Marv\'s Blog

Hassle with Student Loans & Grants

2 Weeks now and counting.

The LEA originally told me that my payment was due on the 19th September. Now 2 weeks on and I haven’t received a single payment or any official word as to why it has been delayed. Aside from the fact I don’t think the LEA don’t like me very much, this delay apparently isn’t there fault, as there are multiple parties involved in the process of getting the money to me:

. So as you can see there’s the rough order of things. One of them screwed up. I don’t trust the LEA (the payment is being made direct to my bank account so my distrust of Royal Mail doesn’t come into it), and my bank has screwed up before, so it’ll be fun to see who’s fault it is. Oh and it can’t be mine as I’ve given the correct details and finished with all the forms.

If it does turn out to be the LEA that is responsible even after they denied it, I’ll post the evidence that shows why I think they don’t like me. There doesn’t appear to be a privacy statement in the emails, so my understanding of the law is they don’t have a leg to stand on if I post them (emails, totally pointless attachments) on my personal site/blog.

LEA lied. GRRR.

LEA lied about my money.

So on my payment schedule it says I was supposed to get paid on Monday. Loada beep. It turns out that students don’t get their money till a whole 5 days after they’ve registered at their Uni. Unfortunatly for everyone at Sunderland University, students are registering on different dates according to the course they’re studying. Our friend Syn registered on Monday, my girlfriend registered today, and I register on Thursday.

So my girlfriend gets her LEA money earlier (and a bigger pile of cash as well), and I get mine around next Thursday. One the plus side, Student Union Vice President Lindsay McLeod (no relation to the Highlander) will be sorting me out with a card holder for my Student Union card on Thursday, so my little purchase a while back won’t be going waste :-).

I’m working on getting myself sorted with a digicam so I can take photos for the Union during the Fresher’s Party @ the Manor Quay on Friday. The current situation is that they have to ask for students to send their own pictures in, and hope they’re of good enough quality and quantity to use on the site & magazine.

I’m also working on helping out the Union in general, going on my track record of getting work for pimping my talents for free. Such work in the past resulted in the aCMS I wrote for Connexions County Durham. That, and the other stuff I’ve done pretty much got me into Uni (pretty good considering I didn’t have enough UCAS points with that totally unrelated BND Popular Music degree).