The incompetance of student finance
Discussion and questions about student financial support arrangements - from government loans and grants to university bursaries. Please use the main Money & Finance forum for more general financial topics.
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The incompetance of student financeJust going to rant a little.
I applied for student finance a while ago. My brother is currently at Uni, so my parents only need to submit evidence once. My Mum and Dad are retired now so I am applying for the maximum loan and grant.
With my brother's application they somehow got my Dad's email address right, and my Mum's came up as some weird hotmail address that we'd never seen before. They said they'd changed it.
The same thing happened to me, and appeared on my "original application" PDF. What the hell?
They also sent me information in the post which I received yesterday. It said the money I would receive next year would be the Maintenance Load of 3575 and Tuition Fee loan of 9000. Grant appears nowhere, and I logged back into SFE and I can't see anything about grants anymore (I could before).
Mum had already asked about which years we needed to provide info for for my brother, and so she sent it off.
The woman we phoned up changed our email address AGAIN. She was also clueless about what was wrong, and thought it was that they hadn't processed the grant evidence yet.
So. What is the point in sending the letter if they haven't finished assessing me yet. It's just a waste of time, effort and paper. And their way of saying they are assessing me for the grant is to remove all traces of the grant from all communication.
(TL/DR):
Staff not in the know. Wrong data. Ridiculous application process. Rubbish website.
Student Loans sucks.
/Rant. -
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Re: The incompetance of student financeThis is why its easier to applier earlier rather than close to the deadline cos their gonna be so busy many mistakes may be made. I'm sure you'll get it sorted soon.(Original post by dominicjohnson)
Just going to rant a little.
I applied for student finance a while ago. My brother is currently at Uni, so my parents only need to submit evidence once. My Mum and Dad are retired now so I am applying for the maximum loan and grant.
With my brother's application they somehow got my Dad's email address right, and my Mum's came up as some weird hotmail address that we'd never seen before. They said they'd changed it.
The same thing happened to me, and appeared on my "original application" PDF. What the hell?
They also sent me information in the post which I received yesterday. It said the money I would receive next year would be the Maintenance Load of 3575 and Tuition Fee loan of 9000. Grant appears nowhere, and I logged back into SFE and I can't see anything about grants anymore (I could before).
Mum had already asked about which years we needed to provide info for for my brother, and so she sent it off.
The woman we phoned up changed our email address AGAIN. She was also clueless about what was wrong, and thought it was that they hadn't processed the grant evidence yet.
So. What is the point in sending the letter if they haven't finished assessing me yet. It's just a waste of time, effort and paper. And their way of saying they are assessing me for the grant is to remove all traces of the grant from all communication.
(TL/DR):
Staff not in the know. Wrong data. Ridiculous application process. Rubbish website.
Student Loans sucks.
/Rant. -
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Re: The incompetance of student financeI think I did it two months ago, and this is the first I've heard from them.(Original post by noma5)
This is why its easier to applier earlier rather than close to the deadline cos their gonna be so busy many mistakes may be made. I'm sure you'll get it sorted soon. -
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Re: The incompetance of student financeLol, I love how I applied in November because everyone says this, and they've still managed to royally f*ck up my application and now god knows when I'll get any money. I'm moving 256 miles away, how am I meant to just get by without? On the phone all they say is, "Well, you've done everything and we've got everything but for some reason it won't go through. Sorry. You won't be getting your money on time."(Original post by noma5)
This is why its easier to applier earlier rather than close to the deadline cos their gonna be so busy many mistakes may be made. I'm sure you'll get it sorted soon.
To top it all off, every time I phoned since November I'd get some bull****, "It's processing." until last week when I insisted they tell me what about it is processing, why it hasn't changed, and pressured the girl until she probably actually bothered to glance at it and realised it is not processing.
I wonder if they actually get paid for this bull? God. -
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Re: The incompetance of student financeThey haven't got a clue :/
Some woman on the phone said as I have a twin they'd split the household earnings in half and take the loan from that, I agree it sounded too good to be true but she said it was right, turns out they knock 2k off..
If they don't know the answer they seem to be too lazy to ask but rather make a bs excuse, I was so tempted to try and find what she said legally standing so they had to do it
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Re: The incompetance of student financeThey changed my wife's application to not income assessed. We rang them up because I was linked to her to support her but when I went to do the support on-line I was no longer linked.
We rang and they said we don't change it and we cannot change it back, you will have to use paper. You obviously asked for it not to be consdiered.
So I asked, why on the system audit trail does it show the linkage being in place on the original application PDF, and why does the same audit trail show the one email and two letters you sent requesting me to provide the support to my wife. They cannot answer. But I know, the end of fiscal year rollover was screwed up, because on the 30/03/12 we were linked and they wrote to me requesting the support, when I went in to do it on the 06/04/12 we were not linked.
I had to have our children reinstated on the application because they removed them in the same period, they told me they had removed them because they had not received the evidience, it was only two weeks between the evidence request and SFE removing them, this also spanned the fiscal year end rollover.
We sent all the evidence in and they received it on 18/04/12, a new piece seems to get scanned each time we ring up and ask why there is no progress, the last 6 weeks after they received it.
They send letters showing amounts that do not reflect the amount you were given on-line, they do this until they have finished assessing, but the letter states you have requested the amount which is a blatent falsehood and in my opinion misrepresentation of the facts. They do not write and advise that some components are still being assessed or awaiting evidence, they do not state that the amounts in the letter are provisional.
Generally I have found the front line to be helpful but they are working in a crap process and system, the people who answer the phone are not at fault, higher up heads should roll. I have run IT and first line support services like this and by now my team would have changed personnel at the management level and it is questionable whether I would have been able to hold my position hence being removed my self.
So instead of getting a letter that states:
Loan x amount : subject to evidence
Grant 1 y amount: assessment pending
Grant 2 z amount: awaiting final confirmation
All you get is:
Loan amount A amount (where A is significantly less than X)
and the letter says the above is what you have requested thus misrepresenting the facts. -
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Re: The incompetance of student financeI'm guessing one of the problems might be the fact that this is the first year of student loans being nationalized (at least I think it is). That means that they'll probably be running on a new system, might take them a while to get the kinks out.
This is all speculation of course, so take it with a pinch of salt. -
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Re: The incompetance of student financeDoes the evidence have to be received by them before the deadline? Or is just the application submission.(Original post by dominicjohnson)
Just going to rant a little.
I applied for student finance a while ago. My brother is currently at Uni, so my parents only need to submit evidence once. My Mum and Dad are retired now so I am applying for the maximum loan and grant.
With my brother's application they somehow got my Dad's email address right, and my Mum's came up as some weird hotmail address that we'd never seen before. They said they'd changed it.
The same thing happened to me, and appeared on my "original application" PDF. What the hell?
They also sent me information in the post which I received yesterday. It said the money I would receive next year would be the Maintenance Load of 3575 and Tuition Fee loan of 9000. Grant appears nowhere, and I logged back into SFE and I can't see anything about grants anymore (I could before).
Mum had already asked about which years we needed to provide info for for my brother, and so she sent it off.
The woman we phoned up changed our email address AGAIN. She was also clueless about what was wrong, and thought it was that they hadn't processed the grant evidence yet.
So. What is the point in sending the letter if they haven't finished assessing me yet. It's just a waste of time, effort and paper. And their way of saying they are assessing me for the grant is to remove all traces of the grant from all communication.
(TL/DR):
Staff not in the know. Wrong data. Ridiculous application process. Rubbish website.
Student Loans sucks.
/Rant. -
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Re: The incompetance of student financeOkay then that's terrible!(Original post by dominicjohnson)
I think I did it two months ago, and this is the first I've heard from them. -
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Re: The incompetance of student finance(Original post by M4LLY)
Not dealing with student finance Makes me all the more glad i'm not going uni
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Re: The incompetance of student financeHey, I tweeted them and they replied saying the application only needed to be Submitted before the deadline, not Processed. They never really made that clear though which annoyed me very much.(Original post by Niceneasy)
**** sake i'm sending my evidence tomorrow, a day late, a day can't hurt... Can it :s?? So many conflicting opinions on this forum
So evidence can be sent afterwards, as long as you Submitted your application and are in the "Evidence Tracking" stage.
Also, I thought they'd lost my Dad's Decree Absolute because I sent it on the 11th May. They only just acknowledged receiving it TODAY. What a joke. And even worse, on the Evidence page it says they received it on the 16th May. Surely they could have updated it a little bit faster than that. -
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Re: The incompetance of student financeAh nice one, you'd think that'd be an issue they would've resolved ages ago, surely this crops up every year? Either way, I'm happy I'm 'safe' cheers for the info!Hey, I tweeted them and they replied saying the application only needed to be Submitted before the deadline, not Processed. They never really made that clear though which annoyed me very much. -
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I submitted my continued application on 1st Jan. SFE sent me a letter 4 months afterwards stating that I'd only get the loan, not the grant. Rang them to find out why and was told, "We're still processing your mother's evidence, it'll take 4 weeks."
Rang them again early May to be told that I have decided that I don't want my application income assessed and that I now need to fill in a paper form.
The most annoying part? This application has been a piece of cake compared to the last 2 years' applications. -
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Re: The incompetance of student financeAs i mentioned below, they changed applications to income not assessed. Then you have to send paper. Really is crap. Then it takes weeks and weeks to get evidence scanned and the situation corrected back.(Original post by avéry)
I submitted my continued application on 1st Jan. SFE sent me a letter 4 months afterwards stating that I'd only get the loan, not the grant. Rang them to find out why and was told, "We're still processing your mother's evidence, it'll take 4 weeks."
Rang them again early May to be told that I have decided that I don't want my application income assessed and that I now need to fill in a paper form.
The most annoying part? This application has been a piece of cake compared to the last 2 years' applications.
