Student loans website is crap

snomys

Hi

I recently found out you can check your outstanding balance etc through a website.

h t t p://w w w. s t udentloanrepayment.co.uk/

But this website appears not to be that great, in my case, it displays a balance but even though contributions were taken from my salary for the last 3 months, the total hasn't budged and has remains the same.

My guess is that this site only gets updated at the start of each financial year, does anyone know if this is the case?

If so, thats so poor, with the amount of money these guys are skimming off of us, they could at least build a better system.

And with a once a year update to your balance, there is so much scope in there for them to cheat you out of your hard earned repayments.

Any further info, much appreciated.

THNX

Lokolo

Yes that is the case but that is because HMRC don't report the payments to Student Loans Company until the end of the financial year not because "the website is crap".

I believe SLC backdate the payments so you end up not paying more interest than you should.

Tixy

Yes its only upadated annually.

Thats because HMRC who collect your tax credit repayments, don't actually pass these on to slc until the end of the tax year - when your employer informs them how much money that they paid to HMRC relates to tax, how much to national insurance and how much to student loans for each employee.

I don't see why that gives SLC scope for them to cheat you out of your hard earned repayments - you simply need to keep a tally of what your employer tells you they have deducted from your pay - and compare that annually.

There is also advice in place to try to help ensure people don't overpay - by telling them to contact SLC when they expect their balance to be repaid in less than 1 year. Even if a person does overpay by accident due to not following this advice it is always possible to get a refund.

CLAPTON

The system currently works this way.

The deductions are made via your company payroll.

The payroll system sends aggravated figures from your employer each month (these are totals for the company employees and so don't contains the details of your personal figures like tax , NI or student loan deductions.)

After financial year end, the company payroll system then sends full details of each employee's total income, tax, NI and student loan deducted) to the HMRC.

Then HMRC send the details SLC.

So SLC is always well behind realtime.

There are plans fro HMRC to collect monthly figures for each person rather than the aggregates so in principle the situation should become more timely.

rizla_king

Better than it used to be, which was no info online and useless and inaccurate yearly statements from SLC.

andymc29

They update your loan balance yearly, normally around august for the year just past ending in April. You cna update the balance to calculate the total left by using the balance calculator on the site.

Then when you calculate that you are within 18 month of paying off the loan you can write to them with copies of your payslips showing what you've paid and ask them to stop taking teh money from your payslip. They will send a stop notice to the HMRC who will forward it to your employer. Once done, you can switch to paying by direct debit directly to the loans company or pay the whole amount by card over the phone if you have it.

It's stupid and over complicated, but would you expect anything less from a government scheme?

OneLife_OneShot

I can't even remember my student customer reference number any ideas on how to get it?

RDG

conisme wrote: »

I can't even remember my student customer reference number any ideas on how to get it?

Phone them?