Student Loans Company Reviews 

I’ve never experienced a company never mind a place where people are supposed to receive fees for education, be extremely poor.

It’s shocking and I have decided not to pursue my studies in the United Kingdom over this.
After applying for SFE from Ireland since July, I had to ring up multiple times + speak with multiple “chatbots”. The funny part is that they even asked for my passport to verify why I would need a maintenance loan, even though they repeatedly say on their automated voice over for “online uploads”. Let’s just say thank God I did not send my passport to them.

Bear in mind every time I’m being placed on hold for 30 minutes and longer.
Eventually get through after dialling 10 minutes after they open. Been placed on the call for 1hr 4m! The representative was kind however this is shocking. I had to hang up mid call because I was late for work.

I’m supposed to start on the 23rd of September 2024 at Birmingham. Looking very unlikely now as I’ve received a letter after all that saying I won’t be receiving SFE.

Making it extremely difficult asking of share codes, EU settlement etc. I’m from Ireland for goodness sakes what’s the need for all this?

I do believe the English government need to look into this as soon as possible. It seems they are understaffed, undertrained, no qualified representatives on the line, 0 courtesy. I will say a pray about this not just for myself but for everybody considering studying in the UK.

Disgraceful to say the least

Anyone else is suffering the fake incompetence, hypocrisy, abuse and neglect of this racist people who takes months if ever to put a sharing code to check pre settle and settle status and do their job? The fact that is a GOV department says everything about England how they really are. Nearly all at the very least.

It takes forever to get on the phone to this company, and half of the staff hang up as soon a s they answer the call. This results in so much wasted time, waiting on hold!

such a terrible company, told me wait time was 30 mins and i waited an hour only for the agent to act like he couldnt hear me then hang up

I’m deeply disappointed as I’ve managed to speak to someone in the past! An amount has been paid to them which is too much and now I’m underpaid from my work place, which doesn’t make sense! Despite me trying to call student loans I’ve been through the security and verification and the line goes dead, so no one answers the phone! This is not good at all as I’m at a loss of £43 and they already get £19 every week from my salary which is £76 per month. With everything being so expensive with the cost of living it’s a joke honestly! And I was told ages ago that this loan really will be scraped when I was in my 40’s and I’m already in my mid 40’s. And I don’t know when I will be able to pay the full amount back. It’s pathetic. I studied for 3 years over 20 years ago and never earnt enough salary wise and had just missed the student grant unfortunately and it was still a struggle for me to get through my education and I was working to manage.

I'd think very carefully before using these. I took out a student loan albeit not a large amount, I had no issues applying or getting the funding however, when reaching a salary triggering the payback all was still well until I received notification of ending payments and cancelling a dd to avoid overpayment. The repayments were taken directly from my salary and after phoning I was told I would not need to take any action as once repayments were complete the deductions from my wage would cease. This is where the problem started after notification I had repaid my sl in full, checking my next wage slips to find out more deductions had been taken I called up and issues a refund no problem, I accepted this as a mistake and they assured me a stop notification had been issues to my EMPLOYER and no further payments would be taken. Roll on 4 months and each month a refund being requested these people continue to deduct my salary, having to phone twice a month to reclaim due to my account being 'dormant' and requiring them time to start ANOTHER refund process. I have called again today, my employer has not received any documentation, and I was told today that the stop notification only goes to HMRC and they will re-issue this. I must now wait until Friday due to my 'dormant' account before I can request a refund AGAIN. This is infuriating and they do not seem to care. I should not have to request my money back every month when I owe them nothing.

THEY DON'T CARE,10 calls over 2 weeks and hours lost on the phone for something that shouldn't take more than 5 minutes ,and still couldn't get what i need.
It's an insulte to all the people that call and try and get some help with anything .

They are the reason I left my studies in my 2nd year of uni. I understood that dealing with them for tens of years after graduation is not worth it.

Recevied a letter in Jan saying I was nearing the end of my loan and to change to dd as then I wouldnt over pay. Set up the dd and got confirmation and was told could take 3 months to chnage over. 3rd month comes around payment was taken from my salary and then dd was due to be taken so cancelled the dd. Rang SLC was told that payment would continue to be taken from salary and when last payment had been done to call. Made my last salary repayment from my July pay. Called to pay the last bit of interest which was £1.39 today. Was told that the stop notice would be issued but another month would be taken and I could ask for a refund which will take 28 days. How can any company be so useless why does it take months for them to do anything. If I owed them and stopped paying they would be the first to be calling and sending letters but it's fine for them to take my money after my balance is at 0. I look forward to fighting for my refund

I spent an hour on hold trying to make repayment, got through to someone who spent about 5-10 minutes making me pass security checks before hanging up the call as soon as it hit 5:30.. Am currently on hold again for 25 minutes & counting.

This company terrifies me. They consistently get very basic things wrong and always ask if I want to make early repayments (no, I don't).

- I have received over 30 paper copies of my 2017/2018 maintenance loan. They had to put a block on my account as they couldn't fix the bug in the system to stop sending me letters.

- I called in January this year to ask how repayments work if you live overseas and the interest rates. The lady on the phone said she was really sorry but she had no idea and that I should call back to get a 'better' person who may know more information. She was really kind but it was a waste of time. I called back and got somebody else who was able to help but they also mentioned they were reading from the website and weren't 100% sure the info they were giving to me was correct.

- It took them over 2 months to set up my direct debit for my overseas repayments. Their staff kept getting it wrong each time (I don't know how, it is such a simple task), and I received some angry letters telling me I hadn't paid. Overall, I have spent around 1 working day on phone calls with them trying to solve it. I feel sorry for some of their staff who have told me they don't know what they're doing. The SLC finally send me a 50GBP apology after I had sent them a thorough complaint email documenting each occasion I had attempted to get my DD set up (which you cannot do online) and how poorly it was handled...

- Today, something simple: I needed to update my bank details for my direct debit. It's not possible to do so online so I had to call and told them at the beginning I needed to update my DD details. After 10 minutes and 43 seconds of confirming my personal details are up to date, the guy tells me the system is down and DD details cannot be updated. He then proceeded to go through every aspect of my finances to see if I could repay something back early (cheeky and irrelevant to the call) - I wonder if they get any sales bonus for doing this. He told me I should call back next week to see if their system is back up and running to update my details - I am not looking forward to reliving this experience every time. He was really condescending and went at the pace of a snail. I had to tell him I had to go and thanked him for his help but he wanted to continue to chat...

They had an it problem were the application will not link.to the sponsor I am dyslexic my son is dyslexic told them I could not fill in a form. Their system will not link the application so I can submit my p60 no form need to be filled in this case. Tried to manually link.it problem with their system they said tough despite being disabled and not being able to fill in the form I would hsve to as they have IT issues. I made a complaint they still have not fixed their IT issue and do not care that they have desciminated against me and my son he still has not got his funding because of their issue. Really unhelpful really desciminative more than one customer service person if you are disabled and can not fill in a 15 page form due to their IT issue tuff disability is your problem they will not make any reasonable adjustments!!!!

Shambles of an organisation. Was sent an email that I was due a refund. I needed to update my bank details, which I could only do over the phone (for some reason...?) I spent 10mins on the phone being told I could do everything online, 10mins on hold, 5 mins patiently explaining that I needed to update my bank details, gave them the details, and then 'surprisingly' the call broke up. I assume the SLC call centre went through a tunnel...? Then had to rinse & repeat. Fortunately it was resolved the second time. In no great hurry/enthusiasm to repay any more than the absolute bare minimum out of my salary now (Money Saving Expert advises *strongly* the same)...

Fraser was helpful and patient with explaining information, no question was too much trouble and he provided an in depth summary to make sure I’d understood the call. He was excellent.

I just quit working as a trainee agent…
I just quit working as a trainee agent for SFE. I get now why there are so many negative reviews. The training they provide is inadequate. After 2 weeks of showing power points, they expect newbie agents to take live calls. I had enough of angry frustrated callers who I was not able to assist swiftly because of the quality of training and not receiving any support. There is minimal side-by-side assistance, just an hour of watching someone take calls, what they call buddying. SFE is more complicated than rocket science. Trainees should not be expected to take live calls unassisted.

My balance was paid off after my April pay - it took 3.5 weeks for the student loans company and HMRC to notice this and they did not send a stop notification to my employer so I had a incorrect deduction of £1,065 taken from my May payslip. After another 3 weeks of speaking to HMRC and Students loan (17 calls and over 6 hours on the phone waiting) they finally agreed I had overpaid and I received my refund. I have checked with my employer and they have not received a stop notification to take student loan deduction off my payslip for June despite agreeing that my balance is zero and paying a refund for my overpayment - I am now in a position where for a second month in a row I am going to have a deduction of >£1,000 incorrectly and leave me out of pocket. I don't understand why they have not sent a stop notification and they will now not answer my phone calls....

Scam company set up to do nothing but steal from those who can't afford it.
I have been getting letters for months saying i need to update my employment status abroad or pay £450 a month. Every single time i have ever gone on the .gov website to upload details, the full website crashes and doesn't work.
How about wrongfully demanding money off people who don't earn enough to pay, put some money into fixing the website and stop trying to scam people.

The biggest Rug pull of all time...

This company is one of the biggest scams in human history. Continues to take money from my wages even after paying off in full. And now that they have been caught are not willing to pay back the refund that actually shows in my account.

Well for a start I had to wait 20 minutes to speak to someone, obviously not that easy to do it online!
The the man I spoke to was quite flippant, the line wasn't clear so had to ask him a question again for him then to say "As I've just said" very rude!