pblackie, be very careful about contact. Never admit a loan exists, so watch what you say or write all the time. If you talk or write, only ever say "a previous loan, now lapsed". Are you sure it's over 6 years? In any case, don't admit a loan and be sure. avatari, I'm sure I remember your interpretation is what I made out some time ago just from reading the post 1998 loan terms wording, and that I thought it couldn't be any different from the terms. But I read people say that the post-1998 loans are not statute barred, and I thought perhaps this is due to new law which applies from then which isn't clear from the actual loan terms. And again, perhaps those people described them as not statue barred only because the loans could be in one way, by P.A.Y.E., extracted from the borrowers. Does anybody, Cons. Action people or forum posters know this? And what does it take for any loan to be a relevant loan, aside from Student Loans, for the Limitation Act statute barred lapse after 6 years? Is it merely that loans can be excluded from 6 years Limitation Act due to a clause written into the loan agreement? And if there is a clause written into the loan agreement, is there any over-riding statutory (or even case law) period after which any loan lapses in the same way as the 6 year term? Also, can someone confirm for definite that once the 6 years is up and the loan becomes lapsed, it can not be revived? I read this in the pop up box from this site re: the 6 year period after which the Limitation Act applies. But I remember, and this was years ago, that if the loan has passed the 6 years where the Limitation Act comes into force, the loan is considered active again if and as soon as you admit it to the lender (and admitting it need not have constituted as much as formal or proper words of admittance). Has this all changed? Are relevant loans barred for every, no matter what, after 6 years? rameses qc - the loan company can have been pursuing you all they ways and all the hours they could, including contracting numerous credit agencies to have you pay and investigation agencies to find you. The Limitation Act is concerned with your rights after 6 years, whatever has happened. It's that it's not considered equitable to your rights to be suddenly presented with having a loan to pay off after that amount of years, if the company have not, for whatever reason, been in touch with you or you with them. It's a very humane and enlightened law. It's not at all suggesting you may step away from a loan within those 6 years, but whatever happens, it's not thought anyone should have to pay after that time of no contact.

However, you mention "rolling contract". I have had experience with L.A. Fitness and I have been through their contracts and there was no suggestion to me at all in their agreements that there was a rolling contract. Their contracts are clearly for a period - like 3 months, 6 months or 12 months. I have read on loads of websites of what they have said when people try to leave or take it for granted that their contract has expired after a year, and then, months later they start charging hundreds of pounds for months after the one year period where the former customer never went near the club, thinking it was all over. There have been loads and loads and loads of people who have been robbed in this way by L.A. Fitness. Basically, it seems from their terms and conditions that there is no rolling contract. But they have you over a barrel, and legal fees are going to be more than the 200 or so pounds they have forced probably thousands of previous members to pay.

One thing about becoming a member online is that it is a full contract - accepting the terms and conditions is the same as signing your name on a contract if you go into a branch and get a printed contract. With contract law - actually just agreeing orally between two parties makes a binding contract if everything is there for that to happen - you don't need to sign anything. The only difference is in terms of evidence that a contract was agreed. If someone goes to court and says, "yes I agreed to become a customer for 12 months by just saying it to them", but claims there was no contract because nothing was signed or written, generally they have no case unless one of the parties also asked for it to be made solid or final in writing. I mean - an oral contract can take place where it is being made. Each contract has to be accepted from the contract offer by the method which the contract states. If no method is stated - it can be any - just oral, clear, unmistakable agreement to all of the terms (where there can be no mistake that this is intended to be a real agreement and both sides have to be offering either money or goods or service). So if there is a printed contract with a part that says something like "sign to accept", then it is only your signature which makes acceptance of a contract then. If no method for acceptance is stated - if you say "yes, I agree, I will pay that amount" with no conditions beyond the offer, then just your spoken word is good enough for the law. Even if it can't be proved in court that a contract has been made from spoken words alone, because you don't have evidence and the other party is lying for example, there will always have been that legal contract.

It's replied above that it's not understood what is meant about the legal right to not have to pay the loans after 6 years by The Limitation Act. What is meant is only in a case if you happen not to have been in touch with The Student Loans company for a period of 6 years, including that you have not made any payments or sent any deferment forms to them during 6 years. Situations may arise where people fall out of contact with the company, after moving house and perhaps forgetting because they knew they would be deferring for the coming years but forgot to communicate and the loan company didn't have the new address. Or when someone moves out of the country, and communication is lost. What is stated here all about The Limitation Act and the 6 year period of no recognition to a loan company of your loan is just relevant if that situation should arise. It wasn't possible for The Student Loan company to arrange to automatically take loan repayments from your income as soon as your income became too much for an annual deferment, unless you instructed them to, when I took out my student loans. Maybe that changed afterwards.

i've two things to contribute - one is information and advice. the other is unsure information and a question about that. 1. don't contact the student loans service at all regarding these loans, if it is after the 6 years, unless you are in a very, very comfortable position to pay the loans. and i mean, much, much, much more comfortably off financially than (i guess, but it's a good guess for most) you would be likely to at first think you need to be. the debt which can be recouped may be unclaimable by the student loans co., but it is still actually owing to them. that means that, humanly, in terms of human agreements, you should pay it off if it's not a problem to you, it is their money you spent, but legally it is your right not to pay anything. in the law, you don't have to pay, but you still borrowed money and it would be right to pay if it is not a problem to you financially. but this is very serious - if you think about this and think 'well, then, i ought to contact them and see about paying: don't, don't, don't, don't, don't. don't contact them. don't contact them unless you have about 5 to 8 thousand pounds more than the sum the loans would be even including the normal interest you knew about added, and you are very comfortable about paying this. to be more safe i would consider - don't contact unless you are in a very comfortable position to pay off 10 or more thousand pounds more than you may have thought the loans would be at most. you must decide: if you do want to contact the student loan co. or any of their agents or any body connecting with your loans to pay off after the 6 years- you must be absolutely sure you will have no problem paying off the loan - identifying the time scale etc. for me this means that it would be foolish to contact them unless you have all of the money in your hand and can pay in full within a few weeks. i wouldn't even think to advise anyone to contact them after the 6 years unless they have the full amount stored safely in an account to be transferred. why contact them if you don't have all of the money ready? it is your legal right now not to pay, after 6 months. if you wish to and think you can save up the money to pay back your loans, don't even think about contacting the company until you have the full amount saved, with lots more just in case, is my advice. don't forget, there are years of interested added, as well as interest while you would be saving, and perhaps fees. if the loans were transferred to debt collectors, those companies are likely to have been able to charge higher interested than the student loans co. (maybe three times the old interest rate, even some more) during the time the loan was with them, but you might not even know the loan was with agencies, or might not know about higher interest. it is very likely that debt collection agencies charge their own additional fees also, which you might not know about at all. some agencies might charge 5 times the value of fees which the less cut-throat agencies charge, and you have no way of knowing before asking them, before opening the whole situation again to you having to pay. don't think that you can easily just contact a debt collection agency if they contact you (or even if they don't contact you first). don't think 'they are not the student loans co. who issued the loan and so the legal right not to pay after 6 years will not be forfeited'. it can easily be the case that the legal right not to pay after 6 years can be forfeited if you contact any body connected with the recuperation or holding or maintenance or information about the loan issued by the student loans co. it could easily be that you go to pay off student loans, having worked out the amount including the interest over the years from old letters from the student loans co., even added a few hundred pounds just in case, and then find out that you are two or three thousand or so pounds short of the figure you are then asked to pay off (maybe much more). i have heard of people who had court proceedings issued against them by a number of debt collection agencies to recoup their student loans, the ex-student did not know anything about this, and when they got in touch, they found they had fees of thousands of pounds to pay a number of debt collection agencies for court action related fees - court fees themselves, solicitors fees, barristers fees, in a few cases interpreters fees, private 'secret' agents' fees for loacting the ex-students. honestly, do not contact anyone about repaying after 6 years, when you have a legal right not to pay and that kind of rule was in existence when you took the student loan and the students loan co. knew about it - it's fine then. don't even think about contating them if you want to repay unless you have a large amount more than all the money you thought you would have to pay - basically unless you are very comnfortably off in this regard at the moment. if you have to wait to get any money you might have to repay should you contact them - certainly don't contact them at all, until you have a small fortune you can literally had over very soon. it is your right not to contact them, not to pay. once you have contacted any of the companies to inform them you want to pay off loan(s), or even enquire about your old student loan(s), it seems your legal right not to pay anything after 6 years stops utterly and you suddenly have to pay. don't forget - if you simply contact the bodies to enquire about the old student loans you had taken out - this can be enough to make it that you have to repay. simply indentifying who you are or the reference number of your loans can be enough to make it that you have to repay. if you don't say who you are, and your address is known (however it is known, from old or recently known) or the company take your phone number without you telling it to them when you phone. they can come to your house or phone you back, and even without you realising what you are doing (perhaps literally, you might not know who you are speaking to or why), you can put yourself in a position where you suddenly lose your legal right not to repay after 6 years. so just don't enquire unless you are sitting on a large sum of money, i advise much, much larger than more than you work out you would have to pay based on the original interest. just don't enquire. just don't enquire unless you have a large lot of money spare, which is ready to be transferred very soon and you can do that without a problem, without any problem arising. even if you ask the person whose names were given as guarantor to enquire, they would have to answer questions. and it is very likely that either they or you as a result would have to pay the full amount, likely to be much more to very, very much more than expected. no one else can enquire on your behalf, or without your knowledge, and if someone tries, they might be asked for their phone number and / or address. the person might receive a visit or phone call and might (possibly without knowing, possibly knowing - how well do you know that person?) give them the information they need to somehow forfeit your legal right not to repay after 6 years. i have heard that this has actually happened. it is your legal right and your gaurantors' right not to pay after this time has elapsed, unless you forfeit this right by communicating to any relevant body connected with the loans. there is no way around this. if you enquire, you are likely to have to pay, and it is not unlikely to be much more than you would expect. even if you get a post office box for a while, or use a payphone somehwere, if you make the contact, you lose your legal right. by law - that means you have to pay. even if they can't find you, and you kind of dodge paying that way, they have another 6 years to find you. and anyway, by law, if you can afford to make any repayments which would be worked out, you are obliged to repay at that stage. don't forget, should that stage arise, even if you can't afford to make the smallest repayments likely to be worked out, you are obliged to pay unless the company or debtor agency get to a position where they work out that you don't have to pay. that might not happen. i am aware that the credit agencies ask for far, far less income than the student loan companies required for you to defer payments, so that you would be repaying even with very, very little income, savings, capital that can be withdrawn or transferred somehow into cash (lose your car, perhaps). in any case, you would have to go through the whole process of income and expenditure forms, which usually goes through a few versions. what does that mean? basically you spend ages filling this in, wondering when it will all be over, only to find it is standard practice, whatever amounts you have filled in, for the debt collection agency to go through their standard "jump when we tell you" procedure for a few months. it means the agency kind of subtly hypnotise you through your confusion, unease, frustration, lack of self-worth, fear, disbelief, inability to express yourself in these circumstances - into both 1. making new versions of the financial forms which don't accurately describe your basic needs at all, and 2. then, after the torture, repaying, whatever your financial circumstances. some agencies can be deadly, subtle, evil, sometimes very evil. and at the end of the day, they have little doubt that they are going to make you repay (some won't take no for an answer unless you go to court and you'd be surprised at how they can make you do what you think you'd never give into before it happens - they make you utterly desperate in other words and you'll do anything to kep a hold of the vision of just getting them away from you in months or years.) the agency usually will have already worked out before they speak to you the percentage to which they will intrude into what you certainly can't objectively afford to give them (often 40 to 60 percent or more), but will start telling you how fair they are and then will make sure that you undergo torture before you get to the stage of paying more than you objectively could ever afford, and a large amount of what you basically need. for many people, (seldom with regard to student loans though, but also sometimes in this area) this whole procedure is kind of to ensure that they do not respect, leading to giving up, leading directly to homes and cars and so on being repossessed. where this all could be so easily avoided by the practice of the debt collection agencies. actually, whether these practices happen to ensure that people in depressed, hurt, weak, and desperate ways in these situations do actually give up and have homes, cars, businesses or things of value repossesed, that is what this kind of treatment often ensures. so what else would the staff of the agencies be doing, where they in fact have statistics about their reposessions and similar in their files? where if people are treated well, they could get through the really bad time for them. some debtor agencies are nice, a few very nice, most in the u.k. are not nice it has been found), many are worse than 'not nice'. and some of the agencies who are handling old student loans really have used private 'secret' agents to locate people in all sorts of ways - work directories which staff have chosen not be private information about themselves, phone books, directories, internet searches, etc. some of the agencies have bought the loans at knock down prices, and may be recouping around 7 thousand pounds, for a couple of weeks paying a secret agent less than 1 thousand pounds to find you. don't risk losing your legal right not to repay after 6 years unless you are very certain you are in a very secure financial position to contact the companies involved and repay, bearing in mind the extra fees i have talked about.