cat5

Having a really bad experience with them, have not been able to access my on line account since about 10 months now due to data corruption to there system!

I have made a complaint and have to wait for there legal 90 days notice period

There explanation is they have to sort out each account manually and there is nothing they can do.

Apparently Virgin are letting another company administrate the super, called "Pillar"

Serious fed up with them.... any one recommend a better Super company?

Centurion

For what it's worth Virgin Money and the savings accounts are equally as sh*te in Australia. They are just rebadged Citibank and you log into the Citibank portal but with a nice Virgin banner instead. Same call center in HK who are crap beyond belief and all my complaints went unanswered.

At one point they debited a random $3000 in witholding tax for no apparent reason despite having my TFN and the previous few months being calculated just fine. A "system glitch" that actually took 2 months for a refund.

Virgin globally is nothing more than a loosely aligned group of separate companies who like the colour red pay to share a logo. It's a franchise and nothing more sadly.

What it isn't is a globally aligned product. It's a real shame because some of the Virgin companies have merit. Virgin Atlantic I like, Virgin Blue has done much to bring serious competition and shove it in Qantas's face.

WTF with Virgin Cola though - who though that was ever going to be a good idea.

Wol

It's all kept the Grinning Pullover in bread and gruel for a couple of decades though.

cat5

I was sucked in by the reputation of Virgin and the low fees, and i could transfer my UK pension because at the time Virgin was one of the few which was QROPS approved.... but wish i didn't.

I am looking at BT for life, which has a good online management system, but then there's Australian Super which seems to come out on top, i think insurance is automatically by default included too.

Swerv-o

I have been in the same boat - my attention was drawn to it by another poster on this site. I Emailed Virgin about it and got this reply:

So maybe there might be merit in contacting David Curneen directly.

So I am not too worried about it at the moment - I will give them a bit longer to get their act together. I am reluctant to churn to a new account, as I have been reasonably impressed with the returns I have seen from Virgin, even during the downturn/GFC crisis.

If this carries on though, I dare say that I may start to change my mind. I don't feel the need to look at my super balance on a daily basis, so I'm not too worried about it at the moment.

Let's keep an eye on it though.


S

ColonialCousin

While we are discussing super, what super are the general populace here using? I've got two accounts (both set up by employers) with AMP and Colonial First State, and I'm finally getting around to doing the grown up thing of rolling them into one or the other, or closing the two down and rolling them into a third new account altogether.

Of the two, I'd probably close the Colonial super account and roll the funds into AMP, but the others I am considering are BT Super for Life or UniSuper (where I have an account from my days as a University tutor).

Anyone got any experience with BT Super for Life? Or recommend any others? MLC?

cat5

Thanks for quoting that reply..... but for me, i really have run out of patience with them, i have made so many phone calls and email's to them, and i just get the same response...that they are down to the last 1,800 c..up's, and they are manually sorting it out, but after all this time it really is a crap service.

It's lucky i'm not retiring now....time to change Super me thinks!

Swerv-o

I did quite a lot of research into this when I first arrived - I think that I found that Care Super was pretty good, though this BT Super now looks like quite a good deal too.

There was another I remember searching, but I can't recall the name now. I had a huge comparison spreadsheet that worked out all the fees etc. Not sure wher ethat is now. Possibly at work.

I went with Virgin in the end, as they were QROPS compliant, but it wasn't worth bringing my UK pension over in the end, as it was so tiny it would have been completely consumed by fees.


S

llanfachreth

AMP are expensive.
Colonial First State now pretty much the cheapest Retail fund.

MarkMC

When I arrived and got a job I had no idea what super was so did a bit of reading and spoke to a lot of co-workers, I've now got BT super for life and got no complaints, the other option was Australian Super, few co workers rekon its great.

Swerv-o

OK, I did some digging and found it. The Super Fund that I found to be most competitive was AGEST - Ostensibly the super fund for government workers, but still an open fund meaning that anybody can join it.

AGEST Super

I found their fee structure to be among the cheapest. I also found my performance calculator spreadsheet which I used to compare the various fees and funds. I will attach it here, with the caveat that the fee structure on the sheet has not been updated since 2006, and may well need changing now.


S

johnnye

Remember that if pension funds are moved into an Australian super fund, the super fund needs to have QROPS status. If the super fund is then rolled into another fund, then new fund will also need QROPS status (for the UK part of the fund) otherwise tax will apply as it will be regarded as an unauthorised payment.
if the required time has not elapsed (I think 5 years).

Swerv-o

Yes, and amazingly most industry or mutual funds are NOT QROPS approved, yet the commercial [read high fee] funds are, so you end up paying one way or another.

The Virgin fund was a good compromise - a reasonably inexpensive fee structure, while still being a QROPS approved fund.


S

Oz Dreaming

I cannot believe how bad Virgin Super are. After still not being able to access my account after 1 yr of upgrade + " we are having some minor problems upgrading but it will shortly be fixed"x 15 + 5 complaints (all never resolved in the 90 days)

I decided to change super to my company super. Virgin have dragged their feet for 2 months, first after 3wks after my request they sent me a form asking for certified confirmation of my address and ID, needed in 10days of the letter, even though it was dated 6 days before i received it. (why they needed confirmation of where i lived seeing that i opened my account with this address and gave all that then.

Then 3 wks after that i get an email asking when i opened the account as they cannot proceed with the transfer until they get that info. Now today they finally phone up and say sorry your company super is not QROPS.

I could have thrown the phone across the room. When i explained how annoyed i was with virgin and was concerned as it seems like a Bernard Maddof scam the operator told me no Virgin is a reputable company. I pointed out if she had her money in a savings account and the bank wouldnt give her a statement or access for 1 yr then made it very difficult to transfer the money what would she would think.

I am now going to transfer all my australian contributions to my company super, temporary leaving the UK pension in Virgin. Then decide whether to open a QROPS super or wait out the 5 yr rule.

As the title says Virgin Super Beware

johnnye

Why not move it all to an indusry standard QROPS fund instead?