erudio student loans

[mrsbug]

Hi, I have an old student loan from 1998 which I have been deferring since then as I have never earned enough to pay it back (there are some advantages to being poor )

I recently had a letter from a company called erudio student loans saying they have bought my student loan from the government. All very reassuring about how the t and cs of my loan won't change, etc.

Now I've had the regular deferral letter from them and it's much more detailed than before. They want my bank details which I'm not really happy to give, and they say my details will be checked with a credit reference agency, which I don't think they used to do - my loan has never shown on my credit file.

Has anyone else had this? Do I have to give them this info?

Wine is a very good idea. I've got a bottle chilling in the fridge for when I get home.

Glob this is all making me sick with worry.

I was all set to avoid their forms and send in a letter and proof of income instead... but now that I have read the last few posts (specifically the bit about Erudio not processing your deferment unless you use and sign their forms) I am wondering if I should just use the forms and black bits out. Is it even legally binding to just black out a few sections?

Sigh... I am ill and have enough stress and misery in my life without all this. :(

Just a quick heads up for those debating about when to submit deferment application - my Erudio first contact letter stated that my loan deferment ended on 19/05/14 - after applying for deferment a direct debit was set up with a first payment on 20/04/14 - one month before the original deferment should have ended.

Further information was requested to enable deferment and given a complete lack of response on the part of Erudio to emails or phone calls I now have either to take the £126.73 hit this month or cancel the dd and risk default proceedings

...

As I've said - this whole thing about DDs is a sham. You only need a DD set up of you are due to make repayments. If you are in deferment you have no reason to give them any permission to apply a DD to your account - this is not breaking any agreement. You break the agreeement when you agree to pay it back each month. If you are eligible for deferment and intend to apply for it then don't supply any DD details or remove the one sitting on your account. They are relying on you not doing anything so money "might" find it's way to Erudio.

You break the agreement when you agree to pay it back and then cancel your DD that should say.

Has anyone else noticed that there are at least a couple of spelling mistakes on Erudios deferment form?!

For example on page in the fair processsing notice undertake is spelt undetake.

Cowboys.

Can anybody email me a copy of the forms? Toddler damage has ruined mine and I am overseas so six weeks to receive them is a bit much for me.

They don't return calls, answer emails or respond to anything. Great tactic.

I am half tempted to ask if they will accept half the loan paying off rather than trying to enforce a debt collection overseas.

Quirrel, they might well accept that. They've bought the debt book at much less than face value and if someone abroad (who they may regard as virtually written off offers to pay half that could be a good deal for them).

I think the worst bit seems to be that the form says fill XYZ in and does not say you can still defer even if you do not fill in the non compulsory bits of the form. That is deceiving people into giving more information than they need. The giving of the additional information might be to the detriment of consumers. If it is worded as - if you want to defer complete the whole form that could be unlawful in my view as it misleads you and you go ahead and act to your detriment. Most people getting a form will think you have to fill the whole thing in.

I asked about paying half to write off the rest and they said they want the whole amount. I did point out that they didn't pay the whole amount for it in the first place but there was a little "almost" chuckle about how they wouldn't make a profit if they accepted half the total just to clear it off.

Seems they want the whole pie. Should be a nice little profit if they manage to get the whole face value of the book they bought for a fraction of the price.

Sorry to be a nuisance about this but can anyone confirm that blacking out portions of the forms is legally okay? Can they use this as an excuse to claim you have voided the forms? And does it REALLY exempt you from agreeing to the bits you have blacked out or can Erudio claim you have agreed anyway by signed the forms even tho they have been defaced?

Has anyone yet successfully deferred with erudio ?

@simonpimpernel if you are eligible to defer you don't need to fill out sections of the form and don't even have to fill in the form if you have the right evidence to show you are eligible to defer. Scroll back to one of my earlier posts posted today.

Hey, I'm new to this, trying to keep up but was wondering if someone could help me? I was paying my mortgage style loan back for about 2 years then deferred as I went on mat leave and when I returned to work I was below the income amount and have deferred since. My current deferral run to February 2015. If I am unsuccessful in deferment (which should not be the case!) does that mean I pay what I owe over the remaining 3 years?? Or do my instalments get split over 5 years again? Presumably because I paid some back it has shown on my credit rating since then? I have been quite lax in this as I have never had an issue with deferment and have some time till I have to again but I don't even know the simplest things about my loan. Thanks in advance for any information/advise.

If black over parts of the form or cross them out and those parts are the parts which say you agree to your data being passed to XYZ then you are not agreeing to that data being passed over. Obviously check you have not left uncrossed out parts which say the same thing elsewhere however. You could cross the fair/unfair processing notice bit out and write against it - I do not agree to any changes to my existing data protection consents (or words to that effect). I do not know what they do if a form comes back with parts not completed. For on line websites if you don't complete compulsory bits of forms they will not accept submission of the form but by post presumably they can. If they only have two categories on the computer - someone who has completed the form and someone who as not though partial completion is going to make things very complex for them.

If you provide sufficient proof of income you are legally entitled to defer, whether you choose to use their form or not.

The legislation is clear and if they try to refuse on grounds not specified in the agreement or law then you can complain to the financial ombudsman, they will be in breach of contract under the agreement, and you may even be able to take legal action for the breach of legal regulations and contract.

That is the opinion of a contract lawyer I managed to get an opinion out of earlier today after showing him the loan agreements and legislation.

Seems like more people are finding this forum. We must keep emailing or twittering martin lewis, BIS, the guy at the independent who did the story last week, other news papers/organaisations, MPs etc etc. The more people outside who know the problem, the more chance one of them will actually perform a serious investigation or speak to someone in government with gravitas to get it sorted. I cant stress how important it is to contact people with our stories. We dont know how many people actually have problems with this as forum posters arent in their thousands, so we have to speak out when we can. We have all already got the story to the BBC, MPs and other news outlets, so every individual with a gripe must contact someone outside the forums because we are all in this pathetically imposed boat together. Bombard twitter etc. Spread our concerns and encountered problems. It seems to be becoming more confusing and eratic at Erudio and they are maybe in meltdown if some of the new stories are right, so we have to keep up the pressure. We have already had one blitz, now we need to keep the pressure on!

i meant paul lewis of course.

Erudioed, i have contacted Richard Bacon, only auto reply so far, Paul Lewis, via email and twitter, any ideas who else i can contact?

i have tweeted, FBooked, have you seen the NUS response on MSE? That will be interesting, every time i ring Eurdio i get a different frustrating response, usually after a pause lol. They must surely have worked out responses by now, i would love to be a fly on the wall in that call centre!

I sway between sending the form with a complaint that i have signed it under duress and just sending them a letter, awaiting a replacement form as i did quite a piece of work on it and thought better of it lol.

Just an aside i am from the city that was the germans blueprint for the blitz, we survived the blitz, and rose from the ashes, yes i went to uni there also. Don't give up!

It would be nice as has already been mentioned if anyone has had success.

persephone, thats good. Basically anyone you can think of. Financial editors at newspapers, education journalists, newsnight, channel 4 news, the daily mirror, mail, express, guardian etc. The numbers should be quite easy to find by going on their websites to report a story. There is a post on this forum somewhere back with many email address, even one for Mark Filer, our beloved leader of Erudio. Anyone you can think of. Facebook, twaater etc, bombard and blitz all.
Dont expect much from the NUS, click on their website and all you are hit with is coke and macdonalds offers for students. And their twaater feed looks like it represents the issues of current students about as much as the NUS did when i was at uni.
At the risk of sounding like Donald Sutherland, i feel the truth is on our side on this one, as we are the ones with the experience of dealing with Erudio, so therefore if we dont spread that it is a shambles, no one will know just how bad it is. And it isnt just bad, the kind of bad one is just overcritical of, as most of us know, thus far it is an absolute disgrace! Which would be joke worthy if there wasnt so much relying on it, which others must be made to understand.

I agree with erudioed and Mandakl. I know phone calls don't mean much but what I learnt from the collections department today is, I feel, very important and telling.

They want to make a profit on their purchase. If you're seen as low risk they probably won't do much about you deferring. I'm assuming that those of us who have consistently deferred and updated our details are seen as low risk but low risk could also mean "more likely to pay" but who knows. I think they must have checked us out with experian already to draw those conclusions. With me they seemed pretty relaxed that I would be deferred even if I didn't fill the forms out and they almost sounded expectant that this would be what most people will do.

Simon Read has something in the Indy tomorrow and says the article answers a reader question so that could be interesting.

Ok i have just emailed my MP for Cov, i won't be able to do much over the weekend as we are moving, typical! We may not have BB much next week either but i will do some digging and see what i can do.

dont forget, the only thing out of erudio was to the BBC where they said stuff would be passed on to CRAs, directly contradicting what others have reported, myself included. Other than that, they have allowed their call center to circulate nothing but confusion. There is still the chance they will play hardball, wait for us all to do something wrong with the deferment and then shaft us all. It wouldnt be the first time a huge company has locked down the hatches and not bent a little when faced by the angry minions.
My advice is still be very careful because nothing is crystal clear yet for any of the problems asked and answered on any forum.

Just wanted to say, keep up the good work and don't forget to send recorded delivery and take photocopies of the forms to keep for evidence just in case these cowboys try something. else :-)

and not only that, still dont forget to log an official complaint because you may still need to go to the ombudsmen rather sharpish if the answer comes back as what you deem 'wrong'. And on top of that, it will also clog up their system for a while and buy you time, potentially another 8 weeks until they answer it.
I know i am repeating an earlier line but its so long since i wrote it, it feels like a back to basics! But it could be the real important lifeline we all need.
I dont know how it stands legally with the ombudsmen but is it possible to even argue having a complete lack of faith and trust in this company because of the dealings you have had. I doubt it but as a business it really is shambolic, how could they be trusted to enact what they have promised if the communications have been so contradictory and shambolic.

I have just found this site after opening my assignment letter today. My deferrment period ends in Feb 15 but I rang them to confirm and she confirmed my correct deferral date. I asked if she was sure as my letter stated i do not have a repayment plan in place and the impression i got is that they wanted me to pay. She confirmed that many of the letters that had gone out were wrong and they were currently trying to send out up to date letters. I said "so should I ignore this letter" and she said "Yes, it is wrong". I asked her to confirm this about three times and i took her name.

It was not until after this conversation that i found this site; and saw a little box on the back of my letter asking me to sign that I agree for them to share my information with CRA's. I do not have a scanner to upload it but its just one small box and it says "Consent to share data on up to date accounts opened in or after 1998". Then says: "In accordance with the t+c's under which the original loan was made available and with data protection act 1998, i hereby agree that with effect from this date, data on my loan opened in or after 1998 which relates to up to date payments may be shared with credit reference agencies"..and then a line for my singature. When i first left Uni, i did start paying back my loan (for two years) until the place closed down and then i was under the threshold so i deferred, i wonder if because i have made payments in the past that they are entitled to share my info to CRA's..but it's not like i have defaulted as i officially deferred...soo confusing.

Anyway, i will do as she says and ignore the letter but i do plan to contact my MP asap and get copies of my original agreements.

Thanks for all the advice i have read on here - it's really nice to find such helpful people working together to try to sort this out.