful here

I have been a Standard Life policy holder, in one form or other, for 40 years and a Shareholder since demutualisation. When they merged with Aberdeen I started to worry and when they changed name to ABRDN I thought they had taken leave of their senses.

I have had a terrible experience with this company. After my husband recently died I had to ask all our pension fund companies to change everything into my name. All went smoothly, quickly and sympathetically with all of the main companies who hold the majority of our shares. But abrdn were an absolute nightmare. They charged me £70 for changing the account detail - all the other companies didn't charge. After they received a copy of the death certificate and the will (no other pension company insisted on seeing the will), they then insisted I filled in an enormous document. This had to be sent backwards and forwards and cost me almost £7 in postage each time. It has been like wading through treacle trying to deal with them; endless phone calls, endless repetition of my details, phone calls suddenly being terminated etc., etc. Today, after yet another mistake on their behalf, I sold all the shares. What a relief to know that I will never have to deal with this appalling company ever again.

I would give zero to this appalling, uncaring, unskilled, non-listening, arrogant company, if I could. I have had shares with them for around 10 years and I was - initially - happy with their performance. They were bought when the company was Standard Life. This migrated to various other names and is now, regretfully ABRDN.
I didn't receive any sensible communication about this change other than a short email and there was certainly no information about whether the access to my account was changing or had been changed.
The first thing I knew that there were going to be issues was when I went online to check on my dividends for my French tax return (we now live in France). I also need to find out if the latest pension regulations are going to impact my shares.
They have impacted my Aegon pension for sure, as they kindly wrote to me, and while I did not understand the implication of all the issues they mentioned in their letter, they did at least they did write to me. I can contact them easily, get access to my account, find out whatever I need.
But not so with ABRDN.
I started trying to access my account three weeks ago. In France you have to list not only your earnings, but your property income if any, details of all your share holdings, your pensions, and even your cash at bank. It's very instrusive. Our return last year was easy.
Failing to submit one on time incurs a large fine - 1000 euros - and putting in the wrong figures, which I shall now have to do (we are basically being forced to insert the figs from last year again) will cause them to be queried, which i am now expecting as I have been unable to log on at ABRDN.
I tried calling, god knows how many times in fact, and it just said 'we cannot take your call' and there is no further explanation offered about this, as to whether this meant they had no staff, or the tel no was in fact no longer a working one.
There is no working email address or complaints formula/process described on their website.
I am sorry for everyone here who is in this position. I believe that if we suffer losses as a result of being unable to contact this firm, we should be able to claim them, and this should apply if we lose value on our shares and are unable to sell them because of the inability to contact them.
As if this is not bad enough, I have since found out that my financial advisor, is now no longer registered with the FCA and hasn't been since last Sept. So now I am worried that he is fundamentally dishonest. The FCA have said that one should not do business with a firm that is not a member, esp regarding regulated business as this means one is not protected against losses, so now it looks like my shares at ABRDN may be in danger. I was so frustrated about being unable to contact ABRDN, that I recently - without knowing he had lost his FA membership - sent my details to him and an authority to act on my behalf. You can't imagine how worried I am.
I've already told Aegon by email (and will call them tomorrow) that he is no longer my FA and is going to be fired, but I have to say that if I can't contact ABRDN to let them know this, and he steals my shares, I will not be protected against any losses as he is now longer a member of the FCA. I am going to try and email ABRDN.
I contacted the Ombudsman about them and they have given me a case number.
I urge each and every person who has left a negative review here to do the same. The Ombudsman needs to know about this shoddy firm and how they are behaving - and the more complaints they get, the more likely they are to act upon it.
I called them initially to see if I could get a case study no, and during the call, the Ombudsman told me that it is very important for you to keep copies of your emails and any automated responses to them, as these prove the communications were received. At least I have that as one message I sent did get an auto-response. But as for getting a proper response to the issue I raised, there has been nothing. What are they doing all day? A bunch of monkeys could run things better than they do.
If you are not an ABRDN customer right now, be careful before you use this company.
Update; I spoke to the company this morning, at last, and got the info I needed. It turns out they should have sent me info about the right website to use - I was on the wrong website for viewing shares. You need to use shareview. Moreover, they have not sent me the verification code to use either. I pointed out that when the takeover happened, I should have had a letter about it, appraising me of the right point of contact. I shall still write a letter of complaint and plan to leave this review up until then.
Tihs is my advice: call them 8.30am on a Monday; check your user ID, that you are using the right website, and also check you have registered for the service first, and then if you still have issues, file complaint. TBA.

What happened ? There I was merrily plodding along with a few Standard Life Shares , getting dividends every year . Filing my tax returns, downloading easily accessible statements. Happy Days .
Then along comes ABRDN who throw a complete spanner in the works . Share prices drop , unable to download historic dividend statements , can’t log in to their share portal on my laptop , but can on my mobile. Sending a simple email to them is like pulling teeth, using their idiotic form that blocks you from sending . I mean What actually happened ??

Like others, I have lost all access to documentation that was Standard Life before the most pointless & inept rebrand in recent history. I have tried calling, and was told that it was an external previous agency who were responsible, but that my concerns would be passed along and that the missing documentation would be posted within 10 working days. Unsurprisingly, that's not materialised. Like others, this is needed for a tax return that I now cannot do due to missing information. To wilfully do this to customers is surely bordering on an FCA offence?

Good consultant, friendly and responsive but restrictive practice of paying huge sums for projections regardless of whether you take it up or not, ridiculous...be very very sure you want 1825 to deal for you before engaging them as you'll pay either way

Terrible time trying to transfer my SIPP from Elevate to another platform. Elevate rec'd instructions in April 2021 and I still don't have all my positions transferred. I don't think they even know what I have with them. Very very slow to reply to emails. Their investigations team is hopeless and you just get fobbed off - system problem leading to manual reconciliation to work out what I have. I've raised a complaint with the Financial Ombudsman, but they too haven't started to look into this. Anyone else in this position? The system problem must have impacted others. I'd love to meet/contact you

Threatened for employee we never had
Had a letter to my company threatening me that I will be reported if I do not pay money into a pension scheme for a person NEVER EMPLOYED BY US, their response, WHEN WE GET IT WRONG IT UP TO YOU TO PHONE US TO DEAL WITH OUR MISTAKE.
Hopeless, arrogant and incompetent company, I wonder if the Information commissioners office and the pension regulator do anything about this?

abrdn (ridiculous and meaningless new name) have made it extremely difficult to access any investor records relating to tax year 2020-21 and earlier - there are no records of dividend payments or access to tax vouchers for this period.

There is misleading information online that these can be accessed from your abrd share portal account - they cannot. I even phoned to check.

I had to wait nearly half an hour on the phone to get this information verbally. I was told that it will 'eventually' appear on equity shareview. I was also told I would be able to reave feedback on a telephone survey after their representative hung up - I waited but I was not connected. This echoes other reviews I have read. Does anyone have a positive experience?

I am sorely tempted to sell all my shares because if a company does the ordinary things like this so carelessly, how are they to be trusted with bigger issues of management of assets and of profitability?

How fit for purpose is the company?

I'm trying to get information for my tax return, but there's nothing on the website, despite trying it multiple ways.
I phoned the number given for Help. The recorded message is still using Covid as an excuse for a 30 minute wait time.
The agent I spoke to gave me a different registration number from the one I'd had previously, and told me to register again. I asked her to wait in case I have more problems. She refused, saying she had other calls to handle, despite me pointing out that they'll get even more calls if they don't see each call through to a satisfactory conclusion.
Now I know why she was so keen to get off the phone: With the new registration number, I can't even log in, and the old one doesn't work any more.
After an hour of trying this, I'm no further forward. I'm further back, since I now know that the organisation I'm dealing doesn't appear to be able to let me access the account I have with them.

If I could give 0 stars I would. They are the most incompetent Company I have had to deal with in my 60 years on this planet.

On the 12th October 2020, I requested 2 dividend statements for 2020/21Tax Year so that I can do my personal Tax Filing which has a Deadline of End of January 2022 !

3 months on, a dozen emails, a dozen phone calls and still nothing !

They stated that the request was actioned on the 30th November....but with the caveat that it takes 28 days to get it in the post.

Unbelievable.... 28 Days to print off 2 pieces of paper, put them in an envelope and place in the postbox....and they can't even get that right.

just spent 2 hours trying to access my online account click forgotten password but receive no email rang the help line was told that the number had changed rang the new number wrong again neen to move my share after this debacle