Drydensfairfax, County Court Claim (Erudio)

Hi all,

I have just joined so a big hi from me!

This morning a County Court claim form arrived in the post from Northampton Court. It's a claim for 2.1k by Drydensfairfax Solicitors on behalf of Erudio Student Loans. The reason they state is that I failed to keep up repayments on "the loan"...I actually have 4 Student loans with Erudio so I'm not sure which one they refer to in the letter.

Anyway, I had been paying Erudio regularly for my student loans up until I did a bank switch from HSBC to Halifax back in Feb 2016. Halifax transferred all my DDs but I noticed after 2 months of the bank switch, Erudio had not taken any money via the DDs? A month later and I got incoming threatening letters from Eurdio.

I called them, and got a rather sarcastic "how did you not notice no payment for 3 months" from the smarmy git on the other end of the phone. I was honest and replied "because I don't give a (text removed by MSE Forum Team) about these loans"...so after some huff and puff from him, I coughed up the arrears and set up new DDs but this time on my Santander bank account. That was around April 2016. The Erudio numptie told me to cancel the DDs on my Halifax AC because "bank switching DDs doesn't work with us".

A few weeks later, I logged into my Halifax account and guess what? I'm overdrawn because suddenly the Erudio DDs came to life, but one DD got reversed by Halifax. So I cancelled the DDs and put some money into the Halifax account to get it back in the black.

So...with Halifax DDs cancelled, I thought things would be cool with the live DDs on my Santander account. Nope. Erudio haven't taken a single penny since they were set up?

3 months later I start getting threatening letters again. Not long after, I fired off a email to Erudio 'complaints' email address detailing the live DDs on my bank account and also told them how usesless the are. I got a delivery receipt and read receipt in return. A few weeks later, I had a missed call on my mobile phone and voice mail requesting I call Erudio with regards to my complaint. I called them back but the number the guy left in the voice mail was the main call centre number. The bloke I spoke to said he couldn't help because it was a complaint? He said he'd get "someone" to call me back"...no-one called me back.

And then started months and months of automated letters from Erudio saying that my agreement is terminated and pay up now etc. I could have called them back but I was totally sick to death of them. Believe it or not, but this is not the first time they have screwed up DDs with me and then I have to call them up, set up the DD for each loan and pay off the arrears on each loan etc...it's like a process which takes over an hour. I've really had enough of them!

So now this Drydens bunch are on my case and I've got this county court claim letter. I've checked my Santander AC and the Erudio DDs are sitting there as live DDs but have never been used? Why can't this dumb company simply take my freakin' money?

I'm not contesting the loans, or try to get out of paying them or get them written off. I've done the right thing since those clowns got involved and paid back what I owe on the agreed monthly terms. But those cretins just cannot get this right?

Now my blurb is out of the way, I'm just seeking advice as to what I should do next. Part of me says to I should defend the claim with the info I have and let it go to court. It's not that I have failed to keep up with payments it's that they have failed to TAKE the payments.

Thanks for reading

Mr Lahey