Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Do you have FFELP loans?

In the last few days, I've noticed that more people have gotten in touch with me, and are frantic about the fact that they are now, and for the first time, receiving threatening phone calls from the likes of Sallie Mae on their FFELP loans. I have asked several of these readers if they've ever received such phone calls in the past. One person today said that it was the first phone call they'd ever received and it's for a debt that has been owed since the late-1990s.

So, here's my question, did you take out FFELP loans years ago, perhaps stopped paying them years ago, and are just now hearing from your lenders or a debt collection agency representing them and demanding that you pay your student loan debt? I am particularly interested in hearing from those who live abroad. (One of the cases I just heard about was from someone who is living outside of the U.S. The agency was able to track the individual down by looking up their cell phone outside of the U.S.)

If you have recently experienced something like this (i.e., in the last two weeks or so), please let all of us know by posting a comment below. 

4 comments:

leni said...

I have not!

Anonymous said...

I don't have this problem at the moment, but I am about to finish my B.A. and even though I am in-school and think Sallie Mae would give an in school deferment. They are sending me notices to pay at the end of this spring. I will actually have to defer it for some other reason for two months in the summer while I am out of school. For some reason they don't know that I am in school even though I have notified them several times. And I am nervous because I at least want to get my B.A. before anything bad happens.

Anonymous said...

To the above poster, Welcome to Sallie Mae! Your story does not surprise me in the least. I can go and on with all the problems I have had with this grossly incompetent run company over the years. You need to watch them with a magnet over every little thing or you may unknowingly find yourself with late fees or ..gasp...even in default! Get used to the notion of lost paperwork, talking with 5 different agents to clear up messes of their own making, payments not being applied correctly, forebearances that never get processed etc etc. If you have federal loans I HIGHLY recommend switching to Direct Loans and go on IBR to escape Sallie Mae Hell. If you have private loans, pray to God or Buddha that bankruptcy rights are rightfully restored to consumers in this country!

SeanFromIT said...

My wife had private Signature Student loans with Sallie Mae. Because they were for a community college (and not my special-Sallie-Mae-relationship private engineering university), Sallie Mae decided to sell off a small portion of the loans to the Department of Education and call them FFELP. Sallie Mae, of course, somehow gets to keep servicing these DoE loans. We didn't learn any of this until they started calling her asking where their payment was (we were like WTF - we pay you every month). So now she has two logins to salliemae.com, one for the private and one for the sold off suddenly FFELP loans. In the process of doing this, they were able to raise the overall monthly payment for both loans more than it was as a single account. I hate Sallie Mae.