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?

I have 4 loans, all pre-1998. So, am I totally screwed?

Unless I missed some comments, Most of the ones so far seem only to relate to post-98 loans and how to deal with the reporting of deferrals to CRAs as this goes against the t&c's for those loans.

Now, I've just discovered that the original t & c's of the SLC stated that they could report my past deferments to CRAs, just that they chose not to. Therefore, is it still worth stating to Erudio that I don't agree with the reporting of my deferment even though I signed the original SLC form that states that they could? Before I found out about the t & c's for pre-1998 loans, I photocopied the last page of the new form and completly blanked out the warning box at the bottom and the whole of the back page in order to write a statement about not agreeing with the new rule. Now I'm beginning to wonder if there is any point in doing this as it seems like Erudio have me over a barrel.

In relation to the deadline for returning forms, my deferment end date is 14 May - what do you reckon is the latest date that I could send them off? And, if they do report the deferment to the CRAs, how long do you reckon it will take to appear on file. I've just been approved for a mortgage and almost having a break-down thinking that the mortgage lender might do some final checks and discover these deferred loans.

For what its worth i think i will probably return my form but not sign the fair processing notice as it stands.

If the original loan terms and conditions allow them to give my details etc to CRAs then they dont need me to sign anything giving them permission to do so.

I will state that my earnings are below the threshold and meet the criteria required for deferment and that I do not agree to any changes or additions to the original loan terms and conditions.

So as the FPN ends with the 'permission giving' box requiring signed, and the bit above that about sharing 'if deferred in the future', leads me to believe that they cannot share my info with a CRA until either hopefully both those conditions are met then I will just try to keep an eye on how the whole thing is going.

I feel sorry for everyone facing the crunch time this year and appreciate anyone who is sharing their experiences as it may help the next round of us coming on to be forewarned/prepared.

I've just been scanning through what I've missed the last few days and here are my thoughts.

I'm repeating one of them:
If you are in deferment you DO NOT need a direct debit sitting on your account. The only reason you need a DD is to MAKE A PAYMENT. If you are deferred you aren't making any payments and if you cancel your DD you ARE NOT DOING ANYTHING WRONG. If you are in deferment and are still eligible to defer then cancel any existing DD you have for Erudio.

I think it's really important people understand this if they are worried about Erudio taking money. You're breaking the agreement if you are making payments and then cancel your DD - that would mean you have defaulted on the loan. If you're not deferment you're not in default. If you are eligible to defer there is no reason for Erudio to have access to your account. It's your responsibility to pay them if you are eligible and not everyone has a bank account so you don't have to pay by DD!

Secondly - oh so they are now saying that we have to fill out their forms? Boo hoo, I don't look at their website and they've not sent me any documentation to tell me to fill out their form or else so.........

Interesting:
www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-2592434/Debt-collectors-set-cash-consumer-borrowing-spree.html

Sorry to rush and run, but got guests and haven't got time to read all the new posts at the moment.
This 5-6K figure being 'an ok loan amount' whilst that is what I borrowed with interest this is now nearly 10k. Which figures does the 5K relate to?

Hmm interesting. I've just been finalising what I'm sending back to Erudio and have put permanent marker crosses all over their forms. Has anyone else noticed that it does actually say on their covering letter that knowingly or recklessly giving false information can result in criminal proceedings being brought against you?

Cross something out though is not false information.
Lying such as filling in a tax form only giving half your income has always been a criminal offence. I would have thought it would something like straight forward fraud so I don't think the fact they say giving false information could be a crime is wrong although it sounds a bit bullying. Do lenders put it on their forms?

Yes, crossing or leaving out the parts that are none of their business is NOT giving false information.

It's just on there to discourage people who may be tempted to lie on the income or other questions actually relevant to deferment.

Plus of course it nicely puts the frighteners on people who misunderstand what it applies to.

Just been on the phone to them again, quite enjoy phoning them now.

Somehow they still haven't managed to update my address despite it being on the front page of their form. I still have to give my parents address to clear their security. After being told my application hadn't been processed I informed them it was looked at on Monday then the advisor dug a bit deeper into my notes and told me my deferral had been accepted and I was now officially in deferral until May 2015. A letter was sent out on the 14th confirming this.

Again, won't take anything for granted until I've got that letter in my hands. Hopefully it should arrive this week, if it does arrive I can then use as evidence for my bank should I need to call on the DD guarantee.

I keep copies of my credit file from all 3 CRAs and have excellent scores with them all and have PDF copies from the last time I checked (I do this every 3-4 months) so I'll check again in a month of so to see what the effects are, if any.

Has anybody who wrote requesting a copy of an original agreement from Erudio had a reply yet?

If so, did you have more than 1 loan?

If you did, did you only pay £1.00 for copies of ALL of your loan agreements covered by the Erudio Reference Number - and did you receive copies of ALL agreements?

Or, did you pay £1.00 per original loan agreement, so £2, £3 or £4 in total - and did you receive these yet?

I sent one request with a PO for £1 and asked for copies of all of my agreements (5 in total). Haven't heard anything back despite emailing a couple of times reminding them of the deadline.

Think I'll send another request once I have my deferral letter. I'm going to email a copy this time too and send an original signed for with another £1.

I need to read up on the follow up process if they don't respond.

@ IchibodT

Congrats - pleased for you on the deferment.

I know you'll have said earlier on the thread but to save my tiny eyes, how did you apply to defer?

1. By the book.
2. Letter and blacked out/missing information + signed application form + evidence of income
3. Bespoke letter + evidence of income - no application form.

Sorry if I'm being nosey but I think it will really help all of us if we know what kind of applications are being processed successfully

Cheers IchibodT - is it 12 working days as a deadline for the original agreement?

Don't worry - just checked - yes it is 12 working days

i have been quietly contemplating today why The Dept of BIS didnt ask the student loans company to ask us deferers whether we wanted to settle our accounts short.
In my imaginary world, a potential scenario for the negotiators would have gone like this:
BIS asks the SLC to mail all if us deferers that the government has decided to sell our loans onto to debt collectors, asking whether we would like to settle accounts for the fee of 25% of the total owed. BIS already know that the figure the bidding process has produced thus far is 17% for current payers, defaulters and the deferers in this loan portfolio. However, BIS, as i was told by them, considered most of deferers as redundant and that the company winning the process would collect very little from them because most were due to be wiped within 9 or less years.

So SLC send this letter out, stating clearly that this debt collector will be controlling the deferral process for the first time. SLC ask for a response on the enclosed form: settle or have the loan passed over to the private sector. I am assuming that most student loan borrowers in deferral would very strongly consider that a good proposal and seek settlement terms before the loan was due to expire.

So figures...and remember, BIS assumed the deferral loan book was pretty worthless:
46% (deferers in the loan portfolio) of 890 million is about 410 million

25% of 410 million is about 102 million.

ACTUAL LOAN PORTFOLIO SOLD TO ERUDIO (that i assume means Arrow Global, CarVal, The Wilmington Trust and other private investors) FOR 160 MILLION

Even if some chose to continuing to defer, SLC could have generated a vast sum of money and still left 480 million worth of debt for sale. Considering most of the defaulters will be tracked down at some point, BIS could surely have still got a rather good price for that 480 million.

I know there are many loopholes in the above, such as deferers becoming liable to pay for odd years and some defaulters maybe evading capture abroad or dying to name just two, but the question remains why were we not offered the option to pay our loans off at a reduced price? As BIS could, we have unfortunately found out all too vividly, sell our loans, i am sure the text of our T&Cs would allow for them to lower our settlement fees, or just add another amendment allowing them to do so.

And this isnt forgetting that BIS employers, and i assume the very desks and coffee they drink during such negotiations, are actually paid for by the tax payer, so they should surely be seeking to settle with borrowers before they let the private sector and all their ammo come in and disrupt our lives. I dont think anyone on the planet is disillusional about what a big global debt collector actually is. This is not credit card debt for holidays and tvs were talking about, but our education, which is fundamentally and philosophically different.

BIS conducted the due diligence test, and now they need to answer some fundamental questions about it...why didnt they ask us of we would settle short during the sales process? How did they decide this labyrinthine collection of global businesses was right to sell to, some already big players in the US and in court as i type this for using heavy handed tactics against ex-students (if you search online you may be very shocked at the state of this issue in the US). Did they know Erudio is basically Honours Student Loans by another name. I know others have more pertinent questions than my small mind can grasp but these are all issues that need looking into and answering for.
All they had to do was mail us and ask if we would settle, but instead, they sold us down the river to the highest bidder. It seems to me that BIS have gotten their priorities the wrong way round. Citizens first, or business first. We have a clear answer on this occasion, and it is a plan they intend to roll out for all future students. We have all unwittingly and unfortunately found ourselves at the start of something that we all need to do our best to stop and highlight before it actually does become policy. If we dont speak out, and we are doing great thus far i think, then no one else will until it is too late.

I completed their form blacked out the fair processing notice and sent 3 wage slips, p60 and proof of savings interest along with covering letter.

Yup it's 12 working days

That's a fair point Erudioed and something which I wonder if a FOI Act request might clarify - although they may refuse answers under the commercial sensitivity get-out.

Of course, they might also have thought the press might report it as BIS blackmailing borrowers - give us the money or we'll set the dogs on you.

It's a tricky one - people would have always looked more favourably on paying back the government rather than a random debt collection firm BUT I don't know if there was a 'right' way they could have communicated that.

Thanks IchibodT - I blacked out the FPN too and included proof of income.

Did you answer the address status questions? I didn't, but I've heard nothing from them asking for the info.

I answered all questions on their form. I know it's giving them way more info than they need but I honestly don't see much harm. All of the info they have asked for is out there anyway, banks, building societies most financial institutions sell this info on.

I regularly trace people through Experian and other resources for my job and most of this info is flying around.

I know others are very reluctant to share this info and that's a decision you have to make and as Erudioed said earlier it's a point of principal for some.

congrats indeed IchibodT, hopefully that will be most of the stress gone for another year...
Point taken emptycoffers. They could have announced the sale though but put it to us that we had a chance to settle short if we so felt, they are master linguists after all. If they managed to sell the debt like this for so much without giving out very much real info, they could have sold it to us i think in a friendly way.

you wont believe this one...one person had cash taken, then told it would be repaid, then had another DD taken whilst waiting for it to be returned...and that is the same case as the one that was highlighted during the weekend by the independent. So even under the watchful eye of the media, they are doing their tricks, or at best, not sorting them automated system out:
www.independent.co.uk/money/loans-credit/erudio-student-loans-reader-has-cash-wrongly-taken-from-account-by-debt-collector-9264279.html

@ IchibodT

For sure - in fact, a fair amount of this information they will have ready access to from the SLC records and some of the rest they could get from Experian anyway.

Perhaps the only thing they couldn't know on first sight would be homeowner or tenant... and phone numbers/emails

Previous addresses would all have been notified to SLC.

So, I asked myself, why did they go to the trouble and considerable expense even, of printing out all this extra paper asking for all this stuff that they mainly already had?

Are they just acting like assholes - just because they can?

Firstly, they probably intended to use this form to cover all eventualities and all types of loan thinking of when they try to buy the next tranches of student debt. So they would have viewed this as money-saving in the longer term.

Secondly, I do think they needed the extra information to put together a credit profile (which they can sell) but also in determining who is worth chasing harder.

Thirdly, without even really trying, they knew the fear of potentially negative credit ratings would make some people pay up - and it has.

It wouldn't surprise me if Erudio have already made more out of fully valid deferrers than they ever imagined this section of the debt was worth.

However - they must feel that somewhere along the way, comparing what data they could already harvest from SLC and Experian and what extra data they could muscle out of us on the deferment forms, that they could find something extra to put the thumbscrews on - there's extra value somewhere.

I don't accept for a moment that they have any 'right' or 'entitlement' to request the information they demanded - it's totally irrelevant to the deferment process so can only be needed for ulterior motives - debt collection or otherwise.

In the end though - you're entitled to defer - and they have no choice in that - they can't not defer you when you're below the threshold - so it's relax and feet-up time for you - well done!

Good on the Indy and Simon Read for keeping up the reporting!

@emptycoffers

I'll put my feet up when I get written confirmation, I'm still fairly doubtful it will arrive.

As for the info collection, there is no doubt they are going to sell this on, but everyone does that. Consumer profiling, Credit profiling if you've got a bank card, credit card, store card, loyalty card, mortgage, credit agreement etc it has already been cross referenced against each other and against CRA records and sold on a dozen times.

This is all appended with shopping habits, online and offline, utility bills, demographics, likely voting habits it goes on and on. Even phone numbers and email addresses are out there.

I really don't like any of it but it's the modern world. I've no doubt Erudio will use what they have in some very tasteless ways, that's what they do, but ultimately if you are entitled to defer and stand your ground they can have every piece of info about you and it is all useless (apart from info re sale).