How Much is Harrassment?

moggins

DH is paying off his student loan and most of it has been deferred as he's not earning enough. However he forgot to fill in the deferrment notice one year and they are insisting that the money be paid for that year.

It works out at about £1500, he offered to pay them £50 a month but they would not accept this saying it was too low, eventually he got them to agree to £65 a month and he has been paying this for the last 6 months. However they are now phoning us almost weekly to tell him that this payment is too low and he must increase it.

We just can't afford to pay any more. I'm a SAHM and he has just had to take another job because of the stress his old one was causing him and his new salary is £5K a year less than the old one, we're going to be hard pushed to put food in our mouths let alone pay them more money.

We can't take much more from these people, DH is already suffering from stress, is there anything we can do?

loobyloo1980

Have you sought any professional advice on this from CAB or one of the other debt places (CCCS, national debtline???) I would say this would be your best bet. I have no experience of student loans, but don't think they should be a special case to any other debt. Have you an address you can send a financial statement to so you can show on paper what your outgoings are?

If after all this it turns out you can't reduce the repayments then your only option would be to make cuts in your other outgoings to fund the extra payment. If you posted all you income and outgoing details, people on here can work wonders. It may be that you have other debts which you could reduce payments on to afford more to SLC.

Good luck, but get in touch with CAB or someone and ask them.

Pere_Ubu

Write to them and tell them that any further telephone calls from them you will consider as harrassment and will take the necessary action, inform the police as harrassment is now a criminal offence (as well as civil). That in future you wish all contact to be in writing. Further inform them in the same letter that you cannot afford more than what you are paying at the moment. Send it recorded delivery.

moggins

Thank you, I haven't been in touch with CAB yet (my first stop were the wise people here) I will try to get through to them next week. I will also get DH to work on the letter, they won't deal with me because it's his debt not mine

It's very unfortunate as I am the financially savvy one of us and deal with all the finances. Unfortunately we don't know exactly what his wages are going to be and how much we will have to spare if anything until the end of this month. He's going to try and top up his wages by doing as much overtime as he can but obviously this will not be a regular thing

fairylights_2

I would just say be VERY careful you keep records of everything from student loans. I missed my deferment deadline one year (as they failed to send paperwork, and I didn't realise it had been due as it was the first year) and they were awful. Unhelpful, rude, uncommunicative :mad: . In the end I borrowed the money to pay the whole lump of loans off (thank heavens for friendly family) and then paid them back at the amount I had offered student loans. Whatever you do, keep pushing them as they won't do ANYTHING to help you.

Good luck

tru

Moggins, we had a similar thing with a loan in hubby's name, they wouldn't speak to me. He rang them and gave his permission for them to speak to me and I got it sorted. Having said that, as they're ringing so often I would do what Pere Ubu said