ERUDIO student loans help

belively

I was wondering if anyone could help me. I am writing this from Japan. Having just got off the phone with Erudio student loans company. Every year without fail I have deferred my student loan. It is a pre 1998 mortgage style loan. I did this by mail up until 2017/2018. After that i started using their portal site and continued to do so up until and including last year. It was getting near that time again and yesterday I went online to check when the date was for my next deferral. It went through last year but i didn't make any copies or prints because it was online so  I thought i would be able to access it. They are now claiming that i haven't deferred last year, that my account is in arrears and they may pass me on to credit agencies. They claim to have sent me letters, this is nonsense, i have informed them that i haven't received any letters from them since March 27th 2018 which was the last time they sent me a statement. They never sent me any deferment papers last year, no warnings of going into arrears, nothing. I have every single letter regarding my student loans from the past 20 years up to the point I started using their online portal. I was wondering if there was any advice you could give me. They have said they are going to call me within the next few days but that they would probably demand i pay all the money and not put my account in deferment. My contact details haven't changed for the past 17 years. They have my email address, they haven't emailed me, they have my phone number and they haven't called me. Any advice as to what i should say to them would be greatly appreciated. I am beginning to wonder if this is why they wanted people to go online using their portal so they could later claim they hadn't received the papers.

I have put in a complaint with them over the phone and the man i spoke to said he believes that i put in the papers but they have no record of it. He also says that they have records of letters sent to me, as i said I have received nothing since March 2018.

I contacted the Financial Ombudsman and they seemed to know nothing about this kind of situation with student loans but i was led to believe they had pursued this company in the past.

kaMelo

As a pre-98 loan there can't be very long left before it is written off but If you fail to defer then the loan defaults, the entire sum is due and will never be written off (subject to statute limitations)   With that in mind it would be very much in Erudio's interest for you to fail to defer.  

Have you got nothing?, email receipt, screenshots, absolutely anything to show you deferred? 
 If they're not playing ball and you have no proof you deferred then send them a SAR to see all the information they hold on you and hopefully it will turn something up.

On a side note, are you living in or visiting Japan? If living are you likely to return anytime soon?

belively

kaMelo thanks for responding, yeah I was online checking cos this year would be my last deferment.
I have spoken to them today again and they said they were proceeding and ignoring my compliant basically. I then got them to read out my address. When they got to the end and didn’t say Japan. I asked, so does it say Japan, they said no. I asked why not. This has happened before and I have letters from them where it says Japan then not then it says it. They said it doesn’t say Japan on their system. So I said well that’s your responsibility you haven’t sent them to the right address. Surely it is not my responsibility to keep telling them my address just in case they might send a letter. They seem to decide by themselves when to put Japan on the address or not. I recorded the conversation of them admitting Japan is not on the address and have sent them examples of a similar time they did this. I never received deferment papers or any notices from them and now I know why. What do you think?

erudioed

When you say they ignored your complaint, do you mean you made an official complaint, or just you getting into a debate with them about the false situation they are trying to sell to you?

As we all know, Erudio, which is now owned by another company who just purchased Arrow Global, will try any trick they can to catch us out. Do you have any evidence at all to support your deferral last year? This is a key question! And also, did you check that you had been deferred after submitting your evidence, and that your application was submitted correctly at the time? You should have an email confirming this. Look for an email from 'no reply' and titled "Your Erudio Student Loans deferment application" which will confirm you sent it.

If you have this, tell erudio this...if they even start the most minor or debates, you state "I would like to make an official complaint immediately and will go all the way to the Ombudsman if you don't sort this out right now".

If no, kaMelo's advice about the SAR has to be the immediate path. But i would still open an official complaint arguing you deferred on its portal.

You could also even contact the ombudsman so they are on top of the complaint with you and you are not left waiting months for them to deal with your issue when it gets to their part of the process.

I personally wouldn't focus on the Japan issue. If you deferred, everything else is irrelevant. Although you could include that in supporting info to the ombudsman at a later date. It sounds like you are letting erudio distract you from the main issue that you deferred online on its portal.

Its a disgrace you have to go to such lengths but this is the game of cat and mouse such companies choose to play to get people to give them cash.The onus is on us to keep the evidence in case they try such tricks. There is a chance you have been trapped by thinking you submitted the application but erudio's system did not process it. Nothing is beyond them in my experience, which is why you have to stay on top of every interaction with them and get some kind of evidence.

In the case of the ombudsman, that you have deferred for 23+ years, should stand you in good stead because why would you not try and defer two years from it being cancelled, etc. But you cant rely on this. Its clear erudio's portal has had issues, so stay strong and prepare for a long fight if you cant find any supporting emails. Its kind of outrageous Erudio's portal doesnt give access to any info about previous deferments or interactions with them.

belively

Unfortunately I don’t have any emails but I know I did it. I checked my info in there today. The address they have on the online portal is even worse than the one they had on the letters. Surely it is there responsibility to keep to what they are supposed to by sending me deferment notices and notices of any changes arrears. They have had my phone number address and email for 17 years and haven’t contacted me.

belively

Sorry, the latest, they claim that a country name isn’t necessary when sending internationally. Utter rubbish when I checked on Royal Mail about this. Also twenty years ago same thing happened with SLC they called me, corrected the address and deferred me. Admitting it was their mistake. Does this not set precedence for what should happen now. They also can’t explain who why or when changed my address on their computer system three times without my authorisation so I have warned them that this is a possible breach of the data protection act covering correct use of peoples information access and loss. Oh and sorry for answering late but no I will not be returning to live in the uk I will be retiring and living out the rest of my days here!

kaMelo

belively said:

Sorry, the latest, they claim that a country name isn’t necessary when sending internationally. Utter rubbish when I checked on Royal Mail about this. Also twenty years ago same thing happened with SLC they called me, corrected the address and deferred me. Admitting it was their mistake. Does this not set precedence for what should happen now. They also can’t explain who why or when changed my address on their computer system three times without my authorisation so I have warned them that this is a possible breach of the data protection act covering correct use of peoples information access and loss. Oh and sorry for answering late but no I will not be returning to live in the uk I will be retiring and living out the rest of my days here!

You're focusing on completely the wrong things here. What happened under SLC stays with SLC. The information will have been transferred but mistakes happen because humans make mistakes.. Whilst there is a responsibility on Erudio to keep things up to date and accurate that responsibility cuts both ways. holding inaccurate data is not a breach of any legislation (some estimates put 20% of data held by HMRC  to be innacurate/incomplete)  but it's to your detriment if it's not.

What evidence do you have of deferral, anything at all? Surely you know your word " I know I did it" just isn't going to cut it. With the knowledge of how Erudio operate, how close you are to the loan being written off and the consequences of not doing so, taking such a laissez-faire attitude saying "I did it" but getting nothing to prove it makes no sense. They're sneaky, you've (possibly) thrown them a bone and now they're clinging on to it hard as it's in their interests to do so.

Leaving all that aside and given what you've said about having no proof of deferral there are two options as I can see.
Send a SAR, this should reveal all the information that they hold on you and may or may not show up that you did indeed defer last year. If it does great. If it doesn't and you don't have any other proof of doing so then, as @erudioed said, you're going to need to complain and take it to the ombudsman if required but whilst unlikely they could ultimately go so far as obtaining a CCJ.

Second option, as you're not living in the UK and have no plans to return then you've really not much to lose no matter what they do.

Moneysaver222

Hello,

I’ve just received 2 arrears notices from Erudio so was hoping someone could offer some advice on how to deal with them.

I have 4 pre-1998 loans (2 with Erudio and 2 with Thesis) and they’re due to be written off in the next couple of years. I’ve deferred without issue for the last 21 years but this year SFE decided not to accept my bank statements. I’d sent them the same ones I’ve always sent them but this time they decided that the lack of address on them made them unacceptable as evidence of my income. However, I didn’t receive the letter they claim to have sent me to tell me this so the first I heard of it was a default notice from Erudio 3 months later.  At that time, I was unaware of Erudio’s tactics, so they scared me into paying them about half of what they said I owed them.

SFE took another month to process my deferment application after I resent them my bank statements, and this resulted in my deferment start date moving from May to July. I thought that meant the problem was resolved but Erudio contacted me again saying I still owed them the rest of the money. I emailed them saying I understood that deferments could be backdated up to 3 months in situations such as this and requested them to do so but they refused.

I heard nothing more from them until today, when the arrears letters arrived. The amount they’re asking for isn’t a huge amount (about £200) but it’d still be a struggle to find the money and I also don’t understand why the arrears weren’t cancelled when the deferment was approved.

Any help would be much appreciated.

 

lantanna

Just got my deferment through for this year. Now for the anxious wait to see if I’ll miss it again next year. 2 more years and I’m free.

daswalkerdas

So thought I'd update this thread as seems to be the one with the most posts.

Had a nice letter from Erudio arrive other day with a new settlement offer.

This time is is £1300.00p. Offer valid until 16-08-22.
My total amount owed now is just shy of 9K.
Due to my age the loan will cancel sept 2024 - so even if I don't get deferment I'd be looking to pay back £2300.00p.

Based on last years high deferment level I think I'll wait it out!