wrote the following letter to Sallie Mae

On December 20th I wrote the following letter to Sallie Mae and I resent the letter today, December 28th, and have received zero response in regards to my letter. I’m very upset with the handling of my loans and the inability of customer service to work with me. As a result, my credit rating is not where it could be and it is essentially causing me more stress than anything since I cannot get the things I need to continue working in order to payoff these loans. December 20, 2012 To Whom It May Concern: I am thoroughly disappointed and disgusted with the customer service I have received from Sallie Mae since the very beginning of my loans coming due in 2009. I have stated over and over and over again that the payment amount at that time was out of my means. I was told by your customer service representatives that maybe I should cut out some non-essentials from my budget so I could afford the payment. First of all, I don’t believe your CSRs should be giving any type of financial advice nor do they know what is going on in my life and finances. Your CSRs don’t know (or care) that I have mounding medical bills due to a botched surgery that led to me having a pacemaker implanted at age 19, which was during my sophomore year in college. In case you are wondering, that is quite a traumatic experience and now I am 100% dependent on a medical implant that requires constant maintenance. I filled out application after application for income based repayment, economic hardship, etc. and did not qualify for any of these. Yet your CSRs can’t go beyond the script that they have been given. I had asked several times, not only to speak with someone I could actually understand, but a manager/supervisor with a little more authority that could really dive into my loans and work out a solution. Again, I was told that if I could catch up on my payments and get my account current, then and only then would they be able to “work something out”. Apparently voicing my concerns with “caring CSRs” didn’t seem to matter as all I was able to do was apply forbearance to my loans time after time. I had offered several times to make monthly payments in the amount of $100.00 to start with and, as I was able, I would increase those amounts. I was told that this amount was “insufficient” and that these payments wouldn’t apply to my principal balance. I found it odd that a financial institute would turn away money. This same scenario went on for 3 years. I became increasingly frustrated with the huge wall I was up against and the fact that no one in the entire Sallie Mae organization could find a way to help me work out a payment arrangement. Obviously, this issue has severely affected my credit score and the ability to get the things I need, such as a newer vehicle to get me to and from work so I could possibly pay the outrageous amounts that Sallie Mae was demanding I pay. Mind you, my job is 45 miles from my home so a car with gas mileage better than 18 MPG would be preferable when gas prices are at $3.59 a gallon. Again, these are things that your company doesn’t understand nor do they care about. I do understand that it is impossible to hear everyone’s “sob stories”, but with repeated requests, one would think that someone would be able tune in and listen for a few minutes. Regardless of all of this, I have been able to work out a temporary payment solution for the next 12 months of $121.94. If this had this been worked out when I had asked originally back in 2009, I would have had roughly $5000.00 paid off by now and possibly more. This is extremely frustrating. Although I have a rather large balance of student loans, consistent payments would have done wonders for my credit. This has also put a huge burden on my mother, who took half of my student loans when I started college. She was a single parent, no alimony payments being made to her, and we didn’t qualify for any additional aid. I work very hard and still fall short to those people that decided to have kids before continuing their education and basically get it for free. The system has major flaws and I believe that Sallie Mae capitalizes on opportunities to hurt rather than help its borrowers. I hope this letter is taken seriously. Since every call should have been monitored, it will be easy for you to go back and see how many times I have called. Some calls were heated because not only was I frustrated with your system, but trying to get to speak to a person I can understand and being on hold and never getting anywhere is entirely unacceptable. I can’t say that I expect anything to come out of this correspondence since all of my dealings have netted me nothing to date, but I hope this gets to the right person and they can take it seriously enough to spark some changes in your company and your dealings with your clients. Thank you,