Student Loans Fake Law Firm

Why would someone receive a letter from a collections agency for Student Loans? Did you lie on your employment forms to say you never had any student loans?

You could go about contacting the BBC in regards to their most recent article and advise them on it. They might look in to it. Apart from that, I have no idea other than contacting Student Finance England, but I doubt they'd be honest about it.

Letters from Smith Lawson & Co say (or used to) at the bottom that:

Smith Lawson & Company is a trading name of the Student Loans Company Limited
VAT REG: No. 556 4352 32 Registered in England No. 2401034 Registered Office: 21 Thomas Street, Bristol BS1 6JS

My daughter received such fake letters from this fake law firm. At the time she was suffering acute depression and also living abroad. It did nothing to help her situation and caused her even more stress. I was able to sort it out for her but it's a shoddy practice and no doubt the SLC will not be bought to book. If I as a businessman used this practice then no doubt I'd have action taken against me by my professional body. One law for arrogant government departments and another law for us mere mortals........... and Wonga!

Article published by the FT yesterday:



http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d9a294e2-fde7-11e3-acf8-00144feab7de.html#axzz35xUjDLRE

Fake letters scandal spreads to Student Loans Company

Graduates falling behind on debt repayments were sent threatening letters from what appears to be an independent debt collection agency – but is in fact a pseudonym for the Student Loans Company.

The revelation is awkward for Vince Cable, given that the quango falls under the remit of the Liberal Democrat business secretary, who vigorously advocates high standards in the business world.

It emerged as Wonga, the payday lender, faced the possibility of a police investigation after it was found to have sent letters from fictitious law firms pressuring customers to repay their debts.

The City of London Police said on Friday that now an agreement had been reached under which Wonga customers would be compensated for the practice, it would “reassess” whether a criminal investigation would be appropriate.

Britain’s biggest payday lender was this week ordered to pay at least £2.6m in compensation to tens of thousands of customers who received the letters.

The FT can disclose that the Office of Fair Trading intervened earlier this year to ask the Student Loans Company to change the wording on its letters because they were potentially misleading.

Letters to indebted graduates had been sent with a masthead from an agency called “Smith Lawson & Company Recovery Services”, as highlighted by the Buzzfeed news site.

Some letters used phrases such as, “We are instructed by our client”, which appeared to indicate that Smith Lawson is an independent firm. There was also a Smith Lawson email address. Phone calls on Friday to the business were met with a voicemail that did not refer to the Student Loans Company.

Only in the small print at the bottom of the letters did it say that this was a trading name for the government body. The organisations share the same registered address in Bristol.

Earlier this year the OFT – which has since been folded into a new regulator – intervened to get the SLC to change the wording of the letters. “The letters . . . are no longer issued by SLC, having been revised following discussions with the OFT earlier this year,” the quango said. “This includes reference to the word ‘client’ in communications.”

Many graduates, after receiving the letters, expressed their fears online that their debts were in the hands of an independent collection agency – unaware that Smith Lawson was merely a pseudonym for the not-for-profit government agency.

The SLC said it introduced Smith Lawson as a “cost-saving exercise” because the use of conventional debt collection agencies required the payment of commission. Asked why the SLC did not issue the letters under its own name, the agency replied: “The use of a secondary brand is part of SLC in-house recovery process, all letters issued in the initial stages of recovery are all branded Student Loans.”"