Student loan company. I'd heard it was bad but...

mintymoneysaver

First attempt today at filling in loan forms for my daughter. So she fills her bit in ( with it only showing her firm offer, not her insurance? Is that right?) She ticks that I will fill in my details seperately, and then half of her information seems to disappear. We'll worry about that tomorrow.
So then I get an email giving me a password and secret question, but no customer reference number.
First phone call then, to get a customer ref no. With that given to me I manage to log in, only for it to tell me that I'm not linked with any student. Well, if I'm not linked with someone then how did they manage to send me an email in the first place?:rotfl:

Now I consider myself a fairly intelligent woman, so heaven help anyone who finds form filling difficult, as I can already see that this is going to totally try my patience!

devildog

Welcome to the world of Student Finance and don't kid yourself that it gets easier cause it doesn't

marywooyeah

don't even get me started on student finance they are the absolutely bane of my existence! they never get anything right - they seem to just randomly generate a number as your award and will change it without notice even if no new information is given and don't seem to think you would have any trouble managing financially if they just take a grand off you here and there.

my nursery filled in the form wrong, so instead of contacting me to tell me this they just took £1010 off me in one go - its been nearly a year now that I'd tried to get it back and asked they deal with it urgently - it took them nearly 2 months just to scan my form onto the system, despite the fact I scanned it and emailed it to them in the first place! I regularly get "new award notices" with significantly different amounts on it, then when I query I'm told to disregard the letters!

the thing I am looking forward to most when I graduate is not having to deal with student finance.

Taiko

How is that the fault of the SLC that your nursery couldn't complete what is quite a simple form? Did you then post that back to them yourself?

Yes the SLC have failings, but they can only work with the information given.

silvercar

I've had no problems with SLC. Eldest had all his payments arrive on time.

I've just applied with younger son for this September and the system seems to have improved in 4 years. I don't remember automatic linking with UCAS info previously and now you can enter passport details rather than have to post off your passport and hope for its safe return.we completed the application in 15 minutes.

marywooyeah

Taiko wrote: »

How is that the fault of the SLC that your nursery couldn't complete what is quite a simple form? Did you then post that back to them yourself?

Yes the SLC have failings, but they can only work with the information given.

I never said it was SLC fault that the nursery didn't fill the form in correctly - SLC never wrote or phoned to query anything they just took £1010 off me in one go. when I phoned I spoke to one person who told me I'd claimed childcare until the end of august, I hadn't and he said yes you have I can see it in front of me I'm not dicussing it further and hung up. rang back and someone else says no you only claimed until june thats what the form says sorry you'll just have to cope with the overpayment. that was sept 11.

by feb 12 once it had gone through various calls and advisors, one girl said "oh, its cos your nursery ran out of space so completed the rest in the additional info section. we don't take into account anything in that section". ok - so you have an area for additional info, but you don't consider anything in that section? that makes complete sense.

I then asked the nursery to complete another CCG2 form with the dates previously incorrect section and scanned it into SLC in mid feb 12 - which then wasn't even passed to an advisor until the end of march 2012, and they have now written asking for more info.

the point I was trying to make was that rather than write and say something was incorrect on the form they just took £1010 off me, and it's taken months to even find out what that was having various advisors tell me different reasons. how many people would just accept they'd been overpaid and not query it? that reduction has led to me having a really hard time financially and it's not the first time SLC have messed my award up. Every year I've been at uni there's been problems with them, I dread it everytime another letter lands on my doorstep.