Freeman Jones. Distinct lack of contact, support, reassurance, never answer the phone.

[upto_our_eyeballs]

Freeman Jones? Distinct lack of contact, support, reassurance and when chased never answer the phone.
As I write this I have been on the phone listening to that tedious tune they play for 45 minutes and still going all in a bid to chase them to ask whether my annual review has been completed?
Has anyone else experienced this? We have had no relationship manager for I wouuld say a good 12 to 18 months now. Never receive any contact from them always us (me) chasing them to ask if everything is going to plan?

[mazbrown]

Hi and welcome to the forum

I'm with freeman jones and they normally come into the forum , Sarah jolly and Steven Hewitt .

Hope they see this and resolve your problems

[Sarah Jolly]

Hi upto_our_eyeballs

I am sorry you're having problems getting through to us.

If I can help by getting a call out to you please drop me an email with your reference to Info@FreemanJones.co.uk and we'll get in touch right away.

Please accept my apologies for the inconvenience this has caused.

Sarah

[mazbrown]

Really quick response by Sarah , hope it's resolved soon .

[Rick71]

Sorry to hear you’re having problems there. From my experience it sounds unusual.

I’m with Freeman Jones, and in terms of contact, help and reassurance I can honestly say I’ve never had any real problems. I have an excellent Relationship Manager who is very much on my side, which having read posts from some other members regarding their IP’s is not always the case, so I guess I’m lucky. My main mode of contact to my RM is email – I send him my bank statements and wage slips every month (strictly speaking, I’m required to do it every six months in line with the six month review, but it’s far easier for me to do it every month), and we have a good relationship. He’s always been very friendly, helpful and supportive.

One issue I have had with Freeman Jones, however, is an apparent lack of communication within the organisation. I’ve referred to an aspect of this in one of my previous posts. In short, it involved staff at Freeman Jones calling me entirely independent of my RM and completely without his knowledge to inform me of changes to my IVA and request extra payment. This was slightly unsettling as the staff in question didn’t seem to think that it was important, or even relevant, to inform my RM that they were calling me. The last one got short shrift from me, and after I explained my annoyance with the situation in an email to my RM (who, as I suspected, was not even aware that any calls had been made) and a long telephone conversation with him in response to it, I got the strong impression that they’d had short shrift from him too. As far as I was concerned, he was being undermined by staff taking it upon themselves to contact me without at least making him aware first, and although I can’t speak for him, if I were in his position I’d be b***** furious!

It seemed to me that words had been had as a result of that, so in fairness it may have been more to do with a couple of staff members perhaps lacking the experience or personal skills to think things through properly before picking up the phone. I hope it’s been properly addressed now.

I’m sure I remember my RM saying during that conversation that they’d just started using a new email/phone system, so I wonder if there might have been some teething problems with it, preventing you from getting through? Either way, I hope you get things sorted soon.

[welshwiz]

Hi up_to_our_eyeballs

I been with Freeman Jones for over 18 months, have had 4 relationship managers in this time,(Ricki 71 really lucky to have same one all time). I have not had any issues with the change of RMS except repeating information when I contact them, they only contact me at review times which to be fair to them is really the only time they need to. I send payslips in monthly so I know I'm up to date. How long have you been with them, I didn't have any problems with my 1st review they contacted me and we discussed the outcome over the phone.

[Rick71]

Crikey, Welshwiz... It sounds like I have indeed been very lucky! Four Relationship Managers?! I wouldn’t be too thrilled about being passed from one to the other – I prefer the personal aspect of dealing with someone who knows my history, the sort of person I am and the attitude I have towards my IVA. Having to start again from scratch, especially more than once, with someone new would nark me right off. I’ve been with them for two and a half years, and it was a bit of a bumpy ride during the first few months due to a lot of PPI messing about from NatWest, so my RM and I had a lot of contact during that time and developed a very good rapport.

One thing that did come up after I made my previous post yesterday, with regard to the new email and phone system I mentioned, was that I received a reply to the monthly statement/wage slips email I sent to my RM – which also contained some information regarding a change in my rent payment – from someone else at Freeman Jones, asking me to provide a letter as proof of this change. That’s a standard requirement, I’m fine with that, but that my email was sent directly to my RM (as normal) and the reply I received was from someone else annoyed me a little, especially after the debacle I’d outlined in my previous post. It doesn’t seem like a consistent way of dealing with clients, and I’m not sure that whatever changes may have taken place at Freeman Jones are particularly helpful from a client perspective. I’m wondering if my email was replied to before my RM even had a chance to see it. Not encouraging.

Upto-our-eyeballs – did you get everything sorted? I hope everything’s all right.

[welshwiz]

hi Ricki 71

Yes did get it sorted after nearly 3 months, managed to get back PPI payment that had been paid in from a creditor not in IVA, we needed it for essential house repairs, it mainly took so long as they lost the original cheque sent from creditor to them!

Interesting somebody eles replied to your email as when I emailed my second RM and no reply for 3 weeks and when phoned told she'd left, I asked why nobody had picked up my email as was told that email accounts were confidential and when the member of staff left nobody could see there email, (which I found really odd) have also noticed when I receive texts to acknowledge receipt of payslips it doesn't say contact RM but contact Insolvency team which also now appears on the new envelopes they have sent, I can only assume that instead of one RM there is now a team, which in fact might workout better if you need a quick response but like you I would prefer to have consistency that was one of the selling points which made me choose FJ

[wiggle1]

Hi all, I was with FJ and apart from some hassle with completion, which was sorted by Sarah and Steve, didn't have any problems of significance with Relationship Managers. Our manager changed more times than I cared to count over the 6 years but I used to phone every 3-4 months just to check everything was OK and to form a relationship with who ever was on our case. During the iva I was off work for 9 months (sick)and went down to half pay, Our manager at the time was brilliant and helped us through it. Keep in touch with whichever manager you get and hopefully it will all be plain sailing from here. Good luck.

[Lee.nt]

Im having endless amount of problems with freeman jones at the minute. I have not spoken to my RM for at least 6 months....Claire Stafford seems to of dissapeared of the face of the earth. There service is a shambles and i agree with previous posts that they do not communicate with each other. Its like getting through to a foreign call centre at times because they dont communicate either. And if i have to listen to that music again on hold i going to go crazy!! Any suggestions????

[wiggle1]

Contact Sarah Jolly or Steve Hewitt, you can find their e-mail addresses on this site. They are very helpful and will answer you.

[Rick71]

font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica">quote:<hr height="1" noshade>Originally posted by welshwiz

hi Ricki 71

Interesting somebody eles replied to your email as when I emailed my second RM and no reply for 3 weeks and when phoned told she'd left, I asked why nobody had picked up my email as was told that email accounts were confidential and when the member of staff left nobody could see there email, (which I found really odd) have also noticed when I receive texts to acknowledge receipt of payslips it doesn't say contact RM but contact Insolvency team which also now appears on the new envelopes they have sent, I can only assume that instead of one RM there is now a team, which in fact might workout better if you need a quick response but like you I would prefer to have consistency that was one of the selling points which made me choose FJ

The way my RM explained the new email system to me was something along of the lines of all emails going into a central hub first, so that in the event of a staff member being absent or leaving their job, someone would at least get to see the email. In my experience of these systems, that tends to mean that there's a delay before it actually reaches its intended recipient, or, as in the case of my last email, it gets answered by someone else before the intended recipient actually gets to see it. Or something like that. Whatever the case may be, I'm not comfortable with it. It's confidential information intended for a specific person to see, and the idea that it could apparently now go to anyone on the team dilutes the process somewhat. I've no doubt that they have strict Data Protection policies in place, but this new email system doesn't seem to lend itself well to that. As far as I'm concerned, if anyone is going to contact me to request information, it has to be my RM - that's what he's for. Some person I've never heard of calling or emailing to request further information, extra payment or whatever, is only ever going to annoy me. Perhaps I'm being a tad over-sensitive here, but it's a bit like some stranger having read bits of your diary then contacting you to ask you questions about it.

[country girl]

I am beginning to wonder this is the same problem with all big IVA companies. I have the same problem with Payplan. Post often gets lost. E mails and Payplan plus messages are ignored. You can usually get hold of somebody on the phone but not a case officer so they can often not help much and as I have said before if is difficult for me to phone during office hours. Also the right hand does not seem to know what the left is doing.
Trying to sort out equity release at the moment but it is proving to be very difficult.
Will be so glad when IVA is over.

[Foggy]

I think the big companies are under resourced ( or over worked)and are putting profits ahead of satisfactory service ... after all the "client" is unable to walk away !

[country girl]

I agree Foggy you have hit the nail on the head! It is getting worse the service I received from Payplan for he first 2 years was excellent but it has steadily gone downhill.

It does make everything much more stressful