I just got off the phone with Sallie Mae and it is almost a lost cause to try to understand their billing system. I always thought that your payment to a billing group was broken into correct proportions and applied to the loans that make up the group. My mistake.. apparently this is a pool of money where they can do whatever they feel like (and makes them the most money in the long run).
I have been making extra payments to my highest interest loan for almost 2 months now (10$ a week) and I take screenshots almost every day of the website status so I can catch their little "changes". Now what I am seeing is that because I am making these extra payments on that loan when it comes time to make my big monthly payment they will not apply a proper amount to this loan. In the past every month this loan would receive 18-20$ (split between interest and maybe interest if I am lucky). Now this month the accrued interest on this loan is almost nothing and the payment was cut from ~20$ to 2.32$ the.. exact amount of accrued interest. This means that they have robbed me of about 17$ that would have gone to my principal.
They really did not have an explanation for how this payment conveniently got dropped to only cover interest. to sum it up they will apply your payments however they see fit and if it is in their benefit to apply nothing to principal on a higher interest loan then they will do whatever they can to have that happen. I requested that all extra money is applied to this one loan no matter what in an email… I hope they can handle that.
Sallie Mae is counting on you not to keep an eye on what they are doing. My advice is to watch them very close.
You can call and request that they put each loan into a new and separate billing group.
Yes, you can request it or they can just do whatever they want .. modify however they want and not notify you…