Saturday, August 16, 2008

Dear Sallie Mae, Please Pull Your head Out of Your Ass. Thanks, Jen

Around the beginning of the year, as you may recall, I paid off a student loan more befitting a doctor/ Harvard grad than a teacher/ state school grad. As you can imagine, I did a few happy dances and then forgot about it. Until today. When I got a nicely worded note letting me know that I was going to default on my loans. After I gave the nice (but clearly uninterested) customer service rep a piece of my mind, I was informed that I had not paid $300. Let me just back up and say that I called my student loan people and confirmed that everything was paid and they happily announced that I was debt free. How, I would like to know, can I pay money that I don't know is owed? The nice (but clearly uninterested) customer service rep insisted they had informed me and gave me the address they had been sending mail to, where I lived in 1996. Did they lose the five (six? ten?) addresses I've had since then? I would understand this if it were still state-run-- government workers aren't really known for getting off their asses for much of anything but a break, but Sallie Mae has been privatized. So, theoretically, this is a profit-seeking corporation. Were they hoping to cash in on the massive interest that has accrued to make a total of $300?

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