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Student loans company "sold debt" to Thesis Servicing Ltd
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thanks :-) also realised of the Hijack of thread so sorry! xxx(From £9000 in 2008)
Overdraft = 0.00
Credit card = £833.00
Debt free aim 30th December 2011
37 days to go!0 -
What the hell is this?
I just got a letter through the door from 'Thesis' saying i owe £2305 and they have been charging me interest since 1 10 2008 at 3.8% ??
This is the first I've heard of this.
Apparently this is from my first year at uni 1997.
I have deferred payment ever year since 2001 since I haven't had a job that paid over 20000+
As far as I was concerned by deferring the payment by sending the student loan company proof of my wage this was the agreement.
Is this legal?0 -
Saint Paul, I have received exactly the same info from Thesis and they have been charging me 3.8% interest since last year. According to all reports we should now be in negative interest and our loans paying themselves off. I had no correspondence from SLC and reading these posts it is a bit worrying. What action have you taken (if any) and what outcome have you had? Thanks0
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Saint Paul, I have received exactly the same info from Thesis and they have been charging me 3.8% interest since last year. According to all reports we should now be in negative interest and our loans paying themselves off. I had no correspondence from SLC and reading these posts it is a bit worrying. What action have you taken (if any) and what outcome have you had? Thanks
Well I have just rung the Student loan company 08702422211 to ask them what is this, they said that part of my loan had been sold off. The lady told me they sent me a letter telling me about it last September 2008, I said I never received such letter, she left the phone for a moment and returned and said she could resend the letter which I agreed with.
I asked her whether this sold off part of the loan was still referred and she just told me to ring Thesis
I ask her if they planned to sell any more of my student loan off to a debt company and she said there was no plans to.
I am not ringing Thesis with my information till I know more about them, and have canceled my direct debit with the SLC just in case.
I will see what others will say over the next few days as I imagine a lot of us will be in the same boat.0 -
It would seem many people got the, 'we sent you a letter' response, when oddly, none of us received them...
It's my understanding that any loans that had been agreed for deferrment with SLC should have been transferred to Thesis under the same terms and conditions. They are meant to operate by the same rules as SLC, (so you're spot on about the interest rate too - I believe it should be -0.4% or similar) and are just a different administrator. SLC apparently couldn't cope with the volume they were dealing with and the Government directed Thesis to take over the earlier batch of loans admin so SLC could concentrate on current students. It's been an absolute shambles unfortunately and obviously has not improved.
I would certainly get on to them if they're charging you interest and demanding payments on deferred loans - simply unacceptable. I'd also expect to get no help from SLC - seems they've washed their hands of everything that got sold on and you have no choice but to deal with two companies now instead of one. I hope you get it sorted out soon.0 -
I've had the letter from Thesis too. I also received an annual statement from SLC which confused me, as it mentioned two of my loans had been restructured. I assumed they had been written off or something, but obviously not!
I never received any letter from SLC about Thesis taking over two of my loans (96 and 97 ones, not 98) and I don't know what to do next. I have always deferred and assume this still stands? I don't fancy ringing Thesis judging by things I have read elsewhere but what is the alternative? Shockingly poor.0 -
This is all sounding quite familiar.
My loans (1993-1998) were sold to Thesis in 2008, and although I *did* actually get a letter saying so in October 2008, it didn't really register because I'd been deferring my repayments until then but had just got a job that paid more than the maximum you can earn and still defer. This is because shortly beforehand I'd had the annual standard letter from the SLC saying they were going to start taking payments by direct debit again.
Then a few months passed.
Then, every four or five weeks, I got an answerphone message on my mobile saying "hello, it's so-and-so from Thesis, please can you phone me back on XXXX".
Naturally I didn't, I'd forgotten about the letter and I had no idea who Thesis were and assumed it was someone trying to sell me something.
Eventually someone got through to me on my mobile. It turned out they hadn't been taking the payments by direct debit, I hadn't noticed (I'd had the letter from the SLC so I assumed it was going out of my account) and I'd run up arrears of £812.95 because they hadn't been taking the payments.
As I pointed out to them, I feel this is their fault. The SLC had told me they would take the payments by direct debit, which didn't happen (apparently Thesis couldn't take over the existing one and had to set up a new direct debit). The way I see it, Thesis failed to contact me in a meaningful way - they claimed to have written to me, but no letter arrived, and they made their phone calls in such a way as to make them sound like a sales call from a random organisation. They said they were not allowed to say what the call was actually about in the answerphone message for security reasons.
After a lot of haggling on the phone, I arranged to repay the arrears at a rate I could afford (on top of monthly repayments of £160, this was about £27 a month).
I'm now worried about two things:
1) what rate of interest am I paying on the arrears? Their documentation is not clear. I spoke to them a couple of months ago after I got my statement was calculated because they'd said the arrears might get lumped back into the main amount of loan, but apparently this can't happen.
I've re-read some of the documentation I've been sent which mentions things like 'our right to charge you interest' so I'm suddenly worrying about what I'm being charged.
2) could this affect my credit rating? I feel it really shouldn't - morally - because although I should probably have checked my bank statements and noticed the payments weren't going out, I don't think Thesis made adequate attempts to establish contact and set up a new direct debit. I've looked at my Equifax credit report and can't see anything about it on there, but I'm having problems registering with Experian.
Does anyone know where I stand, what I should do, or who I can complain to?0 -
I've had the letter from Thesis too. I also received an annual statement from SLC which confused me, as it mentioned two of my loans had been restructured. I assumed they had been written off or something, but obviously not!
I never received any letter from SLC about Thesis taking over two of my loans (96 and 97 ones, not 98) and I don't know what to do next. I have always deferred and assume this still stands? I don't fancy ringing Thesis judging by things I have read elsewhere but what is the alternative? Shockingly poor.
One tip I can pass on, if you do ring them, is that you can get through on 029 2080 8684 which won't cost you as much as their nasty money-grubbing 0844 number.0 -
zhwe270, if it helps reassure you on point 2, I was also worried and checked about the credit report. Because it's a student loan, they aren't allowed to include it on there or mark you for non payments. I've checked my own since the fiasco I had with them and this actually did prove to be true so you needn't worry about that.
I'd certainly check on the interest payments though - Thesis seem to be extraordinarily rubbish at maintaining contact by letter and seem to prefer the vague phone approach which of course, means no-one calls them back. I did the same as you - assumed it was a dodgy sales call and ignored it. Even when they got hold of me, they wanted security details before telling me what the call was about. I've never known a company opperate in such an odd manner and I'd definitely seek a documented response to what you owe and what they're charging you.0
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