BuzzFeed News put the problems outlined in each case to the SLC. A spokesperson said that it was investigating issues with phone calls.



"We take great pride in dealing with the overwhelming majority of our customers accurately and promptly and are sorry to hear when any customer has received a service which does not match their expectations," they said.

"Last week alone our contact centres answered over 162,000 calls from

customers. Over 54,000 customers were able to use our self-service system

to resolve their query on the phone.

"We are experiencing intermittent issues with a very small number of calls,

which we are investigating and will resolve as quickly as we can," the spokesperson added.

"We regularly monitor all customer communication, including calls, social

media, customer letters and complaints as well as the training given to our

customer advisers."

The company deals with around 8 million customers every year and received almost 15,500 messages on its Student Finance England social media accounts in just two weeks.



It claims it is one of the first agencies to use direct messaging on Facebook and Twitter to communicate with customers, and noted that it has quadrupled staffing since last year to meet customer demand.



However, students complained that their direct messages were being ignored.

Mason McGlynn, 18, told BuzzFeed News that he and around 20 others on his filmmaking course in Manchester have had problems since accidentally selecting the wrong course code on the website. His university said it should take two days to fix, but a lack of contact from the SLC has left him in "limbo" for almost a month.

He said he was also hung up on when he called, and he has experienced long waits for responses to his direct messages.



Student Finance England tweeted on Sept. 14 that it was "receiving a high number of DM's at the moment" and "doing our very best to respond".



"I just think it's really poor, the way that they actually communicate with the students," McGlynn said, noting that advisers are "brief" on the phone.