Wednesday, March 14th, 2007...10:14 pm
Letter to WTOL Call for Action
After all of the problems we have experienced and are continueing to experience I sent the following letter to WTOL Call for Action.
Hello,
For over a year my wife has been trying to consolidate our federal loans away from Sallie Mae in order to take advantage of a lower interest rate. Sallie Mae has refused on many occasions to send the payoff amounts and information to Americna Education Services, who we are consolidating with. We cannot get a contact at Sallie Mae who does anything other than transfer us and make empty promises. We have written down many of the numerous times we have contacted them.
We also are trying to consolidate my wife’s private loans away from Sallie Mae in order to get away from a 13% interest rate on several of her loans. We are consolidating these with Wells Fargo. Today we received a call from Wells Fargo telling us that Sallie Mae would not release our payoff amount. Being no stranger to this, we called Sallie Mae and were told first that the letter had been sent, then that we could not consolidate to Wells Fargo from Sallie Mae, by the same person. After several more phone calls, we were given several different answers none of which could help us. The call log is available on my Sallie Mae website, http://www.imjosh.com/salliemae/2007/03/14/sallie-mae-doesnt-allow-consolidation-to-wells-fargo/
So far no one can help us, we make our payments on time and are fed up with the treatment of us by Sallie Mae. It is a disgrace that this company is taking advantage of today’s youth.
Thank you for reading this and I hope you have the time to lend your assistance.
Josh and Amber Smith
4 Comments
October 18th, 2007 at 8:28 am
I have gone through the same problems with Sallie Mae, one representative told me that I could do a forbearance and bring my loan current which would then allow me to get a reduced loan amount and I could NOT be denied for it, everyone is approved I’m told. As soon as I pay the forbearance fee, I get an e-mail saying that I do NOT qualify for the reduction. Then I tried to consolidate through many other companies each of them saying that I could not consolidate through them and giving me another number to call that may be able to help me, finally someone told me that I could not consolidate through anyone but Sallie Mae Consolidations. So I applied through them and at the end of the consolidation was told that I needed a co-signer, which I thought was horribly ironic considering that when I was 19 I already had great established credit, enough so that I did not need a co-signer for a $32,000 loan, and since I went to school to better myself I have bad credit and need a co-signer to consolidate that same loan(actually it is 3 different loans with Sallie Mae equalling $32,000). I cannot even work in the field that I went to school for because in the area I live, I cannot make enough money to pay my bills. Anyways, my sister agreed to co-sign for me but wanted to speak to Sallie Mae to get details first, and being a Finance Manager herself told me after speaking to them that she most certainly would not consolidate with them because their promises of reduced payments and lowered interest rates were not true, and not realistically going to happen, I told Sallie Mae this several times and tried to work out payment plans with them which never worked, I stopped taking their calls and sent $100-$200 a month so that I could still live while attempting to repay my loans, also while making my federal loan payment every month. I stopped altogether making payments when I became pregnant (I never thought I would be able to have children being diabetic for 20 years since childhood) with a very high risk pregnancy resulting in 4 different doctors throughout the pregnancy and 2-3 appointments a week, and now with a newborn I just do not see how I will ever be able to pay th $450 a month they want me to. Is there any relief from Sallie Mae or are we credit doomed for life?
October 18th, 2007 at 10:35 am
Try calling their customer Advocacy Unit
1 888-545-4199
No Promises but at least these people know what they are doing and can take the steps needed. I got the number by writing to my congressman.
November 12th, 2007 at 9:16 pm
I urge everyone who has had problems with Sallie Mae to visit my web site and post your story in my forum. We need to protect future borrowers from the horrors of dealing with Sallie Mae.
The only way to accomplish this is by publicizing the problems we’ve had so people know this is a real problem. Sallie Mae might just be forced into changing their ways. We can make a difference, but only if everyone helps!
Sallie Mae Beef
http://salliemaebeef.com
P.S. Thank you for the link, Josh!
August 26th, 2009 at 8:18 pm
help we co-signed a loan from salliemae what a nightmare we were not aware that interest could be charged on interest and we will never get this mess off our backs. They told us on the phone that they cant tell us how much money to pay a month to start getting this paid down the interest just keeps being converted to principal every quarter We cant figure how this can be legal. I think people who are being sucked into this scheme should be warned and those who are being screwed should join forces and try to get this monster stopped. I wont even go into the problems my daughter is having with the loans she took out it is evil
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