ERUDIO student loans help

anna2007

Cornholio wrote: »

You'd think Erudio would have the names of everyone knocking on 50 flagged up to them automatically and they would try and make an offer....the fact they are not doing this is strange....

There must be a very limited number of people where the age rules for cancellation applies (think back to the people on your course, how many were mature students over 40, or people well into their twenties?). It's the 25 year rule which will apply to most of the loans, and cancellation of those won't kick in until 2018 at the earliest. Even then, the earliest loans were phased in over a number of years, so aren't worth as much to Erudio.

I'm pretty sure Erudio will have worked out the point where it becomes more profitable to make or accept settlement offers, and that's bound to be in the latter half of the remaining life of our MS loans. I think it would be far too risky for them to agree to any settlement offer now or even in the next few years - if word got out it would completely knacker their business model.

anna2007

Lungboy wrote: »

Any suggestions about how to deal with this? Break the cardinal rule and ring them to get them to check?

You could try that, and get them to confirm things in writing after the call.

Or you could try emailing Mark Filer? I always got a quick reply (from someone at Crapita) when using his email address:

mfiler@wilmingtontrust.com

Lungboy

anna2007 wrote: »

You could try that, and get them to confirm things in writing after the call.

Or you could try emailing Mark Filer? I always got a quick reply (from someone at Crapita) when using his email address:

mfiler@wilmingtontrust.com

I seem to remember reading in this thread that people have immense difficulty getting Erudio to put things in writing after a phone call. Maybe an email to their deferment address, followed up by an email to Mr Filer if not successful.

anna2007

gardenia101 wrote: »

Thanks - am I the only one who is still a little confused though

Doesn't quite clear things up, does it?! Do MSE not see how ridiculously convoluted Erudio are being?

gardenia101 wrote: »

Can someone explain why Erudio have messed about with my interest charged from Mar 2014 when I was never in arrears - have they done this to every single customer? I don't see why they needed to do anything to my account except continue to add interest.

I'd like to know the answer to this too, I have a feeling they intend to mess with the interest on all customers' accounts, whether they've had arrears or not. I've been trying to figure out why they'd want to do that, and have a theory (sorry if it sounds a bit bonkers, but that's the norm where Erudio are concerned!).

We know that Erudio paid something like 5p in the pound for our loans. Looking at my loan balance/monthly interest, that 5p in the pound equates to around 18 monthly interest payments (6 of which they've mysteriously waived on my first statement). If they do the same this year and next, that's 18 months' worth of interest.

If you look at the wording of the 1998 regulations, regulation 12 says:

The lender will cancel the borrower’s liability to repay the loan if the borrower....

The regulations define a student loan as:

a loan made by the Student Loans Company under the Student Loans Act 1990 or the Education (Student Loans) (Northern Ireland) Order 1990

It's possible Erudio are interpreting this as meaning only the principal amount of the original loan can be cancelled, there's no reference to accrued interest being cancelled? I'm not saying that's a correct interpretation, and we know Erudio like to twist the meaning of things to suit them, but say they tried such a scam... how many customers would question/fight it and how many would just pay it to be done with Erudio?

Maybe this waived interest is an insurance policy for Erudio, to make sure they at least recoup their 5p in the pound? We'll get a nice letter from Erudio at some point, demanding repayment of the interest that was waived in error, claiming it doesn't qualify for cancellation? Or they'll just claim all interest since the sale and the CCA remediation thing is simply designed to confuse the issue.

There, I told you it was a bit bonkers But I'm going to email BIS to get written confirmation that loan cancellation means principal plus interest, it might be useful to have when we eventually find out what Erudio are up to with the interest.

gardenia101

Lungboy wrote: »

I seem to remember reading in this thread that people have immense difficulty getting Erudio to put things in writing after a phone call. Maybe an email to their deferment address, followed up by an email to Mr Filer if not successful.

Not sure an email to them will do any good - they've consistently ignored every email I've sent them for around 6 months now.... Not a single reply or even acknowledgement & I have put every detail of mine on every email so they can't try that "we need all your details to answer an email due to data protection" rubbish.

Trying to work out if they are capable of singling me out as someone not to reply to at all (& why would they want to single me out?), or if they're just absolutely incapable of dealing with customers by email & I'm not the only one whose emails are always ignored.

Maybe copy in Mr Filer too?

Although back in the early days, before I became wiser in the ways of Erudio, I 'phoned them, they'd say something which sounded reasonable, I'd ask them to put it into writing, the letter would either never appear or it would say something different :rotfl:

gardenia101

anna2007 wrote: »

Doesn't quite clear things up, does it?! Do MSE not see how ridiculously convoluted Erudio are being?


I'd like to know the answer to this too, I have a feeling they intend to mess with the interest on all customers' accounts, whether they've had arrears or not. I've been trying to figure out why they'd want to do that, and have a theory (sorry if it sounds a bit bonkers, but that's the norm where Erudio are concerned!).

We know that Erudio paid something like 5p in the pound for our loans. Looking at my loan balance/monthly interest, that 5p in the pound equates to around 18 monthly interest payments (6 of which they've mysteriously waived on my first statement). If they do the same this year and next, that's 18 months' worth of interest.

If you look at the wording of the 1998 regulations, regulation 12 says:



The regulations define a student loan as:



It's possible Erudio are interpreting this as meaning only the principal amount of the original loan can be cancelled, there's no reference to accrued interest being cancelled? I'm not saying that's a correct interpretation, and we know Erudio like to twist the meaning of things to suit them, but say they tried such a scam... how many customers would question/fight it and how many would just pay it to be done with Erudio?

Maybe this waived interest is an insurance policy for Erudio, to make sure they at least recoup their 5p in the pound? We'll get a nice letter from Erudio at some point, demanding repayment of the interest that was waived in error, claiming it doesn't qualify for cancellation? Or they'll just claim all interest since the sale and the CCA remediation thing is simply designed to confuse the issue.

There, I told you it was a bit bonkers But I'm going to email BIS to get written confirmation that loan cancellation means principal plus interest, it might be useful to have when we eventually find out what Erudio are up to with the interest.

Will be interesting to hear what BIS say about interest, good idea to get clarification. While I can't believe anyone would think that only the capital could ever be written off & the interest not be written off, there is a tiny bit of me that can believe Erudio will try anything to make money out of us....

What a miss-selling it would be if nobody had explained to any of us former students that the interest could never be written off at 50 years of age/25 years after loan, only the capital :eek:

My cynical head says there has to be more to all of this than just inability to do the job properly, since no company can be so poor at so many parts of the business. They must have something planned for us up their sleeves

anna2007

gardenia101 wrote: »

Will be interesting to hear what BIS say about interest, good idea to get clarification. While I can't believe anyone would think that only the capital could ever be written off & the interest not be written off, there is a tiny bit of me that can believe Erudio will try anything to make money out of us....

What a miss-selling it would be if nobody had explained to any of us former students that the interest could never be written off at 50 years of age/25 years after loan, only the capital :eek:

My cynical head says there has to be more to all of this than just inability to do the job properly, since no company can be so poor at so many parts of the business. They must have something planned for us up their sleeves

It does seem ludicrous Gardenia, but would any of us be surprised if Erudio tried something like that and expected to get away with it (at least with some of us, which is all it takes to increase their profits)?

Maybe it is just a case of complete and utter incompetence:

http://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/walsall-disability-benefit-assessment-centre-9841802

Crapita does seem to have talent of a sort though - robbing taxpayers of money and jobs (and these are news headlines from the last week):

http://www.birminghampost.co.uk/business/business-news/anger-capita-makes-millions-birmingham-9979387

http://www.itv.com/news/tyne-tees/update/2015-08-28/woman-arrested-on-suspicion-of-theft-from-teachers-pension-fund/

http://www.burytimes.co.uk/news/13624746.Council_leader____appalled____by_O2_site_job_losses/

http://www.birminghampost.co.uk/business/business-news/capita-printing-unit-move-puts-9810667

http://www.worthingherald.co.uk/news/health/health-news/lancing-staff-face-axe-as-nhs-signs-330m-capita-contract-1-6908522

That NHS contract is plain scary - can you imagine Crapita in charge of back-office administration for the whole of NHS England, responsible for managing medical records, invitations for cervical/breast screenings, etc? Catastrophic.

Everyone knows how !!!!!! Crapita is, so why is it they keep winning these contracts, is the CEO cousins with Dave, or Gideon, or Boris? Or is Crapita just the equivalent of Erudio's "Special Purpose Vehicle", allowing every single thing the taxpayer owns to pass to the private sector, with a huge financial loss/heavy subsidy to those taxpayers?


Arrow Global/Carval/Capita/BIS = ERUDIO = One Hellish Student Loans Consortium

GirlFromMars_2

Any thoughts on whether or not to accept a compensation offer from Erudio for telling me my loan was up for deferment when I was in the middle of a three year deferment period or make a complaint to the financial ombudsman?

It was a super stressful time last year, with lots of in tears type phonecalls to Erudio, but I didn't actually make a complaint, and don't have any supporting evidence about how stressful their demands for financial evidence made me. And other than the occasional worry about the thought of getting evidence together to defer again next year, I've done my best not to think about Erudio in the meantime.

Anyway, strange envelope arrived in the mail this afternoon, after ascertaining that it wasn't brown, and was probably safe to open without eliciting a panic attack I discovered a letter from Erudio (panic!) offering me compensation for the stress they caused me (interesting, but I'd still prefer never to hear from them again!).

So, what are the implications of accepting the offer vs. complaining to the ombudsman? Honestly, I could absolutely deal without the stress of doing anything. Even the thought of going to the bank with a cheque is stressful enough. But, I'm not sure whether that's just letting Erudio get away with the stress they cause.

Brooker_Dave

Perhaps the FCA permission thing means that they have to be careful how many FOS complaints they get?

Seems odd they'd offer compensation without being prodded by someone?

It's not like they care about their hapless customers and their rights after all.

GirlFromMars_2

Brooker_Dave wrote: »

Perhaps the FCA permission thing means that they have to be careful how many FOS complaints they get?

Seems odd they'd offer compensation without being prodded by someone?

It's not like they care about their hapless customers and their rights after all.

There's a similar case listed on the Financial Ombudsman page. http://www.ombudsman-decisions.org.uk/viewPDF.aspx?FileID=83882

My guess is that a lot of people were sent the regular Erudio paperwork when they were still in a deferment period. The SLC had a system where vulnerable clients were given a 3 year deferment option, and either Erudio didn't know about this, or completely ignored it and sent out their regular paperwork to vulnerable clients who's loans weren't due for deferral for years to come.

I guess they must have realised that the Financial Ombudsman would take a very dim view if more of these cases ended up with them & decided to offer compensation to the rest of us who were put in this situation.

I was offered £100 compensation (despite never having asked for anything) not sure if it's better to just take it and forget about them again till next year, or complain to the financial ombudsman so that they know there are more cases.