Student Loans and Repayments

No1newts

No1newts

No1newts

Soldato
Joined
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Now is it just me or is the SLC a bunch of thieving gits.

I need to look into this a little bit more but I will sum it up briefly. Took out loans worth £8k whilst at uni. From rough estimates in my head I have paid back around £4.5k (discounting interest) Now I have just recieved a letter from the company (apparently my sixth statement yet I have only 1 previous letter) telling me I still owe the company £6.8k.

So I have tried contacting them which seems to be impossible, I never have replies to e-mails and I can never, ever get through to them because whenever I call it says my ID number is not recognised so I cannot look into the issue any further. This was after finding out that the phone number they place on the statements has actually been cancelled and finding the existing number on the net was not the easiest task.

Also I apparently have an online account with them from which I can look at my repayments and they claim to have given me a password in the post (which I never recieved) after I registered my account with an e-mail account that I have (which I never actually did) and when giving me this ficticious account they apparently supplied me with my username and all my login details :rolleyes:

I am going to get my pay slips for the last 3 and half years backdated to me but I dont see my figure of £4.5k being much out, if anything I have probably underestimated.

Now this all may be smoke with no fire and I may be getting my facts wrong but does anyone else keep a close eye on their repayments and have noticed any anomalies or has there been any cases of the company trying to pull a fast one?

Dave
 
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Some companies seem to work on such practices. Inconsistencies and all that. They want to be able to up the amount you owe to them basically.
 
They are notorious bad at updating their records - statements are issued in April but often you don't get them until around October - December. Also if you phone them up often they can't actually tell you how much you owe them.

Now part of this is down to the IR/HMRC as they have to feed the info through from PAYE deductions. But in general their admin side of things doesn't appear to be the greatest (also heard a lot of rumours about whistleblowers saying their IT systems are very shoddy).

Anyway having borrowed only £8k I wouldn't expect 6 years of interest to add up to more than a grand or so. One thing to bear in mind is that repayments don't always start the instant you cross the £15k threshold, there can be a delay. Also can you be sure you know what your repayments were 3 years ago - don't forget repayments aren't directly proportional to your salary due to the £15k offset, e.g. at a salary of £22.5k you would have been paying only half the loan repayments that you do at £30k.
 
I paid a few instalments when the threshold used to be £12k. Because I paid so little back in repayments, the interest caused the outstanding loan to be pretty much the same in the following year as it was in the previous year.
 
HangTime said:
They are notorious bad at updating their records - statements are issued in April but often you don't get them until around October - December. Also if you phone them up often they can't actually tell you how much you owe them.

Now part of this is down to the IR/HMRC as they have to feed the info through from PAYE deductions. But in general their admin side of things doesn't appear to be the greatest (also heard a lot of rumours about whistleblowers saying their IT systems are very shoddy).

Anyway having borrowed only £8k I wouldn't expect 6 years of interest to add up to more than a grand or so. One thing to bear in mind is that repayments don't always start the instant you cross the £15k threshold, there can be a delay. Also can you be sure you know what your repayments were 3 years ago - don't forget repayments aren't directly proportional to your salary due to the £15k offset, e.g. at a salary of £22.5k you would have been paying only half the loan repayments that you do at £30k.
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Finding my oldest payslip which was 2008 my repayments back then was £135 which was on my starting salary of 27k.

Now I was on that salary for a year so that should be £1620 (bad maths?) then I went onto 33k for the last 2 years though I cant find a payslip from this time to see what my repayments went up to. Then recently the last few months will be a bit higher as I am up to 48k.

So I based the rough 4.5k figure on 3 years @£135 a month. As I say it may be me making a mountain out of a mole hill but I find it strange that my repayment amount is still so high considering what I have paid off.
 
£135/month on a salary of £27k sounds way off for a start, it should be £90/month (although obviously if you had any bonus/overtime etc obviously it would push that up). In fact £135/month is what it should be for a £33k salary.

Still sounds a bit dodgy as you would have repaid £3240 during those 2 years on £33k plus £1080 during the first year (assuming you paid SL repayments for a full 12 months - as I mentioned above there is often a delay in deductions starting while HMRC update their records) then plus £247 times how every many months you've been on your current pay. So likely around the £4.5k you suggest but just to reiterate you need to be very sure when your first actual deduction went out sometimes it can take months for them to start taking payments.
 
I always wonder about mine tbh, looks like ive only paid off 2k in 4yrs of earning >30k-40k + the couple of 400+ payments when i've got bonus and offshore rates

Kahn
 
I have had the same problem with the phantom username and password. I have never received any such thing, but they assure me it happened.

There's still the issue of the 'great student loan rip-off' where eg if you pay off your loan in June, you continue to make payments until such times as HMRC update the SLC with your payments. IIRC this is the end of the tax year, therefore at least the following April, plus any additional admin time to process the information. This means the SLC end up with potentially thousands of pounds of your money as an interest free loan!
 
My wife has had endless problems with the SLC, last year they started taking off double payments, then after she called up to get it sorted it went to triple payments which left us seriously in bother. Eventually got it sorted but there was no consistency and for months on the run up to our wedding we were worried about cash. Over the course of 5 months they took 13 payments in total, didn't apologise once and at no point gave us a reason for it. Sorted now, but there was no reason for the change, her pay hadn't altered and she was with the same employer.

Apparently due to pay it off fairly soon which is a good thing as it looks like they're bumping the interest rate soon.
 
The student loans company have been screwing us for years and will continue to do so. I remember a few years ago, I only had £600 left to pay on my loan (1st year student loans were available and only stayed at uni for one year), they sent me a letter that said something along the lines of "Good news!! You now pay your student loan back at a reduced rate as you need to earn more to meet the repayment threshhold". So it will take longer to get the loan paid off and earn them more interest. A licence for them to print money IMO.
 
Yetiii said:
The student loans company have been screwing us for years and will continue to do so. I remember a few years ago, I only had £600 left to pay on my loan (1st year student loans were available and only stayed at uni for one year), they sent me a letter that said something along the lines of "Good news!! You now pay your student loan back at a reduced rate as you need to earn more to meet the repayment threshhold". So it will take longer to get the loan paid off and earn them more interest. A licence for them to print money IMO.
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That makes no sense - you can pay it off yourself by direct payment, then tell them to do one.
 
When do the loans start coming out? I told Student Loans Company I'm working with all my employment details, I didn't realise I had to do this, always asumed it was automatic but have done so now anyway. But either way my loan hasn't started coming out of my salary!
 
SLC are useless. I graduated in 2004 and in Oct 09 i decided to do a masters living on my own savings. They sent me a letter saying why am i not paying my loan. They wouldnt accept my uni acceptance letter and returned my paper work yet they would accept a letter I wrote saying my parents are supporting me. This wasnt technically true as I pay my own way and just live with them! :confused:
 
I know when i was planning to go to uni everything you tried to do involving the SLC was hard work or near impossible. Just glad i went to study part time and worked at the same time so never had to deal with the idiots.
 
Heys guys, ive got abit of a question

Just about finished my last year at uni, and got a part time job only weekends, going to turn into full time in afew weeks. My question is

When do i have to tell the Inland Revenue that i need to be taxed since im not a student anymore? would it be the day i finish uni/my last exam or when i graduate do i tell them?

Just because i aint getting taxed nor NI takin off me at the moment and dont want to end up paying ££££ back if i dont tell them im not a student no more

Thanks :D
 
jazzy182 said:
Heys guys, ive got abit of a question

Just about finished my last year at uni, and got a part time job only weekends, going to turn into full time in afew weeks. My question is

When do i have to tell the Inland Revenue that i need to be taxed since im not a student anymore? would it be the day i finish uni/my last exam or when i graduate do i tell them?

Just because i aint getting taxed nor NI takin off me at the moment and dont want to end up paying ££££ back if i dont tell them im not a student no more

Thanks :D
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Students don't get income tax off, you just aren't earning above your threshold. As soon as you earn more, you will be taxed. You don't need to tell the IR or anything.
 
You get taxed if you're a student, so you dont have to tell them anything, you're getting taxed END OF STORY.
 
Yetiii said:
I agree that you can pay the loan with a direct transfer. Although this is not always possible if the balance is large.
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Then pay them in two direct transfers, or however many it takes (I'm guessing you are implying there may be some kind of limit at £10k or so due to banking restrictions or similar - there's certainly no issue with people paying a few thousand off in a lump sum).

In any event you are certainly no worse off than before the change in threshold, since you could simply make monthly direct payments of whatever the difference was between the old deductions and the new ones.
 
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