Student Loans and Statute of limitations/CCA CSL DCA

[42man]

Well the good news is that you haven't acknowledged the debt nor made any payment to them (and i'm sure you won't either up until the 20th)....!!!

[pblackie]

But wouldn't the letter I sent in the post above count as writtain contact and start the clock again?

[42man]

That doesn't look like an acknowledgement !!

 

Might be worth sending out the CCA request also as a safeguard.....

[concernedaboutunfairness]

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.

 

..

 

I only meant to write a couple of paragraphs - that was all the first thing I wanted to say. Then I remembered a lot about this subject I had found out in the last number of years, so I included all of that.

 

The second thing I wanted to say is that I was contacted years and years ago to be told that the student loans I had were sold to some agency. This was not debt collection, I was registered as deferring my loans at the time as I was in postgraduate college. It was just some large scale sale of hundreds of thousands of student loans, I was informed.

 

I don't know if this changes the situation. I believe, I am not sure, but I tend to think it is the case, that I was contacted to be told that - either because of this sale of my loans or something else - my loans now came within the same category as the newer loans - and would have to be repaid from income even after 6 years and the new company could take this automatically.

 

This was the question I wrote I have: Does this sound familiar to anyone?

Does anyone know if that is the case - that my older loans which accrue the legal right not to be repaid after 6 years of no contact to the companies involved can become the newer style of loans which I think do not have this legal right, only because the loan company sold the older loans to new companies and changed their status at the same time?

 

Please post if you know.

 

If you know that this can never happen, due to how the original loans were agreed - their basis in law as contractual loans - please post.

[pblackie]

Hmm, just received a statuatory default letter from them, seems they still won't acknowledge it is statute barred. Thinking I should contact the OFT/FOS any advice?

[count orlok]

I can't quite understand this thread. I took out five loans out at the end of the twentieth century. I have to pay them back if my earnings (does not include my partners income) go above 25k, if i earn less than this i can defere them if i want, or i can pay them off. each year i get sent a form to fill out for deferement, I have been derering it for years, if i do not fill in the forms it automatically gets paid, or i get chased for the debt. I understand if you where under 40 when you left uni any left by the time you reach 50 is whiped out, and if under 50 when you left it gets wipped out when you are 60, but i can't see how it can ever be SB because you have to contact them each year to stop payments being taken.

[babybear39]

Without reading back, if your loan is pre 1998 and there has been no deferment, payment or written acknowlegment for 6 +, the SL becones SB'd.

 

If that is the case, report them to TS and the OFT for chasing payment after an SB letter has been sent.

[expatscot]

In my case it was dealing with a different agency (there is a thread about it somewhere).....

 

I was without a doubt over the 6 year period - it was closer to 8 - and I sent the standard format S.B'd letter and I havent heard a cheep from the agency since. That was about 8 months ago at least, prior to that they had been on a letter or two a month, idle threats of vists etc.

 

So the SB letter and mentioning OFT if they continued 'harassment' certainly did the trick.

[concernedaboutunfairness]

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.

[kurvaface]

Hi Pblackie

So do you actually have a 6 year window where you haven't paid into or acknowledged SLC?

I don't think correspondence in relation to your dispute, as discussed above, would count as acknowledging the debt and therefore (I think) SLC should take a hike.

My experience of SLC and their hired thugs is that they'll try it on any which way to tell you it is not "Statute Barred".

If you have the 6 year window, ignore them, report them and don't give up.

pblackie said:

Hmm, just received a statuatory default letter from them, seems they still won't acknowledge it is statute barred. Thinking I should contact the OFT/FOS any advice?

I understood that the only responses open to SLC when you send a "Statute Barred" notice is to either leave you alone or prove it's not Statute Barred. Have they proven it's not statute barred?

Am I missing something? ....

[mcboggle]

I expect I'm not the only one here who gets a new SLC or DCA letter every time they change address?

The first few times I got really stressed out, especially dealing with one agency who must spend a lot of money on printing red paper, but now I'm kind of inured to printing the same SB letter every year.

At one point I got a letter from SLC saying they were sorry for contacting me and that they wouldn't contact me at 'that address again'. Six months later, by pure chance, I got a DCA demand (and threat of court summons) that had been sent to that vacant property forwarded to me.

This year (four years on) SLC actually sent me a statement, rather than using a DCA, but still haven't responded to an SB letter.

Loans were taken out in early 90s and no contact since 1995, so way past the 6 year line.

Anyone else getting the new address, new DCA problem?

[kurvaface]

Don't even bother writing to the dca. Send a very strong letter to the student loans company reminding them that they are responsible for the behaviour of their dcas and that they should keep them on a tight leash.

[babybear39]

Report the SLC to TS and the OFT for breaching OFT guidlines and the CPUTR 2008.

[chum 9000]

Hi,

 

I read this thread with interest, and wonder if this applies to me at all.

 

I'd be very grateful for any clarification on my situation:

 

I took out a student loan in starting in september 2001, and received my final payment in early summer 2004

 

I have had several jobs since that time, but no money has ever been deducted via PAYE, and I have never contacted or responded to the SLC.

 

However they do contact me annually announcing the interest accrued on my loan. Just received a letter today.

 

Am I right in thinking that as long as no payment is made by me up until summer 2010, and no CCJ is delivered to my address demanding payment by then, then my loan would become statue barred?

 

Thanks in advance

[kurvaface]

You need to know if your loan is a pre-1998 style loan or post -1998 style loan. Post 1998 loans do not become statute barred. The law was changed I believe so that they could get you.

[chum 9000]

thanks kurva,

 

I assume as I took it out in 2001 it is the newer style of loan. Is it purely based on the date you take it out?

 

Still, they can only remove cash from me via PAYE is this correct? Assmuming I don't earn via PAYE, then they can't touch me?

 

If they want the full amount, or if they hand the loan to a collections agency after the 6 yer period - the statue barred rule still applies?

 

I don't know it's all very confusing.

[Orion Blue Nemesis of MH]

What is the position on the apparent commutation of old-style loans to new-style ones?

 

Is it true that if the SLC sells an old-style loan to a DCA it automatically becomes impervious to statute of limitations and therefore gets treated like a new-style loan?

 

Or is that a rumour put out by DCAs in order to mislead and intimidate people?

[babybear39]

Old style loans are subject to the Statute of limitations act and BR and nothing can change that.

[rameses_qc]

@MilkTrayMan S32 won't apply, because they have the option of going for a CCJ at your last known address, and getting it by default if there's no defence lodged

[rameses_qc]

 

@Orion Blue Nemesis of MH It's not a rumour, it's a deliberate lie put around by DCAs. Once it's barred it's barred. NOTHING can change that

[cerberusalert]

S32 won't apply, because they have the option of going for a CCJ at your last known address, and getting it by default if there's no defence lodged

Which can easily be set-aside.

[rameses_qc]

Yes indeedy, very easily. if they can't be bothered to make any effort to formally pursue the debt for six years, then that's their tough titty

[avatari]

You need to know if your loan is a pre-1998 style loan or post -1998 style loan. Post 1998 loans do not become statute barred. The law was changed I believe so that they could get you.

 

Clarification on post-1998, please? I thought that in either case, SoL applies in court as both types are simple contracts: after 6 years, a post-1998 loan CANNOT be enforced by a court - no CCJ can be granted.

 

Yes, money still can still be taken via PAYE after 6 years (if you give them PAYE ref) and they do not need to go to court to do so - but if you tell them to stop chasing you under statute barred, then techically they must stop, as per OFT guidelines?

[pblackie]

Hmm, just received a letter telling me that unless I contact them they will issue court proceedings. As far as i am aware statute barred is a complete defence or am I wrong and SLC have re-writtain the law:-?

[cerberusalert]

Make a complaint to your local trading standards & the OFT with regards to their harassment and threats, they are in clear breach of OFT guidelines & CPUT ;

 

Consumer Direct - Contact us

 

OFT Complaint form

http://www.oft.gov.uk/shared_oft/business_leaflets/consumer_credit/DebtCollectionComplaintForm.DOC

 

The Office of Fair Trading: Contact us

 

[email protected]

 

 

tel: 020 7211 5823

 

The Office of Fair Trading: Debt collection practices

 

http://oft.gov.uk/shared_oft/business_leaflets/consumer_credit/oft664.pdf