ERUDIO student loans help

Brooker_Dave

anna2007 wrote: »

”allowing a "payment holiday" to tide the consumer over a short-term problem”.

No need for a payment holiday when no payments are due.

Now to find a new friendly lawyer now Mr Reeves appears to have left the building.

anna2007

Brooker_Dave wrote: »

The only way to deal with Eurdio is through the courts.

They are a debt collector working out of a tax haven masquerading as a charity with 1 employee.

All borrowers have to do is behave in a reasonable manner, keep up with what's in the loan agreement and stick with doing things as they have been done for the last 20 years or so.

Complaints to the sort touch regulators are a waste of time.

Until Erudio go ahead and report the loans and damage our credit records, court isn't an option. And not everyone will want to use the courts to resolve their issues.

It makes sense to try and persuade the soft touch regulators in the meantime, show them that their own guidance contradicts what they're telling people in response to complaints. The other option is to do nothing and just accept what they say when it's clearly wrong, and wait for our credit files to be damaged - I know which option I'm going with!

EDIT: I should add that I've already raised the payment holiday thing with the ICO, and they said to come back to them once it happened, if I thought it was an inaccurate record!! Still has to be escalated within ICO though.

Brooker_Dave

anna2007 wrote: »

Until Erudio go ahead and report the loans and damage our credit records, court isn't an option. And not everyone will want to use the courts to resolve their issues.

Good point.

Pluthero

Brooker Dave and ANNA2007.

Lets just keep attacking them on all fronts!

Until Erudio take people to court over non DAF compliance its all just threats and bluster.

@Mrmcguffin/Anna : Awesome points about CRA/payment holiday eloquently argued again. I will be using them in my arguments with My Ombudsman when I get a contact email for him.

eroneo

anna2007 wrote: »

Until Erudio go ahead and report the loans and damage our credit records, court isn't an option.

I disagree. When the loans were with SLC, your credit file was protected. Now it is not. So there has been a definite change for the worse. People need to think seriously about court action to stop this in it's tracks. You can go to court without a lawyer or money or may get legal aid. In fact if you have no money, you have a huge advantage because you can't be hurt no matter what the outcome. Don't be afraid. The judge has a duty to make sure unrepresented litigants have their case dealt with fairly. I think just to complain that new rules are being applied that were not before and you want it stopped. The court will have to examine the paperwork and draw a fair conclusion even if you are rubbish at arguing you points.

anna2007

eroneo wrote: »

I disagree. When the loans were with SLC, your credit file was protected. Now it is not. So there has been a definite change for the worse. People need to think seriously about court action to stop this in it's tracks. You can go to court without a lawyer or money or may get legal aid. In fact if you have no money, you have a huge advantage because you can't be hurt no matter what the outcome. Don't be afraid. The judge has a duty to make sure unrepresented litigants have their case dealt with fairly. I think just to complain that new rules are being applied that were not before and you want it stopped. The court will have to examine the paperwork and draw a fair conclusion even if you are rubbish at arguing you points.

Not sure if there would be any valid grounds to raise a court action. What would be the basis of the claim, if there's been no financial loss to the claimant, no breach of contract by Erudio and no grounds for claiming damages?

The courts are there to resolve any legal disputes, I'm just not convinced that not liking what Erudio say they'll do at a future point in time is enough - wouldn't the judge just tell you to come back, once you had actually suffered a loss/been caused harm by Erudio's actions?

anna2007

anna2007 wrote: »

I guess this means that the issue here’s not really about how the extra debt on the credit file might impact on future borrowing (as the student loans would have to be factored in anyway)

I've been thinking about this some more, and I think it only holds true for mortgage borrowing. Our student loans going on our credit files would have an impact on all other non-mortgage borrowing. This is because one of the factors that's taken into account in calculating a credit score and in lenders' decisions, is the proportion of available credit that's being utilised by the applicant, see here:

http://help.creditexpert.co.uk/help/CreditExpert/Credit_Score/how_to_improve_your_credit_score

"Total Credit Balance
Keep the total amount you owe across all of your credit accounts (excluding mortgages) below £15,000. Paying off any one of your credit accounts will reduce your total credit balance and increase your credit score.

Available Credit
Paying off any one of your credit accounts will increase your available credit and increase your credit score".

For example, I'm currently using 24% of my available credit, but if I added the value of my student loans (to both my current value of borrowing and the total available credit), this means I'd be using 33% of my available credit, so my credit score will fall. And that's with a "moderate" level of borrowing, and low student loans balance. If someone is using more of their available credit and/or the value of their student loans is higher, that will have much more of a negative impact on their credit score.

There's a good explanation in this Telegraph article of how the level of borrowing compared to total available credit affects your credit rating:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/borrowing/mortgages/10417901/Five-ways-to-improve-your-credit-rating.html

I think this is something we could use as evidence to FOS of the negative impact the reporting of our student loans will have on our credit ratings. You can use Noddle, which is free, to add up the current borrowing for all of your credit agreements, as a percentage of the total available credit. Then add in the student loans balance to find out how much it increases the percentage borrowing.

When Experian commented to MSE last year on the impact our student loans would have on our credit files, they said:

"Many scores look at how much outstanding credit people have, so a significant increase in total amount owed might be viewed as less positive".

And in the same article, this is balanced with a positive:

"A well-managed loan should strengthen someone's credit history. A deferred loan would simply show loan start date, balance outstanding and no payments due".

Well, that last bit we now know isn't true - the entries on our credit won't show as "no payments due" (a positive effect on credit scores), but as "payment holidays". As a payment holiday is viewed negatively by lenders, coupled with the reduced credit scores due to increased borrowing, then our student loans going on file can only have a negative impact.

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/news/loans/2014/04/student-loans-graduates-deserve-truth-about-what-goes-on-credit-files

Sassymum

New to this, I've posted anything in my life but Erudio have driven me to the brink.

In March 2014 I received deferrment papers, as my salary had increased and with the maintenance payments from my ex now included I didn't return them. I naively assumed that Erudio would take payments as the SLC had previously done, the direct debit was, I believed, set up. Some 6 months later I received a letter stating I was over £600 in arrears and that I could not defer as I was in arrears. I was also informed that I was mistaken in thinking that my loans would be cancelled in November when I reached 50 years old. I set up a dd and repayment plan for the arrears. Two months later Erudio cancelled the dd, 4 months later I received notification I was now over £900 in arrears!

Eventually I realised this company was not to be trusted and were not going to help me find a solution that was in my best interest. I have paid off my arrears and my loan is now cancelled. I have just made a formal complaint with Erudio and requested information on their rules regarding direct debits and cancellation of policies. As well as a copy of the assignment of my debt from the government to Erudio or if by a commercial agreement a copy of that agreement.

Has anyone had any success in obtaining this information? Also I am struggling to understand how it is ok for the government to sell my debt to a company such as this?

dizzybuff

Your dd was probably cancelled like many others around September. This was apparently because of a human error. This took thousands of people into arrears. I wouldn't expect any answer fron erudio and after eight weeks escalate it to the fos. But to be honest I wouldn't expect an outcome from them either.

anna2007

Hi Sassymum, welcome to the forum

The loan agreement hasn't changed (at least, that's what we keep being told by BIS/Erudio!), so you're on the original t&c's. There are two versions, pre-1998 and post-1998, so depends on when you took your first loan out as to which one applies. You can see a copy of both agreements here:

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/4945901

The 1998 student loan regulations also contain terms which apply to our student loans and you can see those here:

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1998/211/schedule/2/made

Did you receive a Notice of Assignment? You should have got this around March last year, telling you about the sale to a dodgy DCA outfit called Erudio! There is a 'sale and purchase agreement' between BIS and Erudio, which BIS has refused to release via an FOI request and has gone to internal review stage, you can see details of that here:

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/sale_of_mortgage_style_student_l_2#incoming-617125

Was it an SLC or Erudio deferment pack you received last March? And did it tell you the amount, date and method of repayment, if you didn't apply for deferment? I take it you had a DD already in place with SLC? Some of these DD's seem to have automatically transferred over to Erudio's name on people's bank accounts, without any kind of authorisation.

You said your loans have now been cancelled, so are you disputing the amount of arrears you had to pay? Did these carry on past your loan cancellation date in November?

As for your question on how it's possible that our Government can get away with selling our student loans on to a dodgy DCA outfit, we're all still wanting to know the answer to that one!