Student loans company

[WispasAreNicerThanFlakes]

I’ve finished paying off my student loan! Thank God for that!

BUT they have told me today that until their systems update they won’t cancel the order to my payroll to keep taking money from my salary.

This means that they will definitely take £150 from me at the end of the month even though they already owe me a refund of £80!

How can this be?

AIBU to be really pissed off? They’ve been charging me 7% interest and I doubt they’ll put 7% on the money they owe me!

Any suggestions on how to stop them gratefully received too!

Can you block the payment via your bank?

Student loans are taken directly from your salary.

They take it directly from my pay, I’ll try payroll tomorrow though.

I was so happy it was finally over and feel
so bloody deflated now!

Congrats on getting the loan paid off - which Plan out of interest?

sounds a real administrative and needless pain for you, although you should get that overpayment back. Hopefully quickly.

The same happened to me and I had to request a refund, which was processed relatively quickly tbf.

They are an absolute nightmare. Make sure that you keep hold of all your details (logins etc.) I found that when I needed to fill in my section of my son's student loan details, I needed all of my information from 1991 (when it was just starting and everything was done on paper!) It took a huge effort to get my part done in time.
I don't think that you can do anything until they cancel that order unless your payroll will pause it for you?

Yes. We nearly had this. But they warned DH in advance so we paid the last amount off as a lump sum. The hoops we had to jump through to do so was ridiculous so I advise anyone who is getting to this to do so well in advance. (We had a problem because they couldn’t cope with DH resetting his account unless he had access to his university email address…).

Plan 2- it has taken 11 years to pay for a 1 year PGCE!

Ugh I'll be paying mine off for centuries 🙄 I hope you get it sorted out.

@WispasAreNicerThanFlakes I'm a teacher too. The crap pay 😒 😆

Teacher here too. I still owe everything I borrowed for my PGCE 12 years ago but I think I have finally paid off my original degre (cheaper fees then).

just realised there’s a very real chance I might still be paying it off if and when my daughter goes to uni herself. God that’s depressing!!!!

OP the SLC actually advertise that they are crap with this and advise if you expect to pay off within a year to cancel them taking it from your pay and set up a DD instead. I think they usually write and suggest this. Did you have a big pay rise or something meaning paying it off now is unexpected? Anyway don’t worry you will get it back

No, but when I rang them about clearing the balance they said they would still be taking deductions for a few months from my salary and I couldn’t afford to double the repayments!

They are completely incompetent - I ended up paying by direct debit for the last few months of the loan which isn’t as advantageous as it’s coming out after tax instead of before but it was worth it as I could then cancel it once paid off.

Well done! I checked mine the other day and my payments don't make a difference, it doesn't even cover the interest now. Don't think I'll ever pay it off.

I've never repaid a penny 😂

This is a flaw in how student loans are paid back. They are taken each month by PAYE but only paid off the loan at the end of the financial year. This means the amount left on the loan is often a year out of date and you can be paying it back for 12-18 months longer than you owe. You will get it back.
Usually when it looks like you only have 2-3 years left to pay they will write to you to say that you are coming to the end and to avoid overpayment of the student loan it's advise you switch from paying through PAYE to direct debit as via the direct debit method it goes off your loan each month and the student loans company have an accurate figure for how much is left and can stop the payments as soon as you have cleared your debt

Also a teacher. I still owe £65k 🤷‍♀️🙈 and I'm about to go into my 9th year of teaching

You need to keep a REALLY close eye on them. My relatives partner finished their student loan payments …only to find out they had kept on taking money from her. SLC had to pay it back to my relatives partner. Very shady

You should have got a letter explaining this about a year before the loan was due to conclude. It gives you the option to change to DD.

You'll have to wait ans request a refund now, unfortunately

I've just realised the UG portion of mine should have times out but hasn't.

From what I'm reading the end of payments is always messy, and they always end up owing you a rebate, even when they're not actively cocking your account up.

I haven’t checked mine for years. I believe they still wipe them out after 30 years so I’ll be done with it before retirement.

Same here, the interest is more than I pay off. I didn't realise how high the interest rates were on mine (I've got some on plan 1 and some on plan 2). Pretty sure I won't ever be paying it back!

Just to respond to this in case anyone else reads it, there is no difference paying via salary or direct debit. Student loan payments, when taken from salary, are not taken before tax. The payments are calculated based on your gross pay, but are taken from your net pay (I.e. after tax).

Martin Lewis just did a whole thing about this exact subject! Recommend looking at his website as it advises what to do

This has been well publicised for years, with the solution to move to a direct debit for a the last amount to avoid it from happening.

Yes it's incompetent of SLC, but there is a big highlighted notice when you log in to check your balance as soon as it drops below £5k offering the option to move to a DD.