Stayed Erudio SLC Loan Court Claim - missed deferment as i moved - ombudsman found in favor claim stayed can i sue/counterclaim Erudio

[Beingfleeced]

Hi,

I’ve scanned through your posts and have been through a very similar situation with Erudio and have just had my complaint upheld by FOS after almost a year of back and forth and great stress.  I don’t know where you are with this now as I don’t have time to look through all of your posts but wanted to share some info in case it helps you or somebody else. 
 

Are you still able to provide further information to the ombudsman for the final decision? as I could possibly help with some information on previously upheld decisions. The FOS should now be fully aware that Erudio changed their processes in 2021 and no longer emailed the deferment reminder, causing many people who hadn’t updated their addresses to miss the deferment window. They claim they sent texts with a link to a reminder  but a lot of peoplereporting that they either didn’t receive text or the link didn’t work. 
 

FOS are upholding complaints on the basis that Erudio made no effort to contact people by any other method after deferments were missed and accounts went into arrears. These are people who have successfully deferred for 20+ years and FOS state that it is standard industry practice to try and find people’s new addresses in order to make contact. 
 

it is clear that Erudio chose to change their processes in 2021 to catch people out and of course it is in their interest not to make any effort to find these people. The only contact you eventually receive is once the debt has been passed on to DCA. I can refer you to a couple of decisions where people either didn’t change their address or Erudio claim not to have received the change of address. 
 

The key thing is though that FOS are upholding complaints mainly because they feel Erudio could have done more to contact people once the situation became serious enough to go to DCA. Especially if that person had been successfully deferring for decades. 
 

It is also worth pointing out that FOS don’t necessarily look at other decisions when considering your complaint and I’ve had to refer them to previously upheld complaints where the situation was remarkably similar. In fact, my first attempt at a complaint was not upheld but I appealed citing another FOS decision where the complaint was upheld. It then went back to the case handler who upheld it. Erudio appealed but it was upheld again. Erudio appealed again and then it went to ombudsman for final decision and they have upheld it again. 
 

I wish there was a way to tell everyone dealing with Erudio that they need to fight it. I almost gave up several times because it was so anxiety inducing. 
 

if this is too late for you, and I hope it isn’t, please bear in mind that you can always make an offer to pay off a percentage of the final balance to clear the debt. I’m sure there are people on here who would advise against this but I understand they are accepting as little as 15% of the balance (I was considering offering 10% at one point just to get it out of my hair as I did not want to leave a debt hanging over me). Like I say I only considered this due to my anxiety but my conscience just couldn’t allow it in the end as I’m just so disgusted with how this company operates.  My relative was willing to pay 10% to clear the debt but if they did not accept the offer then they would get £1 per month for the rest of my life. 
 

I will update my original post about this once the decision has been published. 
 

Oh I also got some compensation because of Erudio’s call handler’s disgusting phone manner. They tried to convince me that I hadn’t done things correctly because I had just had a baby at the time and probably had baby brain and misremembered my actions. Incredible.