So I thought I would share my Sallie Mae experience.

My girlfriend and I have been looking to buy a home. About six months ago we went to a mortgage broker and got preapproved for a mortgage. We have been looking at houses off and on for the past six months while at the same time getting our finances in order and saving for a down payment.

Last week we found a house. Saturday we put the offer in. Today our offer was accepted. We were thrilled. I called the mortgage broker and told him. He congratulated me and told me what we had to do from here. I got off the phone with him and he called me back five minutes later.

He told me that he reran my credit report and there was a delinquency on my credit report from Sallie Mae for $49.00 in December and January. this total of $98.00 dropped my credit score from 698 to the low 500\'s.

I called Sallie Mae and asked them why they didn\'t notify me of the change in my monthly payment and why they didn\'t let me know that I was delinquent? Nobody there could answer me. They couldn\'t help me, they just want their money.

Now I have to wait another year before I can reapply for a mortgage.

My son applied for Sallie Mae loans to attend a vocational school. Unfortunately the school provided little in the way of education and marketable skills. Also, financial crises prevented him from completing the remainder of his second year.
Since then he has had to settle for crappy jobs with crappy pay and now has a debt to repay that adds interest exponentially. My son tried to talk to them, when he could actually get hold of a human being and to try to find a middle ground of compromise such as how about a payment that is realistic with the cost of living and wages…all for naught. He was unable to eke out a living with his wages and when it came down to buying food or paying a student loan payment, he opted for the food. Sallie Mae\'s debt collection and customer service techniques border on criminal and cruel and unusual punishment. They make resolutions impossible and their monthly payment programs are disproportionate to my son\'s, to anyone\'s income I would surmise.
The debt was eventually turned over for collections and we all know there is a special hell for those folks their methods are inhumane, unethical and unreasonable. He now has to deal with the collections and the government in some form or fashion; needless to say he comes up against two very unreasonable and unmerciful entities. The government has their agenda and and collections has theirs and neither the twain shall meet.
He has currently lost his job and he decided to go back to school and was doing some research on the student loan debacle and discovered there might be some way that not only would he benefit from but that it would make it possible to make some head way into eventually paying back his student loan. He contacted the collection agency that holds the student loan and they told him that if he could consistently make monthly payments for 10 months his loan would go out of default and then he could reapply for student loans. He was also told that they would not attach his tax refund. Well that was a lie because they did and my son received a letter from the treasury department that they had indeed withheld and applied his measly tax refund to the student loan. So now I am thinking if they lied about that they might be lying about the “10 month” deal. He has enlisted my help in assisting him in making these monthly payments and I can’t afford them either. I am now though skeptical if making these payments will actually help him out of the “default status”, allowing him to indeed apply for more student loans to finance a better education for a better paying career. What’s the deal!
And to those that think that Sallie Mae is a benevolent organization have yet to experience their unmerciful and uncompromising side. I strongly suspect there is more to their stories.