Students charged £325,000 a year to call revenue-generating Student Loans Company phone number

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Students are spending £324,872.06 a year on telephone calls to the Student Loans Company Limited, This is Money can reveal.

The company, which arranges financial services for students, does not currently offer contact by email or a free phone number using instead an 0845 telephone number, from which it makes money.

Between April 2010 and March 2011 this generated it almost a third of a million pounds.

An SLC spokesman said its contact telephone number was not premium rate: ‘Premium rate telephone numbers are defined as “09XX” numbers, and the telephone numbers provided by SLC all start with “0845”. Revenue that it receives from telephone calls is used to offset overall telephone charges, which reduces the cost to the public purse.

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‘The amount invested in providing a telephone service to our customers is greater than the revenue made on these numbers.’

The company, which is a not-for-profit organisation and wholly in public ownership, said it did not offer email contact because it is not possible at the moment for it to deal with customer queries in a secure way. 

It added: ‘We are, however, looking to bring in a secure messaging product (web based e-mail) in the near future.’ 

Easy target? Students are spending £324,872.06 a year on telephone calls to the Student Loans Company Limited, This is Money can reveal

Currently, calls can be free or cheaper by using the SayNoTo0870 website which lists alternative geographical numbers to 0845 numbers.

Depending on your telephone call plan, geographical numbers are more likely to be included at no extra cost than 0845 numbers. 

SLC said that the reason it uses 0845 numbers is to route calls across the company's multiple sites.

‘At peak times, we have 7 contact centre locations and need the functionality that the use of 0845 numbers provides to allow us to route calls across those locations.  Using non-geographic numbers allows calls to be routed to the next available advisor at any location, ensuring that calls are answered as quickly as possible.’

Students are marching today to the City of London in protest against the much bigger cost of tuition fees next year. Many universities are set to charge £9,000 a year.

Today's student protest, organised by the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts, is part of an on-going anti-cuts campaign against what protestors' claim is the threat of privatisation of higher education.