Trouble with Thesis Servicing and Student Loan Deferment

buzbuzz

Hi,

I am hoping someone can give me some advice regarding this problem I am having with Thesis Servicing.

I have a pre 1998 student loan, that I have always deferred as I am well below the income threshold. Deferment on this loan was due on 15th May. This year I received my deferment application mid March, I completed it and sent it back with the relevant documentation early April. On 18th May I received a deferment letter from the SLC with a deferment date of 16 June, and a letter from Thesis demanding payment for May or they would hand the debt over to a collection agency.

I immediately tried to ring SLC to confirm that my loan has been passed on to them for managing, but kept getting passed around from person to person and eventually cut off, this happened twice after spending around 3 hours trying to talk to someone there.

I then tried calling Thesis, who did answer and confirm that my loan account was passed to them for servicing. The gentleman I spoke to said the same as the letter, if I do not pay the outstading amount it will be passed to a debt collection agency, my whole loan may be cancelled and it will ultimately damage my credit rating. I asked them why they had taken so long to process the deferment and they said they only received it on 14th May, they take 4 days to process and that is why my deferment was dated for June. I asked him why my deferment was not backdated and he said that is not part of the agreement I had signed and he had no knowledge of this being possible.

Now even though they are only asking for £50, that is still a large amount of money for me to find. They tried a similar trick to this a few years ago, and called my parents house while I was out and convinced them to pay £150 to save my credit rating.

Anyone any advice on how I should proceed? I have tried reading around here, but cannot seem to find a definite answer.

thanks,

theoretica

You should be able to backdate the deferment (by no more than three months)- this was the case when I took mine out and is backed up by google, so presumably applies to you. Glacial slowness of the postal system (to give then the benefit of the doubt) should be a valid reason for them to do this.

I think you need to ask to speak to a manager (it helps if you remember or note down the name of everyone you speak to) and ask for the information about not backdating in writing and what their complaints procedure is- you need to go through this before going to the FSO.