As a trustee, I needed to quickly liquidate a trust’s bond holdings in a number of companies. The largest holding was with Prudential and while other companies have managed to do as they were asked within the timescale demanded, Prudential have been spectacularly incompetent. Among their several failings: * they did not liquidate the bond when they were asked, despite numerous reminders * they kept causing further delays because they claimed that documentation had not been “scanned into the system”, when it had. Scanning by you or I takes a matter of minutes but at the Pru each scanning pixel is hand-crafted, which is why it takes days. * they didn’t communicate with each other or with us and we were often left holding on the phone for up to 50 minutes trying to sort out the mess that they had made * when they finally liquidated the bond, they had a brainstorm and randomly reinvested the proceeds into something else entirely rather than transmitting the cash. They failed to inform us of this surreal mistake, causing yet more delays * they have not responded to an official complaint to their complaints department about their serious failings * one of their lackadaisical employees made the comment that “everyone makes mistakes” without a hint of an apology or any sense that they knew how to sort it out * an email of complaint and threat of legal action to a line manager received an automated reply that he was on holiday and that a colleague should be contacted instead, with no contact details provided. We are still waiting for the money, weeks after it should have been paid out. It was a simple request and a simple task for them to perform. They have failed utterly to perform it and show no concern at having done so. To quote from their website “We have very high standards and do everything we can to ensure that all our customers get the best possible service, but sometimes we do make mistakes.” This should be amended to “We have magicked up a set of high standards but haven’t a clue how to achieve them and our staff can’t be bothered to follow them. Our best possible service is miles worse than that of our competitors. When we keep making mistakes, don’t expect concern, an apology or rectification in anything approaching a reasonable timescale.”