Monday, January 02, 2006

Student Loan :-S

Today I decided I would finally do something about my student loan problems. I gathered together all the information I had and contact the student loan company (SLC) with my figures.

The last statement I had from the SLC was in 2004 Nearly two years ago before I started making repayments. Since then I have started working and have had payments deducted from my wages. Both whilst I was work for Business Link and later at Tbred. I decided to try and work out what I had paid off
In the last few days I have phoned the SLC several times to ask how much they thought I currently owed. One time I tried to phone the operator hung up on me after I had been waiting for absolutely ages. Again I had to wait eventually getting put through to someone who said she couldn’t quote over the phone but would send out a valuation.

The valuation arrived in the post a few days later it showed no record of any payment so I phoned up to query this and was told the Inland Revenue has not passed any details of payments on. Personally I think this is appalling I dread to think what sort of punishment the FSA would hand out to one of our lenders if they told a customer that they were waiting for a third party before they could record details of payments.

I decided to work it all out for myself and send them a littler with all the details in. I had to work with slightly incomplete records as the tax office never returned some of the pay slips I sent when they were calculating my tax rebate. Tto make matters more confusing business link I made several payments based on the old threshold of earning over £10,000 not the current £15,000 threshold.

Regardless when I totted up what I have paid it equates to about 10% of my total student loan. I would say is a significant chunk, given II am being charge about £30 a month interest and this is compounding upwards I am losing out heavily for there mistakes in effect currently I have paid extra tax which has had no benefit whatsoever on my financial position.

I have forwarded a letter with photocopies of my remaining payslips and P60's in the hope it will help them sort out the problems. If not I will try writing to my MP as a Liberal he should be against tuition fees and this is a nice case against them I think. I mean what the heck sort of system takes money out of people's wages specifically to pay for their loans and the money never arrives.

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