Unfair charges from the Student Loans Company?

norserose

I moved house a year ago and forgot to tell the Student Loans people, genuine oversight. I've updated and successfully deferred my repayments, as I don't earn enough to repay.

Unfortunately they're now chasing me for arrears of £90 and a charge of £80.

I know that I should have changed my address with them but I had about 20 people to notify and unfortunately this one just slipped through the net, and that's my mistake. But unfortunately, at the moment I can't repay the money, (even if I wanted to!) and even repaying at £22 per month for the next 8 months is going to be tricky. My hours were cut recently and I'm struggling each month to pay the bills and not keep going into the red.

I also question how it is fair to expect me to repay an instalment on the loan, when I don't earn enough to be eligible, and the validity of charging me an £80 fine - for what, exactly?! The banks can't get away with this any more, so can the SLC?

I'm currently signed off from work with stress and anxiety and I have to say that this is part of the problem - they called me on Sunday to demand the repayment in full, have sent a letter saying that if I don't repay I'll become liable to repay the entire student loan, my debt will be passed on to a debt collection agency etc and this is really stressing me out.

Can anyone offer any advice please? Can they do this?

bigmatt1174

Are we talking about Honours Student Loans based in Rotherham?

Contact them and tell them that you are in financial difficulty and you would like to a: defer your payments as you are not earning enough - if you are earning less than £2318 per month then you should be eligible for deferment. Also ask them to send you a Financial Statement so you can document your incoming and outgoings and you also document what you would like to offer them per month.

Hope this helps

norserose

Hi - thank you. No, it's the Student Loans Company based in Glasgow. I suppose really I'm asking if it's fair and legal for them to levy an £80 admin charge? :mad:

norserose

It's also just come to my attention that they have charged me £20 for a letter to tell me this and they will be charging me £20 for any subsequent letters.

If people have reclaimed charges from the banks that were actually quite a bit less than this, can I reasonably use the template letters and try to get these charges waived?