Paul Madden from Grant Thornton has spoken to me today about the initial post by Cheshiredebt. He has made it clear to me that he thinks the quote from Cheshiredebt is factually inaccurate in both word and spirit.
I have invited Paul, or one of his senior management, to post alongside Karol so that the many genuine concerns raised regarding GT closures and PPI can be answered and explained fully.
I have said many times on this forum before that Grant Thornton are a very highly respected company, after having met their two Insolvency Practitioners and Paul himself. However there is no doubt that they do need to raise their profile on this forum to justify this respect, over the last few months they have failed to do this resulting in many negative posts.
I do hope that they take up my offer and start to post more often.
Andy, Its not just closures and PPI GT have a problem with.
They blatantly lie to people, make false accusations and in my opinion just fob you off.
They repeatedly ignore e-mails, on most occasions I have sent the same e-mails up to three or four times before getting a response and yes I have also put the subject heading as IVA FORUM.
There doesn't appear to be any client care there with them and again in my opinion they are all out to screw us unfortunate people for every penny the can get and not just for creditors.
They make up figures as they go along which does not equate and when you ask for an explanation via e-mail again it gets ignored.
Why should we have to repeatedly send the same e-mails over and over
Why should we have to put IVA Forum as the subject to get any response
I am one of the unfortunate people who were transferred to GT from Blair Endersby and has been the worst experience of my life.
Yes it would be very nice to see additional GT presence on this forum but somehow I don't see it happening.
Jeffw, the reason for putting IVA Forum in the subject line is so that the mail gets directed to Karol.
Whilst I do not dispute what you say ( you are certainly not alone ) I can only say that my experience, after being unceremoniously transferred from Tenon, has been quite the opposite.
Like you, I hope GT does extend it's presence on the forum and responds to some of the criticism being leveled, however, I am disappointed that it has taken this long and a great number of vociferous complaints to get a senior response.
My opinions are merely that .. opinions based on experience. Always seek professional advice.
IVA Completed 23rd July 2013 .... C.C. 10th January 2014
I really do feel that the time has come for clients who are unhappy with their IP's services to take the matter up firstly with the complaints department of the firm, and if this does not work with the regulatory body to allow them to investigate whether there is a pattern of poor customer care, or even isolated incidents of same.
The forum is becoming littered with negative posts, and whilst Andy, his team and the professionals do our best to try and help them get resolved, at the end of the day only the firm in question can deal with these personal matters and resolve the issues to everyone's satisfaction. All I can say is that my regulatory body take a very dim view of unanswered correspondence, and failure to progress cases.
All firms, even the best ones, get complaints occasionally - but I was always taught that the best measure of customer service was the way in which client complaints are dealt with. The few we get in our firm are taken extremely seriously, and dealt with as an absolute priority by the IPs personally.
Melanie already done that but GT missed thier deadline to reply i complained about that and they apparently sent a letter saying they needed more time on the 24th 1 day before deadline (this only came to light after i asked them to esculate).
Funnily enough the letter they "Apparently" sent on the 24th may arrived on the same day as the letter send on the 27th may with same dated post marks of 28th of may.
When a comapny treats it clients like mushrooms some of the fertiliser will be slung back at them unfortunately.
Time to end of IVA 0 days
Time to end of GT dealing with it...CC recieved after a battle royal !!
Im doing the GT complaint process until it suceeds or fails (3 stages taking a minimum of 3 months if they actually bother to keep to thier own imposed deadlines)then i,ll take it down the regulators side if those options fail, im happy to let them redeem themselves but at moment they continuing to be a incredibly poor IP with customer service and CC's.
Already going to put a complaint in about their breach of the data protection act during PPI fiasco
Time to end of IVA 0 days
Time to end of GT dealing with it...CC recieved after a battle royal !!
Well what a surprise ! Received the following e-mail last Friday and no response as promised, I didn't expect any different GT are so unreliable.
Good Afternoon
Thank you for your email.
I can advise that this is currently with Karol Wilson and will issue you with a response on Monday 3 June 2013.
I trust the above is satisfactory, should you have any further queries please do not hesitate to contact Customer Services on 0844 855 2166 or email ivacustomerservices@uk.gt.com
In fairness to Karol she is pretty responsive - I asked her to look at something for me on Friday and she got back to me today, so do give her a chance, but also don't be afraid to chase - as this is your right as a client.
Grant Thornton - now i have received my certificate and have been removed from the register i will be in contact. How do i make myself known to the 'customer service" team?
I have delayed contact as i feared you would delay my certificate as a result.
I have just finished reading all these posts after leaving this forum for a while because I was getting more annoyed (believe it or not) with everything to do with the IVA fiasco (not the forum of course), and I have to totally agree with Viperboyz and the problems with GT. We are with them now after being with Tenon and previously to that with Unity.
We had problems with the first two companies with incorrect information being given. GT, even though they arranged a F@F which was accepted in December 2012 and stated closure by 6 months had to be chased up by myself 7 months later because we had heard nothing.
We were then sent the spotty letter which we were asked to sign to enable further PPI to be claimed. We now have a meeting on 21st August 2013 and have been told we can expect our closing certificate within 6 to 8 weeks of this date, (if creditors agree?).
They have already agreed to the F@F.
We are already 82 months into the IVA.
I have had to constantly keep things moving.
The whole situation is completely unsatisfactory whichever way you look at it and pulls our original contract out of all proportion. There is no excuse for this mess really.
At the moment we have a meeting on 21st August 2013 arranged by Natalie at GT following numerous emails by myself because we had heard nothing almost 7 months following our F@F which was accepted by creditors (with PPI). We were told then it would take 6 months for closure.
We also received the spotty letter (which we reluctantly signed) following my emails because we were told this would speed things up (possibly further PPI to claim?). Why this wasn't picked up at the F@F last December we shall never know!
We understand from GT that our Closing Certificate should be with us within 6 to 8 weeks of this date as long as creditors agree???. Haven't they already agreed?
My concern is that if I hadn't made contact through emails at that time we would still be sat here now thinking that the Certificate was on its way. In my opinion that should have been the case.
If all goes to plan we should have our Certificate roughly around the middle of October, which will be exactly 7 years since the IVA was agreed.
Let's hope that you are on the final run now Borneo, and it is good to note that your persistence in chasing them may have led to this for you. Other GT clients may well have to invoke similar tactics.
