Comments on: The Student Loan Company Is Crap

By: Student Loan Company – What We Really Think | Piggynap's Blog | Zoe Piper

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 22:32:52 +0000

[...] want to subscribe to the RSS feed for updates on this topic.I wrote a post a while ago about how crap the student loan company is. It seems I’m not the only person with a bad impression – let’s take a look at [...]

By: moi

moi — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 15:54:19 +0000

Incompetent diots profiteering from poor students. I’m trying to get through to them on the phone and its pretty much impossible to get through.

By: singlelayer

singlelayer — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 10:20:20 +0000

Why don’t they set the threshold for which repayments start at a level whereby you are at very least paying back the whole interest, if not some of the loan too?

By: Andy

Andy — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 12:39:58 +0000

They are completely shit. Just tried to pay using an Austrian credit card. This is attached to an Austrian zip code. I happen to live in Austria. But it seems that thez don’t like anything other than British postcodes, so I’ve been scuppered. I guess I will soon receive another letter explaining how they will come to repossess my legs.

By: Sarah

Sarah — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 12:42:52 +0000

oh my god, i totally agree they areuseless, I’m applying for help with fees for the Open University, but the reference number they have given me isn’t long enough, so I tried logging into the Studen loan comps site and got the same msg, to reset my password… I DON’T HAVE A PREVIOUS PASSWORD, just totally useless, also the details they had to contact me were for my address from 5 years ago, even though I have been making payments up until last year when my income reduced – why doesn’t it go on your national insurance number like everything else, it’d be a lot easier!

By: squid

squid — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 07:58:13 +0000

Oh – and I don’t regard the loan as a burden really on account of it being ‘inflation only’ – it’s more of an inconvenience. However that doesn’t mean to say that a future government won’t call in the debts/increase the interest with legislation – but I would hope that wouldn’t happen as it would affect such a large number of people it would be political suicide.

By: squid

squid — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 07:56:18 +0000

Oh don’t get me started on them either

They never know exactly how much you owe them; they never send out annual statements on time (nor annually!); a guy I know has worked for about 5 years and has never paid any back even though the SLC know he’s working.

Those on the pre-PAYE days have even more of a laugh as they get to send in a cheque once a year – can you see the SLC chasing up non-payers?!

Plus I remember when at uni the number of people that didn’t get their payments on time. I certainly don’t have any confidence that the money that leaves my via PAYE actually ends up at the SLC without some of it getting lost in the system.

With regards to the interest part – sounds like you were given duff information to me. My understanding on going to uni in 1999 was that you were charged interest immediately but that interest would only be pegged at inflation for the duration of the loan – so you only pay back the ‘real’ value which fair to me.

I experienced the “you’ll never pay it back on this wage” scenario and it took me 4 years to get onto a wage that will see me pay it back on the minimum payments. But I took that as a positive thing – it means that the repayment levels aren’t prohibitive or likely to induce hardship. I wouldn’t shout too loudly about it as it may mean they reduce the thresholds back to their old levels to mean we all pay more.

This all said, I’m assuming that the loan deal you got was comparable to mine – it may be that you’re not on the ‘inflation only’ deal.

By: Lindsey

Lindsey — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 13:50:12 +0000

In a previous job my student loan and National Insurance was not paid (despite it being taken out of my wages by my employer who didn’t declare the payments) The emphasis was on me to prove I HAD paid my loan money not on the previous company to prove they hadn’t taken the money. Due to a lack of payslips ever being given out I can only prove a portion of my payments and so have lost a lot of money. I have phoned the SAAS at least 10 times over the year asking for a statement o I can check it is finally correct but they don’t seem to be able/willing to produce one and my online statement is incorrect.

Seems the SAAS is purely there to get money from anyone and does not seem to care from where.

I have gone through a horrible process to try to reclaim this money and with no support from the SAAS. The National Insurance is now sorted which is at least one good thing.

By: Ant

Ant — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 22:02:39 +0000

Don’t get me started on the student loans company. The most useless government department I’ve had the misfortune to deal with. Even worse than the tax office.