Sallie Mae Inc

Sally Mae is the worst loan company I have dealt with. They will not process or cash your check payments on time, causing you to be late and or delinquent with your loan. We, at first used to pay by debit card over the phone and several times in paying that way, Sally Mae would double dip our bank account, draining our account. (In other words, taking out double the amount.) So we decided to pay by mail and that's when it got worse by not processing checks on time. I send all of our checks to them certified mail, so I know when they receive our payment and check our bank as to when they cash it. Most of the time, it is better than seven days or more from receipt of payment until cashing the check. Now here's where it get even worse. Since they don't process our payment very fast, we get repeated phone calls from them as many as seven per day. According to the Federal Consumers Dept. these calls fall under annoying. I may have to report them for this. I have been keeping documentation of all mail sent to them by tracking and documenting receiving/cashing/processing time frames. The way they do business is unacceptable. In short, I do NOT recommend Sally Mae to anyone for a student loan. Please use another source. I have friends on facebook who say they have had similar problems with this company. I will be looking into alternative solutions to this problem in the future.

Customer disservice This debacle starts a little over two years ago when my wife was about six months pregnant with our second child. Up to this point, I had been paying Sallie Mae using the automatic withdrawal from my checking account method. Things were going well. Unfortunately, my wife’s boss started to realize that with a baby on the way, my wife was headed for some maternity leave and he would have one less employee for a few months, so he fired her. I only mention it because I believe that it is important. Our finances got a little tight and I had to switch to paper billing through the mail. It afforded us a little more time each month to make the pay. We struggled and were on the verge of losing our house, so I requested a deferment of my payments. After my deferment period had expired, I didn’t receive any bills. When I called to inquire, I was informed that I owed some money due to missed payments and, of course, there were some late fees associated with that as well. I asked how this could have happened. I was told that I was responsible for mailing in my bills because I was now on the ‘coupon’ method of repayment. I informed them that I had NOT requested the coupon option and would prefer to go back to receiving my bills in the mail. Sallie Mae’s customer service department could not figure out how my account was switched to coupon payment. I spoke to several different members of Sallie Mae’s staff on multiple occasions (monthly) and the problem was never resolved, despite the fact that they had assured me each time that it had. A short time later, I contacted Sallie Mae to try and find a solution to my problem of not being able to make a particular payment on time. I was waiting for a check to be mailed to me. I had not received it yet and I was unable to pay my bill at that point. When I spoke to a Sallie Mae representative, he assured me that I could avoid the late fee by switching my due date to a later date in the billing cycle. He proceeded to switch the dates for me. Later that month, I was informed, via a barrage of phone calls, that I was late on that month’s payment and there were some additional late fees as a result. It seems that the due date switch cannot take effect until the next billing cycle, negating the reason I had the switch made in the first place. My customer service ‘help’ failed to inform me of that. Of course this error, his error, resulted in fees I had to pay. My next phone conversation with Sallie Mae was concerned with trying to get my account back onto paper billing, again. For some reason, my representative could not make this adjustment. They suggested that I use Sallie Mae’s online payment option through their website. Frustrated with all of my previous attempts to resolve this situation with customer service, I was willing to try anything. I went to the website and created an account in an attempt to pay my bills online. I reviewed, checked off and paid every due amount I could find on the web page, associated with the billing groups on my account (the website is unable to display them all on one place, apparently). Still, a month later I received a volley of phone calls indicating that payments were missed and, you guessed it, additional fees were due. Adding insult to injury Feeling financially overwhelmed, I decided to apply for an income based repayment plan. I tried to fill out the documentation on Sallie Mae’s website, but I was confused by some of the wording of the questions and opted to fill out the forms which I downloaded from the same site and just fax them in to the number provided. I never heard from Sallie Mae. Having no real alternative, I had to call Sallie Mae customer service for some help with this new issue. I called during the week, during normal business hours (I have learned to never call after hours or on the weekend, since the ‘help’ available at those times is even less adept) to try and find out what had happened with my submission. At this point I had also learned to never talk to the standard Sallie Mae staff, since they could not solve any of my issues. In fact, they tended to make matters worse. I immediately asked for a supervisor, thinking that this will enhance my chances of success. In addition, I have started asking for names, full names. Corey Keller, if that was his real name, was the supervisor I was working with. The first thing he said was “Wow, your account is a MESS!” He then proceeded to ask me when I filed the income based repayment documents. When I told him that I wasn’t really sure, he gave me a hard time, indicating that I should know that information. I made a guess off the top of my head as to when I submitted the paperwork. He rudely piped in and informed me that it was actually a month after the date I had given him. I could not figure out why he would ask me for the information if he had it in front of him, on the computer, all along. Feeling like I was being verbally reprimanded, I asked him if he remembered every date associated with forms that he had ever filled out. He very snidely said to me: “If it’s important to me, I do it and I remember”. He then indicated to me that I had filed for income based repayment online and no action was taken since the form was incomplete. I told him that I that I was aware of that and that I had filed a second time with a fax. He told me that no action had been taken since the paperwork was not received. Feeling extremely frustrated, I asked him to send me the paperwork, via the mail, again. It’s been over two weeks and I have still not received my income based repayment documentation. Obviously, Corey had not followed through on his responsibilities. I wasn’t sure whether Corey Keller’s job wasn’t ‘important’ enough to him or if he was just a liar, but I wanted to call and find out. Seeking some measure of accountability, I called Sallie Mae and asked for Corey. I was put on hold while he was located. I sat on hold for 48 minutes. At that point, I hung up in frustration. Had I not done so, I would probably still be on hold, waiting. In my desperate search of Sallie Mae’s website for some answers, I came across an interesting quote which is sited as being a Sallie Mae slogan. It reads: “Customer Service is not a department, it’s an attitude”. As a customer, I didn’t really experience a great deal of service, but there was certainly a fair amount of attitude. The solution Despite all of this, I am still willing to try and salvage this situation. If Sallie Mae is at all interested in making things right, this is what I propose. (1) Repair my damaged credit rating. All of these issues have lead to late and missed payments, none of which are due to any errors on my part. In addition, I have exerted considerable effort in trying to rectify the situation to no avail. Therefore, I do not believe that I should be penalized for them. (2) Waive all outstanding late fees associated with late and missed payments. Again, these fees are directly associated with my inability to work with a competent member of the customer service staff and as a result, I do not believe that I should be penalized. (3) Return me to paper billing. Just mail me my bills, all of my bills, clearly indicating the amount (s) owed for ALL of my billing groups. I believe that these are very reasonable requests and my argument is well founded.